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Chapter 5

1

As for you, son of man, take a sharp sword and use it like a barber's razor, passing it over your head and beard. Then take a set of scales and divide the hair you have cut.

2

¹ Burn a third in the fire, within the city, when the days of your siege are completed; place another third around the city and strike it with the sword; the final third strew in the wind, and pursue it with the sword.

3

(But of the last take a small number and tie them in the hem of your garment.

4

Then take some of these and throw them in the midst of the fire and burn them.) Say to the whole house of Israel:

5

Thus says the Lord GOD: This is Jerusalem! In the midst of the nations I placed her, surrounded by foreign countries.

6

But she rebelled against my ordinances more wickedly than the nations, and against my statutes more than the foreign countries surrounding her; she has spurned my ordinances and has not lived by my statutes.

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Therefore thus says the Lord GOD: Because you have been more rebellious than the nations surrounding you, not living by my statutes nor fulfilling my ordinances, but acting according to the ordinances of the surrounding nations;

8

² therefore thus says the Lord GOD: See, I am coming at you! I will inflict punishments in your midst while the nations look on.

9

Because of all your abominations I will do with you what I have never done before, the like of which I will never do again.

10

³ This means that fathers within you shall eat sons, and sons shall eat fathers. I will inflict punishments upon you and scatter all that remain of your people in every direction.

11

Therefore, as I live, says the Lord GOD, because you have defiled my sanctuary with all your detestable abominations, I swear to cut you down. I will not look upon you with pity nor have mercy.

12

A third of your people shall die of pestilence and perish of hunger within you; another third shall fall by the sword all around you; and a third I will scatter in every direction, and I will pursue them with the sword.

16

When I loose against you the cruel, destructive arrows of hunger, I will break your staff of bread;

17

I will send famine against you, and wild beasts that shall rob you of your children. Pestilence and bloodshed shall stalk through you, and I will bring the sword upon you. I, the LORD, have spoken!

13

Thus shall my anger spend itself, and I will wreak my fury upon them till I am appeased; they shall know that I, the LORD, have spoken in my jealousy when I spend my fury upon them.

14

I will make you a waste and a reproach among the nations that surround you, which every passer-by may see.

15

When I execute judgment upon you in anger and fury and with furious chastisements, you shall be a reproach and an object of scorn, a terrible warning to the nations that surround you. I, the LORD, have spoken!