 1 Take a sharp sword to yourself son of man. Take a barber's razor and cause it to pass on your head and on your beard. Then take scales to weigh and divide the hair. 2 Burn a third part with fire in the middle of the city when the days of the siege are fulfilled. Then take a third part and beat around it with a sword. Then scatter a third part in the wind and I will draw out a sword after them. 3 Take a few of them and tie them up in your skirts. 4 Then take of them again and throw them into the middle of the fire and burn them in the fire. For a fire will come forth from them into all the house of Israel. 5 Thus says the Lord God: This is Jerusalem. I have set it in the middle of the nations, and all around her are the lands. 6 She has changed my judgments into wickedness more than the nations, and defiled my laws more than the countries that are all around her. For they have rejected my judgments and my laws. They have not walked in them. 7 Therefore thus says the Lord God, Because you multiplied more than the nations that are all around you, and have not walked in my laws, neither have kept my judgments, nor have done according to the judgments of the nations all around you; 8 therefore thus says the Lord God, Behold, I, even I, am against you, and will carry out judgments in your midst before the nations. 9 I will do in you what I have not done, and the like of which I will never do again, because of all your abominations. 10 So the fathers shall eat the sons in your midst, and the sons shall eat their fathers. And I will execute judgments in you, and I will scatter the whole remnant of you into all the winds. 11 Therefore, as I live, says the Lord God, surely, because you have defiled my sanctuary with all your detestable things, and with all your abominations, therefore I will also withdraw. Nor shall my eye spare you, nor will I have any pity. 12 A third part of you shall die with the plague, and shall be consumed with the famine in your midst. And a third part shall fall by the sword all around you. And I will scatter a third part into all the winds, and I will draw out a sword after them. 13 My anger will be fulfilled. I will cause my fury to rest on them and I will be comforted. Then they will know that I the Lord have spoken in my zeal when I have fulfilled my fury in them. 14 I will make you a waste and a curse among the nations that are all around you, in the sight of all who pass by. 15 It will be a reproach and a taunt, a chastening and a horror to the nations that are all around you when I execute judgments against you in anger and in fury and in rebukes. I the Lord have spoken it. 16 When I shall send on them the evil arrows of famine, which shall be for their ruin, which I will send to destroy you. Even I will increase the famine on you and break your staff of bread. 17 I will send famine and evil beasts upon you and you will be destroyed+. Pestilence and blood will pass among you. I will bring a sword upon you. I the Lord have spoken.
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