1. As for you, son of man, take a sharp sword. Take and cause it to pass upon your head and upon your beard as a barber’s razor. Then take balances to weigh and divide the hair.
2. You shall burn with fire a third part in the midst of the city when the days of the siege are fulfilled. Then you shall take a third part and strike it with the sword all around the city. And a third part you shall scatter in the wind. And I will draw out a sword after them.
3. You shall also take a few in number from them and bind them in the edges of your robes.
4. Then take some of them again and cast them into the midst of the fire and burn them in the fire. For a fire shall come out into all the house of Israel.
5. Thus says the Lord God: This is Jerusalem. I have set it in the midst of the nations, with countries that are all around her.
6. But she has rebelled against My judgments more wickedly than the nations, and against My statutes more than the countries that are all around her. For they have refused My judgments and My statutes, and have not walked in them.
7. Therefore thus says the Lord God: Because you have more turmoil than the nations that are round about you and have not walked in My statutes, or have kept My judgments, and have not even acted according to the judgments of the nations that are all around you,
8. therefore thus says the Lord God: Pay attention. I, even I, am against you and will execute judgments in your midst in the sight of the nations.
9. I will do in you what I have not done, and the like of which I will not do anymore, because of all your abominations.
10. Therefore the fathers shall eat their sons in your midst, and the sons shall eat their fathers. For I will execute judgments on you, and the whole remnant of you I will scatter into all the winds.
11. Therefore, as I live, says the Lord God, surely, because you have defiled My sanctuary with all your detestable things and with all your abominations, therefore I will also diminish you, and My eye shall have no pity, nor will I spare.