1 “You, son of man, take a sharp sword. You shall take it as a barber’s razor to yourself, and shall cause it to pass over your head and over your beard. Then take balances to weigh and divide the hair.
2 A third part you shall burn in the fire in the middle of the city, when the days of the siege are fulfilled. You shall take a third part, and strike with the sword around it. A third part you shall scatter to the wind, and I will draw out a sword after them.
3 You shall take of it a few in number, and bind them in your skirts.
4 Of these again you shall take, and cast them into the middle of the fire, and burn them in the fire; from it shall a fire come out into all the house of Israel.
5 “Thus says the Lord Yahweh: ‘This is Jerusalem. I have set her in the middle of the nations, and countries are around her.
6 She has rebelled against my ordinances in doing wickedness more than the nations, and against my statutes more than the countries that are around her; for they have rejected my ordinances, and as for my statutes, they have not walked in them.’