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you, son of man, take a sharp sword and use it as you would a barber’s razor, and shave your head and your beard. Then take a set of scales to weigh and divide up the hair. 2 When the days of the siege come to an end, you are to burn with fire a third of the hair inside the city. Then you are to take a third of the hair and slash it with the sword all around the city. And scatter a third of the hair to the wind, for I will draw a sword to pursue them. 3 But you are to take a few strands of hair and bind them in the edge of your robe. 4 Then take a few of these again and throw them in a fire and burn them. A fire will spread from there and go out to the whole house of Israel.
5 “This is what the Lord God says: ‘This is Jerusalem, which I have set in the centre of the nations, with countries all around her. 6 Yet she has rebelled against My ordinances by doing more wickedness than the nations and countries around her. She has rejected My ordinances and has not walked in My statutes’.
7 “Therefore this is what the Lord God says: ‘You have been more turbulent than the nations around you, and have not walked in My statutes or kept My ordinances. You have not even kept the ordinances of the nations that are around you’.
8 “Therefore this is what the Lord God says: ‘Behold, I am against you, O Jerusalem. I will execute judgments in your midst in the sight of the nations. 9 Because of all your detestable practices, I will do to you what I have never done before, and the like of which I will never do again. 10 Consequently, fathers will eat their sons in your midst, and sons will eat their fathers. I will execute judgments among you, then I will scatter to the winds any of you who survive. 11 Therefore, as I live’, says the Lord God, ‘because you have defiled My sanctuary with all your detestable things and all your abominations, I will withdraw My favour from you. My eye will not spare, nor will I have pity. 12 A third of your people will die of the pestilence or be consumed by famine within you; a third of you will fall by the sword all around you; and a third of you I will scatter to the winds and pursue with a drawn sword.
13 ‘When My anger is spent and I have satisfied My wrath against them subsides, I will be avenged. When I have spent My wrath against them, then they will know that I, the Lord, have spoken in My zeal.
14 ‘I will make you a ruin and a reproach among the nations around you, and in the sight of all who pass by. 15 You will be a reproach and a taunt, a warning and an object of horror to the nations around you when I execute judgments against you in anger, and in wrath, and with furious rebukes. I, the Lord, have spoken. 16 When I shoot deadly arrows of famine at them, arrows for destruction that I will send to destroy you, I will intensify the famine against you and cut off your supply of food. 17 I will send famine and wild beasts against you, and they will leave you childless. Pestilence and bloodshed will sweep through you, and I will bring the sword against you. I, the Lord, have spoken’.”