Then Jehovah showed Ezekiel that conditions in Jerusalem would get so bad that food would be almost nonexistent, and that they might even have to use dung as fuel.

When Jehovah, in order to emphasize the extreme hardships that would develop, told Ezekiel to use human excrement as fuel, as the son of a priest he was horrified. The thought was revolting; so God allowed him to use cattle manure. Just as horrified as Ezekiel was about this, so the Jews would be at the conditions they would experience during Jerusalem’s siege by the Babylonians. Jehovah said:

“Son of man, here I am breaking the rods around which ring-shaped loaves are suspended, in Jerusalem, and they will have to eat bread by weight and in anxious care, and it will be by measure and in horror that they will drink water itself, to the intent that they may be lacking bread and water and they may look astonished at one another and rot away in their error.”​—Ezek. 4:16, 17.