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.
6. But she has rebelled against My ordinances more wickedly than the nations and against My statutes more than the lands which surround her; for they have rejected My ordinances and have not walked in My statutes.'
7. Therefore, thus says the Lord God, 'Because you have more turmoil than the nations which surround you and have not walked in My statutes, nor observed My ordinances, nor observed the ordinances of the nations which surround you,'
8. therefore, thus says the Lord God, 'Behold, I, even I, am against you, and I will execute judgments among you in the sight of the nations.