Immerse: Prophets - Flipbook - Page 335
4:17–5:16
E ze k iel
323
very scarce in Jerusalem. It will be weighed out with great care and eaten
fearfully. The water will be rationed out drop by drop, and the people will
drink it with dismay. Lacking food and water, people will look at one an
other in terror, and they will waste away under their punishment.
“Son of man, take a sharp sword and use it as a razor to shave your head and
beard. Use a scale to weigh the hair into three equal parts. Place a third of
it at the center of your map of Jerusalem. After acting out the siege, burn it
there. Scatter another third across your map and chop it with a sword. Scat
ter the last third to the wind, for I will scatter my people with the sword.
Keep just a bit of the hair and tie it up in your robe. Then take some of
these hairs out and throw them into the fire, burning them up. A fire will
then spread from this remnant and destroy all of Israel.
“This is what the Sovereign Lord says: This is an illustration of what
will happen to Jerusalem. I placed her at the center of the nations, but she
has rebelled against my regulations and decrees and has been even more
wicked than the surrounding nations. She has refused to obey the regula
tions and decrees I gave her to follow.
“Therefore, this is what the Sovereign Lord says: You people have be
haved worse than your neighbors and have refused to obey my decrees
and regulations. You have not even lived up to the standards of the na
tions around you. Therefore, I myself, the Sovereign Lord, am now your
enemy. I will punish you publicly while all the nations watch. Because of
your detestable idols, I will punish you like I have never punished anyone
before or ever will again. Parents will eat their own children, and children
will eat their parents. I will punish you and scatter to the winds the few
who survive.
“As surely as I live, says the Sovereign Lord, I will cut you off com
pletely. I will show you no pity at all because you have defiled my Temple
with your vile images and detestable sins. A third of your people will die
in the city from disease and famine. A third of them will be slaughtered by
the enemy outside the city walls. And I will scatter a third to the winds,
chasing them with my sword. Then at last my anger will be spent, and I will
be satisfied. And when my fury against them has subsided, all Israel will
know that I, the Lord, have spoken to them in my jealous anger.
“So I will turn you into a ruin, a mockery in the eyes of the surrounding
nations and to all who pass by. You will become an object of mockery and
taunting and horror. You will be a warning to all the nations around you.
They will see what happens when the Lord punishes a nation in anger
and rebukes it, says the Lord.
“I will shower you with the deadly arrows of famine to destroy you. The
famine will become more and more severe until every crumb of food is
