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Ezekiel 4:1-5:17 — Siege of Jerusalem Symbolized

Ezek.4.1-5.17

¹Now you, son of man , take a brick, place it before you, and engrave on it a city, Jerusalem. ²Then lay siege against it: build a siege wall against it, cast up a siege ramp against it, set up camps against it, and place battering rams against it all around. ³Then take an iron pan and set it up as an iron wall between you and the city. Set your face toward it, so that it is under siege, and you shall besiege it. This is a sign for the house of Israel. ⁴Then lie on your left side, and lay the iniquity of the house of Israel upon it. For the number of the days that you lie on it, you shall bear their iniquity. ⁵For I have assigned to you the years of their iniquity as a number of days, three hundred and ninety days; so you shall bear the iniquity of the house of Israel. ⁶When you have completed these, you shall lie down a second time on your right side, and you shall bear the iniquity of the house of Judah for forty days; a day for a year, a day for a year I have assigned it to you. ⁷You shall set your face toward the siege of Jerusalem with your arm bared, and you shall prophesy against it. ⁸Behold, I will put ropes on you, and you shall not turn from one side to the other, until you complete the days of your siege. ⁹Now take for yourself wheat, barley, beans, lentils, millet, and spelt; put them into a single vessel and make them into bread for yourself. For the number of the days that you lie on your side, three hundred and ninety days, you shall eat it. ¹⁰Your food that you eat shall be by weight, twenty shekels a day; from time to time you shall eat it. ¹¹You shall drink water by measure, a sixth of a hin ; from time to time you shall drink it. ¹²You shall eat it as a barley cake, and you shall bake it over dried human excrement before their eyes. ¹³Then the LORD said, 'Thus will the children of Israel eat their defiled bread among the nations where I will banish them.' ¹⁴Then I said, 'Ah, Lord GOD! Behold, I have never defiled myself. From my youth until now I have not eaten anything found dead or torn by wild beasts, nor has any unclean meat entered my mouth.' ¹⁵He replied to me, 'See, I will let you use cow dung instead of human excrement, and you shall bake your bread over it.' ¹⁶Moreover He said to me, 'Son of man, behold, I am going to break the staff of bread in Jerusalem. They will eat bread by weight and with anxiety, and they will drink water by measure and in dismay; ¹⁷so that they will lack food and water, and be appalled at one another, and waste away in their iniquity.'

Chapter 5

¹As for you, son of man, take a sharp sword; use it as a barber's razor and pass it over your head and over your beard . Then take weighing scales and divide the hair. ²One third you shall burn in the fire in the midst of the city, when the days of the siege are fulfilled. You shall take one third and strike it with the sword all around the city. And one third you shall scatter to the wind, and I will unsheathe a sword after them. ³But you shall take a few of them in number and bind them in the edges of your garment. ⁴And from these again you shall take some, cast them into the midst of the fire, and burn them in the fire. From there a fire will come out to the whole house of Israel. ⁵Thus says the Lord GOD: 'This is Jerusalem; I have set her in the center of the nations, with countries all around her. ⁶But she has rebelled against My ordinances in wickedness more than the nations, and against My statutes more than the countries that are around her; for they have rejected My ordinances, and as for My statutes, they have not walked in them.' ⁷Therefore thus says the Lord GOD: 'Because you have been more turbulent than the nations that are around you, and have not walked in My statutes, nor kept My ordinances, nor have you even conformed to the ordinances of the nations that are around you;' ⁸therefore thus says the Lord GOD: 'Behold, I—even I—am against you, and I will execute judgments in your midst in the sight of the nations. ⁹Because of all your abominations, I will do to you what I have not done, and the like of which I will never do again. ¹⁰Therefore, fathers will eat their sons in your midst, and sons will eat their fathers. I will execute judgments against you, and I will scatter your entire remnant to every wind. ¹¹Therefore, as I live, declares the Lord GOD, surely, because you have defiled My sanctuary with all your detestable idols and with all your abominations, I Myself will also diminish you; My eye will not spare, and I also will show no pity. ¹²One third of you will die by pestilence and be consumed by famine in your midst; one third will fall by the sword all around you; and one third I will scatter to every wind, and I will unsheathe a sword after them. ¹³Thus My anger will be spent, and I will vent My wrath upon them, and I will be appeased. And they shall know that I, the LORD, have spoken in My zeal, when I have spent My wrath upon them. ¹⁴I will make you a ruin and a reproach among the nations that are around you, in the sight of all who pass by. ¹⁵So it will be a reproach and a taunt, a warning and a horror to the nations that are around you, when I execute judgments against you in anger, in wrath, and in furious rebukes. I, the LORD, have spoken. ¹⁶When I send against them the deadly arrows of famine, which are for destruction, which I will send to destroy you, I will intensify the famine upon you and break your staff of bread. ¹⁷I will send famine and ferocious wild beasts against you, and they will bereave you; pestilence and blood will pass through you , and I will bring a sword against you. I, the LORD, have spoken.'

Translation Notes

4/11/2026

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