Ezekiel 4-5

New Catholic Bible

Before the Siege of Jerusalem

Chapter 4

Symbols of Siege and Exile. ¹ As for you, son of man, take a clay tablet and lay it in front of you. Draw on it a city, Jerusalem.^{[a] 2} Portray it under siege, erect towers against it, pitch camps, and set up battering rams all around it. ³ Then take an iron griddle and place it as though it were an iron wall between you and the city. Keep your gaze fixed upon the city; it will be in a state of siege, and you will be the besieger. This will be a sign for the house of Israel.^[b]

^4 [c]Then lie on your left side while I place the guilt of the house of Israel upon you. You will bear their guilt for the number of days that you lie on your side. ⁵ Allowing one day for every year of their guilt, I ordain that you bear Israel’s punishment for three hundred and ninety days.

⁶ When you have completed these days, you shall lie down again, this time on your right side, and bear the punishment of the house of Judah for forty days: one day for each year I have allotted you. ⁷ Then fix your gaze on the siege of Jerusalem, and with bared arm you shall prophesy against it. ⁸ I will tie you with ropes so that you cannot turn from one side to the other until you have completed the days of your siege.

^9 [d]Then take wheat and barley, beans and lentils, millet, and spelt. Put them all into the same pot and make bread for yourself. You are to eat it for as many days as you lie upon your side—three hundred and ninety days. ¹⁰ The food that you shall eat shall weigh twenty shekels a day, and you are to eat it at fixed times. ¹¹ You are also to measure out and drink the same amount of water each day at fixed times—one-sixth of a hin. ¹² The food that you eat shall be in the form of a barley cake. Bake it in the sight of the people with human dung as fuel.

¹³ The Lord then said: Thus will the Israelites be forced to eat defiled food among the nations to which I will banish them. ¹⁴ “Lord God,” I protested, “from my youth until this very day I have never defiled myself. I have never eaten an animal that died a natural death or was torn to pieces by wild beasts. No unclean meat has ever entered my mouth.” ¹⁵ He replied: Very well. I will permit you to use cow dung instead of human dung to prepare your bread.^[e]

¹⁶ Then he said to me: Son of man, I intend to reduce greatly the supply of food in Jerusalem. The people will ration anxiously the bread they eat and sip carefully the measure of water they are allotted each day. ¹⁷ Because of the scarcity of bread and water, they will be overwhelmed with fear and waste away because of their iniquity.

Chapter 5

¹ Son of man, take a sharp sword and use it as a barber’s razor to shave your head and your beard. Then take scales and divide the hair you have cut off. ² When the days of the siege come to an end, burn one-third of the hair inside the city. Take another third and cut it up with the sword throughout the city. Scatter the last third to the wind while I pursue it with the sword. ³ In addition, take a few of these hairs and conceal them in a fold of your robe. ⁴ From these, however, take some and cast them into the fire and burn them completely. A fire will spread from there against the entire house of Israel.

⁵ Thus says the Lord God: This is Jerusalem, which I have established in the midst of the nations and surrounded with foreign countries. ⁶ But she has rebelled against my ordinances and my statutes more wickedly than all the nations and the countries around her, rejecting my ordinances and refusing to obey my laws.

⁷ Therefore, thus says the Lord God: Because you have been more rebellious than the nations that surround you and have not followed my statutes or respected my ordinances and have not even observed the laws of the nations that surround you, ⁸ therefore, thus says the Lord God: I too am coming against you, and I will execute my judgments on you for all the nations to see. ⁹ And because of all your abominable offenses, I will inflict punishment on you that I have never done before and the like of which I will never do again. ¹⁰ Those of you who are parents will eat your children, and children will eat their parents. I will execute judgments on you, and any of you who survive I will scatter to the winds.

¹¹ Therefore, as I live, says the Lord God, because you have defiled my sanctuary with all of your detestable and vile abominations, I will destroy you. I will not take pity on you or spare you. ¹² One-third of you will die of pestilence or perish because of famine, one-third will fall by the sword outside your walls, and one-third I will scatter to the four winds and pursue them with the sword.

¹³ Then, once my anger has abated and I have vented my wrath against them, they will know that I, the Lord, have spoken in my jealousy. ¹⁴ I will make you a desolate waste and the object of mockery among the nations that surround you, a fate clearly evident to all those who pass by. ¹⁵ You will be an object of mockery and abuse, a frightening warning to the nations that surround you, when I execute my judgment on you in anger and fury and dreadful punishments. I, the Lord, have spoken.

¹⁶ When I loose my deadly arrows of famine against you, arrows of destruction which I will send forth to destroy you, and when I afflict you with one famine after another and cut off your supply of food, ¹⁷ I will afflict you with even more intense famine and wild beasts, and you will be left childless. Plague and bloodshed will sweep through you, and I will bring the sword against you. I, the Lord, have spoken.