Ezekiel Cuts His Hair with a Sword

5 “As for you, son of man, take a sharp sword. Use it to cut the hair from your head and face. Then weigh and divide the hair. ² A third part you must burn in the fire in the center of the city, when the days of the battle are completed. Then take a third part and cut it up with your sword as you move around the city. And a third part you must throw to the wind. For I will pull out a sword behind them. ³ Take a small number of the hairs and tie them in the cloth of your coat. ⁴ Take some more of them and throw them into the fire, and burn them up. A fire will spread from there to all the people of Israel. ⁵ The Lord God says, ‘This is Jerusalem. I have set her in the center of the nations, with lands around her. ⁶ But she has turned against My Laws worse than the nations and the lands around her. The people of Jerusalem have turned away from My Laws and have not obeyed them.’ ⁷ So the Lord God says, ‘You have been more sinful than the nations around you. You have not walked in My Laws or kept them. You have not even kept Laws like the nations around you have. Because you have acted this way,’ ⁸ the Lord God says, ‘I Myself am against you, and I will punish you in the eyes of the nations. ⁹ Because of all the things you have done which I hate, I will do with you what I have never done before, and what I will never do again. ¹⁰ Fathers will eat their sons among you, and sons will eat their fathers. I will punish you and divide you, and spread to every wind those of you who are left. ¹¹ You have made My holy place unclean with all your hated objects of worship and sinful ways. So as I live,’ says the Lord, ‘for sure I will turn away from you. My eye will have no pity and I will punish all of you. ¹² One third of you will die by disease or be destroyed by hunger among you. A third will be killed by the sword around you. And a third I will spread to every wind, and go after them with a sword.

¹³ ‘This is how My anger will stop. I will cause My anger to be upon them, and I will be comforted. Then they will know that I, the Lord, have spoken in My jealousy when I have sent My anger upon them. ¹⁴ I will make you a waste and a shame among the nations around you, in the eyes of all who pass by. ¹⁵ You will be a shame, and people will speak against you. You will show people the danger of sinning and fill the nations around you with fear, when I punish you in anger and with angry words. I, the Lord, have spoken. ¹⁶ I will keep you from getting food. I will make your hunger worse, and take away the bread you need. ¹⁷ I will send hunger and wild animals against you, and they will take away your children. Disease and death will pass through you, and I will bring the sword against you. I, the Lord, have spoken.’”