1. "And as for you, son of man, obtain for yourself a sharp knife for shaving hair, and you shall take it and draw it across your head and across your beard. And you shall obtain for yourself a balance for weighing, and you shall divide the hair.
2. A third part you shall burn with fire in the midst of the city, according to the completion of the days of the siege. And you shall take a third part, and you shall cut it with the knife all around. Yet truly, the other third, you shall scatter to the wind, for I will unsheathe the sword after them.
3. And you shall take from there a small number. And you shall bind them in the end of your cloak.
4. And again, you shall take from them, and you shall throw them into the midst of the fire, and you shall burn them with fire. And from it, there shall go forth a fire to the entire house of Israel."
5. Thus says the Lord God: "This is Jerusalem. I have placed her in the midst of the Gentiles and of the lands all around her.
6. And she has despised my judgments, so as to be more impious than the Gentiles, and my precepts, more so than the lands that are all around her. For they have cast aside my judgments, and they have not walked in my precepts."
7. For this reason, thus says the Lord God: "Since you have surpassed the Gentiles who are all around you, and have not walked in my precepts, and have not accomplished my judgments, and have not even acted in accord with the judgments of the Gentiles who are all around you: