1. “And you, son of man, take for yourself a sword, sharp as a barber’s razor. Take it for yourself, and you must cause it to pass over your head and over your beard, and you must take for yourself a set of scales for weighing, and you must divide them.
2. A third you must burn with fire in the midst of the city at the completion of the days of the siege, and you must take a third, and you must strike it with the sword around it, and a third you must scatter to the wind, and I will draw a sword behind them.
3. And you must take from these a few in number, and you must tuck them in your hem.
4. And from them again you shall take some, and you must throw them in the middle of the fire, and you must burn them with fire; from it a fire will go out to all of the house of Israel.
5. Thus says the Lord Yahweh: This is Jerusalem in the midst of the nations where I have put her, and countries are around her.
6. But she has rebelled against my regulations to the point of wickedness more than the nations, and my statutes more than the countries that are around her; for they rejected my regulations, and as for my statutes, they did not walk in them.
7. Therefore, thus says the Lord Yahweh: Because of your commotion more than the nations that are around you—you did not walk in my statutes, and you did not do my regulations, and according to the regulations of the nations that are around you, you did not do.
8. Therefore thus says the Lord Yahweh: Look! I, even I, am against you, and I will execute judgment in the midst of you before the eyes of the nations,