1. “As for you, son of man, take a sharp sword and use it as a barber’s razor. Shave off some of the hair from your head and your beard. Then take scales and divide up the hair you cut off.
2. Burn a third of it in the fire inside the city when the days of your siege are completed. Take a third and slash it with a sword all around the city. Scatter a third to the wind, and I will unleash a sword behind them.
3. But take a few strands of hair from those and tie them in the ends of your garment.
4. Again, take more of them and throw them into the fire, and burn them up. From there a fire will spread to all the house of Israel.
5. “This is what the sovereign Lord says: This is Jerusalem; I placed her in the center of the nations with countries all around her.
6. Then she defied my regulations and my statutes, becoming more wicked than the nations and the countries around her. Indeed, they have rejected my regulations, and they do not follow my statutes.