Ezekiel 4

“And you, son of man, take a brick, set it before you, and engrave a city on it—Jerusalem. Lay siege to it. Build a siege wall against it, heap up a siege ramp against it, set up camps against it, and place battering rams all around it. Take an iron pan and set it as an iron wall between you and the city. Set your face toward it. It will be under siege, and you will besiege it. This is a sign for the house of Israel. Lie on your left side and place the iniquity of the house of Israel upon it. For the number of days you lie on that side, you shall bear their iniquity. I have assigned you the years of their iniquity as a number of days, 390 days. So you shall bear the iniquity of the house of Israel. When you have completed these, lie again on your right side and bear the iniquity of the house of Judah for forty days. I have assigned you a day for a year, a day for a year. Set your face toward the siege of Jerusalem, with your arm bared, and prophesy against it. Look, I will put cords around you, and you shall not turn from one side to the other until you have completed the days of your siege. Take wheat, barley, beans, lentils, millet, and spelt. Put them in one vessel and make bread for yourself from them. Eat it for the number of days you lie on your side, 390 days. The food you eat shall be weighed out, about eight ounces a day. Eat it at set intervals. Drink water by measure, about a pint. Drink it at set intervals. Eat it as a barley cake, and bake it over human dung in their sight.” The LORD said, “In this way the people of Israel will eat their bread unclean among the nations to which I will drive them.” I said, “Ah, Lord GOD! I have never defiled myself. From my youth until now I have not eaten an animal that died on its own or was torn by beasts, and no defiled meat has entered my mouth.” He said to me, “Look, I have given you cattle dung in place of human dung. You shall prepare your bread over it.” He said to me, “Son of man, look, I am breaking the staff of bread in Jerusalem. They will eat bread by weight and with anxiety, and drink water by measure and with horror, so that they lack bread and water, look at one another in horror, and waste away in their iniquity.”

Rights and attribution