¹ 'For your part, son of man, take a brick and lay it in front of you; on it scratch a city, Jerusalem.

² You are then to besiege it, trench round it, build earthworks, pitch camps and bring up battering-rams all round.

³ Then take an iron pan and place it as though it were an iron wall between you and the city. Then fix your gaze on it; it is being besieged and you are besieging it. This is a sign for the House of Israel.

⁴ 'Lie down on your left side and take the guilt of the House of Israel on yourself. You will bear their guilt for as many days as you lie on that side.

⁵ Allowing one day for every year of their guilt, I ordain that you bear it for three hundred and ninety days; this is how you will bear the House of Israel's guilt.

⁶ And when you have finished doing this, you are to lie down again, on your right side, and bear the guilt of the House of Judah for forty days. I have set the length for you as one day for one year.

⁷ Then fix your gaze on the siege of Jerusalem, raise your bared arm and prophesy against her.

⁸ Look, I am going to tie you up and you will not be able to turn over from one side to the other until the period of your seclusion is over.

⁹ 'Now take wheat, barley, beans, lentils, millet and spelt; put them all in the same pot and make them into bread for yourself. You are to eat it for as many days as you are lying on your side -- three hundred and ninety days.

¹⁰ Of this food, you are to weigh out a daily portion of twenty shekels and eat it a little piece at a time.

¹¹ And you are to ration the water you drink -- a sixth of a hin -- drinking that a little at a time.

¹² You are to eat this in the form of a barley cake baked where they can see you, on human dung.'

¹³ And Yahweh said, 'This is how the Israelites will have to eat their defiled food, wherever I disperse them among the nations.'

¹⁴ I then said, 'Lord Yahweh, my soul is not defiled. From my childhood until now, I have never eaten an animal that has died a natural death or been savaged; no tainted meat has ever entered my mouth.'

¹⁵ 'Very well,' he said, 'I grant you cow-dung instead of human dung; you are to bake your bread on that.'

¹⁶ He then said, 'Son of man, I am going to cut off Jerusalem's food supply; in their extremity, the food they eat will be weighed out; to their horror, the water they drink will be rationed,

¹⁷ until there is no food or water left, and they fall into a stupor and waste away because of their guilt.'

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The New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) is a Catholic translation of the Bible published in 1985. The New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) has become the most widely used Roman Catholic Bible outside of the United States. It has the imprimatur of Cardinal George Basil Hume.

Like its predecessor, the Jerusalem Bible, the New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) version is translated "directly from the Hebrew, Greek or Aramaic." The 1973 French translation, the Bible de Jerusalem, is followed only "where the text admits to more than one interpretation." Introductions and notes, with some modifications, are taken from the Bible de Jerusalem.

Source: The Very Reverend Dom (Joseph) Henry Wansbrough, OSB, MA (Oxon), STL (Fribourg), LSS (Rome), a monk of Ampleforth Abbey and a biblical scholar. He was General Editor of the New Jerusalem Bible. "New Jerusalem Bible, Regular Edition", pg. v.

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