Dual Panel1“O man, take a sharp sword, and use it like a razor to shave your head and your chin. Then take scales and divide the hair into three lots.
2When the siege comes to an end, burn one third of the hair in a fire in the centre of the city; cut up one third with the sword round about the city; scatter the last third to the wind, and I shall follow it with drawn sword.
3Take a few of these hairs and tie them up in a fold of your robe.
4Then take others, throw them into the fire and burn them. “Say to all Israel:
5These are the words of the Lord GOD: This city of Jerusalem I have set among the nations, with lands all around her,
6but she has rebelled against my laws and my statutes more wickedly than those nations and lands; for her people have rejected my laws and refused to conform to my statutes.
7“The Lord GOD says: Since you have been more insubordinate than the nations around you and have not conformed to my statutes and have not kept my laws or even the laws of the nations around you,
8therefore, says the Lord GOD, I in turn shall be against you; in the sight of the nations I shall execute judgements in your midst,
9such judgements as I have never executed before, nor ever shall again, so abominable have all your offences been.
10Parents will eat their children and children their parents in your midst, Jerusalem; I shall execute judgements on you, and any who survive in you I shall scatter to the four winds.
11As I live, says the Lord GOD, because you have defiled my holy place with all your vile and abominable rites, I in turn shall destroy you and show no pity; I shall spare no one.
12One third of your people will die by pestilence or perish by famine in your midst; one third will fall by the sword in the country round about; and one third I shall scatter to the four winds and follow with drawn sword.
13When my anger is spent and my fury is abated I shall be appeased; when my fury against them is spent they will know that I, the LORD, have spoken in my jealousy.
14I have reduced you to a ruin, an object of mockery to the nations around you, and all who pass by will see it.
15You will be an object of mockery and abuse, an appalling lesson to the nations round about, when I pass sentence on you and execute judgement in anger and fury. I, the LORD, have spoken.
16“When I loose the deadly arrows of famine against you, arrows of destruction, I shall shoot them to destroy you. I shall send one famine after another on you and cut off your daily bread;
17I shall unleash famine and savage beasts on you, and they will leave you childless. Pestilence and bloodshed will sweep through you, and I shall bring the sword against you. I, the LORD, have spoken.”