Ezekiel

4 “And for yourself, man, take a brick and put it before you and mark out on it a city (Jerusalem) 2 and lay siege to it and build a wall of investment against it and throw up a ramp against it and put down camps against it and place battering-rams all round; 3 and for your part take an iron griddle and put it as an iron wall between you and the city, and set your face fixedly toward it; and have it in a state of siege, besiege it—it is a token to the house of Israel.

4 “And for yourself lie on your left side and place the guilt of the house of Israel on it; for the number of days that you lie on it you shall be bearing their guilt. 5* And I on my part have given you the years of their guilt for a number of days, three hundred and ninety days, and you shall bear the guilt of the house of Israel; 6** and having finished these you shall lie on your right side and bear the guilt of the house of Judah forty days, a day for a year; I have given you a day for a year. 7 And you shall set your face fixedly toward the siege of Jerusalem, with your arm bared, and prophesy against it.

8* “And I hereby put ropes on you and you shall not turn over from side to side till you have finished the time of your siege. 9 And for yourself take wheat and barley and beans and lentils and millet and spelt and put them in one dish and make them into bread for yourself, which you are to eat for the number of days that you are lying on your side, three hundred and ninety days. 10 And your food that you eat you shall eat by weight, ten ounces a day, at a regular hour; 11 and you shall drink water by measure, three pints at a regular hour; 12 and you shall eat it as a barley-cake, and bake it with lumps of human excrement before their eyes”; 13 and Jehovah said “So shall the sons of Israel eat their bread unclean among the nations where I disperse them.”

14 And I said “O, O, Lord Jehovah, God of Israel! here my person has never been defiled by an uncleanness, and I have never eaten meat from a creature that had died a natural death or been killed by wild beasts, from my childhood till now, nor has any foul food gone into my mouth.” 15 And he said to me “See here, I give you cow-droppings instead of human dung, that you may do your bread on them.”

16* And he said to me “Man, here am I breaking bread-stocks in Jerusalem, and they shall eat bread by weight and in anxiety, and drink water by measure and aghast, 17 so that they may be short of bread and water and look aghast at each other and rankle down in their guilt.