Ezekiel 5

5 ¹ And you, son of man, take a sharp sword and use it as a barber's razor, passing it over your head and your beard. Then take scales for weighing and divide the hair. ² Burn a third in the fire inside the city when the days of the siege are complete. Take a third and strike with the sword all around the city. Scatter a third to the wind, and I will pursue them with a drawn sword. ³ And take a few of them and bind them in the folds of your robe. ⁴ Then take some of these again and throw them into the fire and burn them in the fire. From it a fire will spread against all the house of Israel.

⁵ This is what the Sovereign Father says: This is Jerusalem. I have set her in the center of the nations, with countries all around her. ⁶ But she rebelled against my rules more wickedly than the nations, and against my statutes more than the countries around her; for they rejected my rules and did not walk in my statutes.

⁷ Therefore this is what the Sovereign Father says: Because you have been more rebellious than the nations around you, and have not walked in my statutes or kept my rules, and have not even acted according to the rules of the nations around you— ⁸ therefore this is what the Sovereign Father says: Look, I myself am against you, and I will carry out judgments in your midst in the sight of the nations. ⁹ And because of all your detestable things I will do among you what I have never done before and will never do again. ¹⁰ Therefore parents will eat their children in your midst, and children will eat their parents. I will carry out judgments on you, and whatever remains of you I will scatter to every wind.

The Father's Fury Spent

¹¹ Therefore, as I live, declares the Sovereign Father, surely because you defiled my sanctuary with all your vile things and all your detestable practices, I myself will withdraw; I will spare no one, and I will show no pity. ¹ 1 v11 God 'withdrawing' means he is removing his protecting care and mercy from Jerusalem. ¹² A third of you will die by plague or be consumed by famine in your midst; a third will fall by the sword around you; and a third I will scatter to every wind, and I will pursue them with a drawn sword.

¹³ Then my anger will be spent, and I will satisfy my fury against them and find relief. And they will know that I, their Father, have spoken in my zeal, when I have spent my fury on them.

¹⁴ I will make you a ruin and a reproach among the nations around you, in the sight of all who pass by. ¹⁵ You will be a reproach and a taunt, a warning and a horror to the nations around you, when I carry out judgments against you in anger and fury and furious rebukes. I, your Father, have spoken. ¹⁶ When I send against you the deadly arrows of famine, arrows of destruction that I send to destroy you, I will heap famine upon you and cut off your food supply. ¹⁷ I will send famine and wild beasts against you, and they will leave you childless. Plague and bloodshed will sweep through you, and I will bring the sword upon you. I, your Father, have spoken.