Cut off your hair and beard with a knife. Then weigh the hair with a balance.
2 Burn one-third in Jerusalem. Take another third and smite it about with a knife. And scatter the remaining third in the wind. I will chase after the hair in the wind with my sword.
3 Keep a few strands to tie on your skirt. 4 Burn these strands in the fire later.
9 Because of your abominations, 10 fathers will eat their sons, and sons will eat their fathers.
11 Since you have defiled my sanctuary with abominations and detestable things, I will have no pity on you.
12 A third of you will die with pestilence and famine. Another third will die with the sword. And I'll scatter the remaining third to the winds, while chasing them with a sword.
13 This will satisfy my anger and fury, and I will be comforted. And they'll know that I'm God.
14 I'll completely destroy you. All the nations will laugh at you as they pass by.
15 All your neighbors will be astonished when they see what happened to you.
16 I'll send the evil arrows of famine to destroy you by starving you to death.
17 I'll send wild beasts to eat you,
and bring pestilence, blood, and the sword to kill the survivors. I, God, have said it.
This is what God says to the mountains, hills, rivers, and valleys:
I, even I, am going to kill you with a sword and destroy your high places.
4 I'll break your altars and images. And cast dead people in front of your idols.
5 I'll bury the idols in dead bodies, and scatter bones around your altars.
7 When the dead people will fall on you, you'll know that I am God.
8 But I'll let a few survive, who will be scattered around.
9 They'll remember me with their whorish hearts and eyes that go a whoring. And they'll hate themselves for committing abominations.
10 Then they'll know that I'm God and remember that I said I'd do these evil things to them.
Clap your hands and stomp your feet
11 So clap your hands and stomp your feet and say,
The people of Israel will be killed with the sword, famine, and pestilence because of their evil abominations.
12 Those that are far away will die from the pestilence, those that are near will be killed with a sword, and everyone else will die in a famine. This is how I'll satisfy my fury on them.
And that's how you'll know that I am God.
A few more words about this episode
Get some wheat, barley, beans, lentils, millet, and spelt to bake bread with it. (4:9)
This is where the recipe for "Ezekiel 4:9 Bread" supposedly comes from.
But I'm waiting Ezekiel 4:12 bread. That's the bread that God asked Ezekiel to make, with the special ingredient - human dung!
Lie on your side for 430 days (4:4-6)
The significance of the 390 and 40 days is unknown, although believers have come up with many proposals. The SBL Study Bible says this about it: "The number of days - 390 and 40 - do not conform to the chronology of either nation's exile. The Septuagint offers different figures 150 and 40 years, respectively."
Eat twenty shekels of this bread each day while you're lying on your side, along with one-sixth of a hin of water. (4:10-11)
A skekel is about 10 grams and a hin about 4 liters. So Ezekiel's daily ration would be about 200 grams of bread and two-thirds of a liter of water.
I've never eaten anything that offended you. (4:14)
Deuteronomy 23:12-14 provides instructions for dealing with human dung - and it doesn't include cooking with it.
When the dead people will fall on you, you'll know that I am God. (6:7)
The phrase "You shall know that I am the Lord" is used more than sixty times in the book of Ezekiel - always after God does something evil.