⁶ By July 18 in the eleventh year of Zedekiah’s reign,^[a] the famine in the city had become very severe, and the last of the food was entirely gone.

² Two and a half years later, on July 18^[a] in the eleventh year of Zedekiah’s reign, a section of the city wall was broken down.

Judgment against Judah

⁹ “My lord the king,” he said, “these men have done a very evil thing in putting Jeremiah the prophet into the cistern. He will soon die of hunger, for almost all the bread in the city is gone.”

³ By July 18 in the eleventh year of Zedekiah’s reign,^[a] the famine in the city had become very severe, and the last of the food was entirely gone.

¹⁹ “This is what the Lord of Heaven’s Armies says: The traditional fasts and times of mourning you have kept in early summer, midsummer, autumn, and winter^[a] are now ended. They will become festivals of joy and celebration for the people of Judah. So love truth and peace.

²¹ “Now this is what the Sovereign Lord says: How terrible it will be when all four of these dreadful punishments fall upon Jerusalem—war, famine, wild animals, and disease—destroying all her people and animals.

¹⁰ Parents will eat their own children, and children will eat their parents. I will punish you and scatter to the winds the few who survive.

¹¹ “As surely as I live, says the Sovereign Lord, I will cut you off completely. I will show you no pity at all because you have defiled my Temple with your vile images and detestable sins. ¹² A third of your people will die in the city from disease and famine. A third of them will be slaughtered by the enemy outside the city walls. And I will scatter a third to the winds, chasing them with my sword.

⁹ “Now go and get some wheat, barley, beans, lentils, millet, and emmer wheat, and mix them together in a storage jar. Use them to make bread for yourself during the 390 days you will be lying on your side. ¹⁰ Ration this out to yourself, eight ounces^[a] of food for each day, and eat it at set times. ¹¹ Then measure out a jar^[b] of water for each day, and drink it at set times. ¹² Prepare and eat this food as you would barley cakes. While all the people are watching, bake it over a fire using dried human dung as fuel and then eat the bread.” ¹³ Then the Lord said, “This is how Israel will eat defiled bread in the Gentile lands to which I will banish them!”

¹⁴ Then I said, “O Sovereign Lord, must I be defiled by using human dung? For I have never been defiled before. From the time I was a child until now I have never eaten any animal that died of sickness or was killed by other animals. I have never eaten any meat forbidden by the law.”

¹⁵ “All right,” the Lord said. “You may bake your bread with cow dung instead of human dung.” ¹⁶ Then he told me, “Son of man, I will make food very scarce in Jerusalem. It will be weighed out with great care and eaten fearfully. The water will be rationed out drop by drop, and the people will drink it with dismay. ¹⁷ Lacking food and water, people will look at one another in terror, and they will waste away under their punishment.