4:1 As for you, son of man, take a clay tablet; lay it in front of you, and draw on it a city (Jerusalem).
4:2 Raise a siege against it: build a tower, lay out a ramp, pitch camps, and set up batteringrams all around.
4:3 Then take an iron griddle and set it up as an iron wall between you and the city. Fix your gaze on it: it shall be in the state of siege, and you shall besiege it. This shall be a sign for the house of Israel.
4:4 Then you shall lie on your left side, while I place the sins of the house of Israel upon you. As many days as you lie thus, you shall bear their sins.
4:5 For the years of their sins I allot you the same number of days, three hundred and ninety, during which you will bear the sins of the house of Israel.
4:6 When you finish this, you are to lie down again, but on your right side, and bear the sins of the house of Judah forty days; one day for each year I have allotted you.
4:7 Fixing your gaze on the siege of Jerusalem, with bared arm you shall prophesy against it.
4:8 See, I will bind you with cords so that you cannot turn from one side to the other until you have completed the days of your siege.
4:9 Again, take wheat and barley, and beans and lentils, and millet and spelt; put them in a single vessel and make bread out of them. Eat it for as many days as you lie upon your side, three hundred and ninety.
4:10 The food you eat shall be twenty shekels a day by weight; each day the same.
4:11 And the water you drink shall be the sixth of a hin by measure; each day the same.
4:16 Then he said to me: Son of man, I am breaking the staff of bread in Jerusalem. They shall eat bread which they have weighed out anxiously, and they shall drink water which they have measured out fearfully,
4:17 so that, owing to the scarcity of bread and water, everyone shall be filled with terror and waste away because of his sins.
4:12 For your food you must bake barley loaves over human excrement in their sight, said the LORD.
4:13 Thus the Israelites shall eat their food unclean among the nations where I scatter them.
4:14 "Oh no, Lord GOD!" I protested. "Never have I been made unclean, and from my youth till now, never have I eaten carrion flesh or that torn by wild beasts; never has any unclean meat entered my mouth."
4:15 Very well, he replied, I allow you cow’s dung in place of human excrement; bake your bread on that.