²⁵ There was a great famine^(A) in the city; the siege lasted so long that a donkey’s head sold for eighty shekels^[a] of silver, and a quarter of a cab^[b] of seed pods^[c](B) for five shekels.^[d]

⁶ By the ninth day of the fourth month the famine in the city had become so severe that there was no food for the people to eat.^(A)

¹³ But I said, “Alas, Sovereign Lord! The prophets^(A) keep telling them, ‘You will not see the sword or suffer famine.^(B) Indeed, I will give you lasting peace^(C) in this place.’”

¹⁴ Then the Lord said to me, “The prophets are prophesying lies^(D) in my name. I have not sent^(E) them or appointed them or spoken to them. They are prophesying to you false visions,^(F) divinations,^(G) idolatries^[a] and the delusions of their own minds. ¹⁵ Therefore this is what the Lord says about the prophets who are prophesying in my name: I did not send them, yet they are saying, ‘No sword or famine will touch this land.’ Those same prophets will perish^(H) by sword and famine.^(I)

²⁸ Then he asked her, “What’s the matter?”

She answered, “This woman said to me, ‘Give up your son so we may eat him today, and tomorrow we’ll eat my son.’ ²⁹ So we cooked my son and ate^(A) him. The next day I said to her, ‘Give up your son so we may eat him,’ but she had hidden him.”

¹³ The Lord said, “In this way the people of Israel will eat defiled food among the nations where I will drive them.”^(A)

¹⁴ Then I said, “Not so, Sovereign Lord!^(B) I have never defiled myself. From my youth until now I have never eaten anything found dead^(C) or torn by wild animals. No impure meat has ever entered my mouth.^(D)”

¹⁵ “Very well,” he said, “I will let you bake your bread over cow dung instead of human excrement.”

¹⁶ He then said to me: “Son of man, I am about to cut off^(E) the food supply in Jerusalem. The people will eat rationed food in anxiety and drink rationed water in despair,^(F)

³ By the ninth day of the fourth^[a] month the famine^(A) in the city had become so severe that there was no food for the people to eat.

⁴ If we say, ‘We’ll go into the city’—the famine is there, and we will die. And if we stay here, we will die. So let’s go over to the camp of the Arameans and surrender. If they spare us, we live; if they kill us, then we die.”