Ezekiel 5

Revised Geneva Translation

5 “And you, son of man, take a sharp sword and use it as a barber’s razor, and cause it to pass over your head and over your beard. Then take a scale to weigh and divide the hair.

² “You shall burn a third of it with fire, in the center of the city, after the days of the siege are completed. And you shall take a third and strike around it with the sword. And you shall scatter a third to the wind. And I will draw a sword afterward.

³ “You shall also take a few of them in number and bind them in your clothes.

⁴ “Then take them again and cast them into the midst of the fire and burn them in the fire. From there a fire shall come forth into all the House of Israel.

⁵ “Thus says the Lord GOD: ‘This is Jerusalem. I have set it in the midst of the nations and countries all around her.

⁶ ‘And she has changed My Judgments into wickedness more than the nations, and my Statutes more than the countries that are all around her. For they have refused My Judgments, and My Statutes. They have not walked in them.’

⁷ “Therefore thus says the Lord GOD: ‘Because your multitude is greater than the nations that are all around you, and you have not walked in My Statutes, nor have you kept My Judgments —you have not even done according to the judgments of the nations that are all around you —

⁸ “therefore thus says the Lord GOD: ‘Behold, I, even I come against you, and will execute judgment in the midst of you in the sight of the nations.

⁹ ‘And I will do in you that which I have never done before, and the like of which I will never do again, because of all your abominations.

¹⁰ ‘For in the midst of you the fathers shall eat their sons, and the sons shall eat their fathers. And I will execute judgment in you. And I will scatter the whole remnant of you into all the winds.

¹¹ ‘Therefore, as I live,’ says the Lord GOD, ‘surely, because you have defiled My Sanctuary with all your filthiness, and with all your abominations, therefore I will also destroy you. Nor shall My Eye spare. Nor will I have any pity.

¹² ‘A third of you shall die from pestilence and shall be consumed with famine in the midst of you. A third shall fall by the sword all around you. And I will scatter a third of you into all winds. And I will draw a sword afterward.

¹³ ‘Thus shall My anger be ended. And I will cause My wrath to cease in them. And I will be comforted. And they shall know that I, the LORD, have spoken it in My zeal, when I have ended My wrath upon them.

¹⁴ ‘Moreover, I will make you desolate and abhorred among the nations that are all around you, in the sight of all who pass by.

¹⁵ ‘So you shall be a reproach and shame, a chastisement and an astonishment to the nations that are all around you, when I shall execute judgments in you, in anger and in wrath and in sharp rebukes. I, the LORD, have spoken it.

¹⁶ ‘When I shall send upon them the miserable arrows of famine, which shall be for destruction, which I will send to destroy you, I will increase the famine upon you and will break your staff of bread.

¹⁷ ‘So I will send upon you famine and calamitous beasts. And they shall plunder you. And pestilence and blood shall pass through you. And I will bring the sword upon you.’ I, the LORD, have spoken it.”