1 "And you, son of man, take for yourself a sword, sharp [as] {a barber's razor}. Take it for yourself, and you must cause [it] to pass over your head and over your beard, and you must take for yourself a set of scales for weighing, and you must divide them.
2 A third you must burn with fire in the midst of the city at {the completion} of the days of the siege, and you must take a third, and you must strike [it] with the sword around it, and a third you must scatter to the wind, and I will draw a sword behind them.
3 And you must take from these a few in number, and you must tuck them in your hem.
4 And from them again you shall take [some], and you must throw them in the middle of the fire, and you must burn them with fire; from it a fire will go out to all of the house of Israel.
5 Thus says the Lord Yahweh: This [is] Jerusalem in the midst of the nations [where] I have put her, and countries [are] around her.
6 But she has rebelled against my regulations to the point of wickedness more than the nations, and my statutes more than the countries that [are] around her; for they rejected my regulations, and [as for] my statutes, they did not walk in them.
7 Therefore, thus says the Lord Yahweh: Because of your commotion more than the nations that [are] around you--you did not walk in my statutes, and you did not do my regulations, and according to the regulations of the nations that [are] around you, you did not do.
8 Therefore thus says the Lord Yahweh: Look! I, {even I}, am against you, and I will execute judgment in the midst of you before the eyes of the nations,
9 and I will do with you [that] which I have not done, and which I will not do again, because of all of your detestable things.
10 Therefore parents will eat children in the midst of you, and children will eat their parents, and I will execute judgment in you, and I will scatter your entire remnant to every wind.
11 Therefore {as surely as I live}, {declares} the Lord Yahweh, {Surely} because you have defiled my sanctuary with all of your vile idols and with all of your detestable things, {now indeed I} will reduce, and my eye will not take pity, and surely I will show no compassion.
12 A third of you will die because of the plague, and because of the famine they will perish in the midst of you, and a third will fall through the sword around you, and a third I will scatter to every direction of the wind, and I will draw [the] sword behind them.
13 And my anger will come to an end, and I will place my rage on them, and I will relent, and they will know that I, Yahweh, have spoken in my passion {when I fully vent my rage against them}.
14 And I will make you into a desolate place and into a disgrace among the nations that surround you before the eyes of {every one who passes by}.
15 And it will be [an] object of taunting and [an] object of mockery, a warning and a horror to the nations that [are] around you whenever I execute judgments against you in anger and in wrath and in furious punishments! I, Yahweh, have spoken!
16 When I send my arrows of deadly famine against them, which will be as destruction that I will send [in order] to destroy you, I will increase famine against you, and I will break {the supply of food} for you.
17 And I will send against you famine and fierce animals, and they will make you childless; and plague and blood will pass through you, and I will bring [the] sword upon you. I, Yahweh, I have spoken!"