4
Ezekiel

Symbolic Acts of Siege and Judgment on Jerusalem

Ezekiel 4:1-5:17
1And you, son of man, take a brick for yourself and set it before you, and decree upon it a city, Jerusalem. 2You shall set a siege against it, build a siegework against it, pour out a mound against it, station camps against it, and place battering rams around it. 3And you, take an iron griddle for yourself and set it as an iron wall between you and the city; then you shall prepare your face toward it, and it shall be under siege, and you shall confine it; it is a sign for the house of Israel. 4You are to lie down on your left side and place the iniquity of the house of Israel upon it; you shall bear their iniquity for the number of days you lie upon it. 5I assign to you the years of their iniquity according to the number of days—three hundred and ninety days—so that you bear the iniquity of the house of Israel. 6When you have completed these days, lie down a second time on your right side and bear the iniquity of the house of Judah for forty days, one day for each year; I assign it to you. 7And toward the siege of Jerusalem you shall prepare your face, with your arm stripped bare, and you shall prophesy against it. 8Behold, I place cords upon you so that you cannot turn from one side to the other until you complete the days of your siege. 9Take wheat, barley, beans, lentils, millet, and spelt for yourself; put them into a single vessel and prepare them as food for the number of days you lie on your side—three hundred and ninety days—during which you shall eat it. 10Your food shall be eaten by weight: twenty shekels a day, from time to time. 11You shall drink water by measure, a sixth of a hin, from time to time. 12And a barley cake you shall eat, and it shall be baked before their eyes on human excrement. 13And the LORD said: Thus shall the sons of Israel eat their food unclean among the nations to which I shall banish them. 14I replied: Alas, Lord GOD, my soul has never been defiled; from my youth until now I have not eaten anything found dead or torn by wild animals, nor has any unclean meat entered my mouth. 15And he said to me: See, I have given you cattle dung in place of human dung, and you shall make your food upon it. 16He said to me: Son of man, I am about to break the supply of bread in Jerusalem; they will eat bread by weight and in anxiety, and drink water by measure and in horror. 17They will lack bread and water, and every man and his brother will waste away and rot because of their iniquity.
Chapter 5
1Son of man, take a sharp sword—a barber's razor—and use it on your head and beard; then take scales of weight and divide the hair. 2Burn one third in the fire inside the city when the siege days are completed; strike another third with the sword all around the city; scatter the final third to the wind while I draw the sword after them. 3And you shall take from there a little by number and bind them in your wings. 4From these you shall again take some and throw them into the fire to be burned; from there fire will spread to the entire house of Israel. 5Thus says the Lord GOD: This is Jerusalem; I have placed her in the midst of the nations with lands surrounding her. 6And she rebelled against my judgments for wickedness more than the nations, and against my statutes more than the lands around her, for they rejected my judgments and did not walk in my statutes. 7Therefore thus says the Lord GOD: Because you have been turbulent more than the nations around you, have not walked in my statutes, have not done my judgments, and have not done even as the judgments of the nations around you, 8therefore thus says the Lord GOD: Behold, I myself am against you; I will execute judgments in your midst in the sight of the nations. 9I will do to you what I have never done and what I will never do again, because of all your abominations. 10Therefore fathers will eat their sons in your midst, and sons will eat their fathers; I will execute judgments against you and scatter all your survivors to every wind. 11Therefore, as I live, declares the Lord GOD, because you defiled my sanctuary with all your detestable things and abominations, I also will cut you down; my eye will not spare and I will not pity. 12One third of you will die by pestilence and be finished by famine in your midst; one third will fall by the sword around you; and one third I will scatter to every wind and pursue with the sword. 13I will exhaust my anger and vent my wrath upon them; then I will be satisfied and they will know that I am the LORD who spoke in my jealousy when I finished pouring out my wrath upon them. 14I will make you a desolation and a reproach among the nations around you before the eyes of every passerby. 15You will become a reproach, a taunt, a warning, and a devastation to the nations around you when I carry out judgments against you in anger, fury, and furious rebukes—I, the LORD, have spoken. 16When I send the deadly arrows of famine among them—arrows intended for destruction—and when I send them to ruin you, I will add famine upon you and break your supply of bread. 17And I will send famine and harmful living things against you, and they shall bereave you, and pestilence and blood shall pass through you, and I will bring the sword upon you—I, the LORD, have spoken.
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