1. "As for you, son of man, take a sharp sword; take and use it as a barber's razor on your head and beard. Then take scales for weighing and divide the hair.
2. One third you shall burn in the fire at the center of the city, when the days of the siege are completed. Then you shall take one third and strike it with the sword all around the city, and one third you shall scatter to the wind; and I will unsheathe a sword behind them.
3. Take also a few in number from them and bind them in the edges of your robes.
4. Take again some of them and throw them into the fire and burn them in the fire; from it a fire will spread to all the house of Israel.
5. "Thus says the Lord God, 'This is Jerusalem; I have set her at the center of the nations, with lands around her.