Ezekiel’s Strange Defiled Meal

⁹ “And you, take for yourself^[a] wheat and barley and beans and lentils and millet^[b] and spelt, and you must put them in one vessel, and you must make them for yourself^[c] into a food during the number of days that you are lying on your side; three hundred and ninety days you shall eat it. ¹⁰ And your food that you will eat^[d] will be according to weight; twenty shekels for each day at fixed times^[e] you shall eat it. ¹¹ And an amount of water^[f] you shall drink, a sixth of a hin; at fixed times^[g] you shall drink it. ¹² And as a bread-cake of barley you shall eat it, and with human excrement^[h] you shall bake it before their eyes.” ¹³ And Yahweh said, “Thus shall the Israelites^[i] eat their unclean food among the nations where I will scatter them.”^{[j] 14} And I said, “Ah, Lord Yahweh! Look! I have not been defiling myself, and a dead body and mangled carcass I have not eaten from my childhood until now, and unclean meat^[k] has not come into my mouth!” ¹⁵ And he said to me, “See I will give you cattle manure^[l] in the place of the feces of a human, and you may prepare your food on it.” ¹⁶ And he said to me, “Son of man,^[m] look, I am going to break the supply^[n] of bread in Jerusalem, and they will eat bread by weight, anxiously,^[o] and rationed water,^[p] and they will drink with horror, ¹⁷ so that they will lack food and water, and they will be appalled with one another,^[q] and they will waste away because of their guilt.^[r]