The Destruction of Judgment Illustrated
Ezekiel 5“You, son of humanity, take a sharp sword and use it like a barber’s razor on yourself. Shave your head and your beard, then take balances to weigh and divide the hair. You are to burn a third in the fire at the center of the city when the days of the siege have ended. Then you are to strike a third with the sword all around the city. Scatter a third to the wind, and I will draw out a sword after them. You are to take a small number of these and bind them in the folds of your robe. You are to take some more of them and throw them into the fire and burn them in it. From this, a fire will spread out into all the house of Israel.
“Lord YHWH says: ‘This is Jerusalem. I have set her in the middle of the nations, and countries are around her. She has rebelled against my ordinances in doing wickedness more than the nations, and against my statutes more than the countries that are around her; for they have rejected my ordinances, and as for my statutes, they have not walked in them.’
“Therefore Lord YHWH says: ‘Because y’all are more insubordinate than the nations around y’all, and have not walked in my statutes, or kept my ordinances, or even followed the ordinances of the nations around y’all, therefore Lord YHWH says: ‘Look, I myself am against you. And I will execute judgments among you in the sight of the nations. I will do in you that which I have not done, and which I will not do anything like it any more, because of all your abominations. Therefore the fathers will eat the sons within you, and the sons will eat their fathers. I will execute judgments on you; and I will scatter the whole remnant of you to all the winds. Therefore as I live,’ says Lord YHWH, ‘surely, because you have defiled my sanctuary with all your detestable things, and with all your abominations, therefore I will also diminish you. My eye won’t spare, and I will have no pity. A third part of you will die with the pestilence, and they will be consumed with famine within you. A third part will fall by the sword around you. A third part I will scatter to all the winds, and will draw out a sword after them.
“‘Thus my anger will be accomplished, and I will cause my wrath toward them to rest, and I will be comforted. They will know that I, YHWH, have spoken in my zeal, when I have accomplished my wrath on them.
“‘Moreover I will make you a desolation and a reproach among the nations that are around you, in the sight of all that pass by. So it will be a reproach and a taunt, an instruction and an astonishment, to the nations that are around you, when I execute judgments on you in anger and in wrath, and in wrathful rebukes—I, YHWH, have spoken it. When I send on them deadly arrows of famine and destruction, I will send them to destroy y’all. I will intensify the famine on y’all and will break y’all’s supply of bread. I will send famine and evil animals against y’all, and they will make you childless. Plague and blood will pass through you. I will bring the sword on you. I, YHWH, have spoken it.’”