The Siege of Jerusalem Predicted

1You also, son of man, take a tile, and lay it before yourself, and portray on it a city, even Jerusalem: 2and lay siege against it, and build forts against it, and cast up a mound against it; set camps also against it, and plant battering rams against it all around. 3Take for yourself an iron pan, and set it for a wall of iron between you and the city: and set your face toward it, and it shall be besieged, and you shall lay siege against it. This shall be a sign to the house of Israel.

4Moreover lie on your left side, and lay the iniquity of the house of Israel on it; [according to] the number of the days that you shall lie on it, you shall bear their iniquity. 5For I have appointed the years of their iniquity to be to you a number of days, even three hundred ninety days: so you shall bear the iniquity of the house of Israel. 6Again, when you have accomplished these, you shall lie on your right side, and shall bear the iniquity of the house of Judah: forty days, each day for a year, have I appointed it to you. 7You shall set your face toward the siege of Jerusalem, with your arm uncovered; and you shall prophesy against it. 8Behold, I lay bands on you, and you shall not turn you from one side to the other, until you have accomplished the days of your siege.

The Defiled Bread

9Take for yourself also wheat, and barley, and beans, and lentils, and millet, and spelt, and put them in one vessel, and make bread of it; [according to] the number of the days that you shall lie on your side, even three hundred ninety days, you shall eat of it. 10Your food which you shall eat shall be by weight, twenty shekels a day: from time to time you shall eat it. 11You shall drink water by measure, the sixth part of a hin: from time to time you shall drink. 12You shall eat it as barley cakes, and you shall bake it in their sight with dung that comes out of man. 13Yahweh said, Even thus shall the children of Israel eat their bread unclean, among the nations where I will drive them. 14Then I said, Ah Lord Yahweh! behold, my soul has not been polluted; for from my youth up even until now have I not eaten of that which dies of itself, or is torn of animals; neither came there abominable flesh into my mouth. 15Then he said to me, Behold, I have given you cow's dung for man's dung, and you shall prepare your bread thereon. 16Moreover he said to me, Son of man, behold, I will break the staff of bread in Jerusalem: and they shall eat bread by weight, and with fearfulness; and they shall drink water by measure, and in dismay: 17that they may want bread and water, and be dismayed one with another, and pine away in their iniquity.