Ezekiel 5:2
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When the days of the siege have ended, you are to burn up a third of the hair inside the city; you are also to take a third and slash it with the sword all around the city; and you are to scatter a third to the wind. For I will unleash a sword behind them.
Commentaries
Excerpts gathered from published commentaries to ground the reading.
In this chapter we have a further, and no less terrible, denunciation of the judgments of God, which were coming with all speed and force upon the Jewish nation, which would utterly ruin it; for when God judges he will overcome. This destruction of Judah and Jerusalem is here, I. Represented by a sign, the cutting, and burning, and scattering of hair (Eze 5:1-4). II. That sign is expounded, and applied to Jerusalem. 1. Sin is charged upon Jerusalem as the cause of this desolation - contempt of God's law (Eze 5:5-7) and profanation of his sanctuary (Eze 5:11). 2 Wrath is threatened, great wrath (Eze 5:8-10), a variety of miseries (Eze 5:12, Eze 5:16, Eze 5:17), such as should be their reproach and ruin (Eze 5:13-15).
Open source ↗5:2 Ezekiel was to burn one third of the hair to represent those who would die of famine during the siege. He was to chop another third of the hair with a sword to represent those who would die violent deaths. He was to scatter the final third to the wind to represent those who would be sent into exile.
Open source ↗Cross-references
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A third of your people will die by plague or be consumed by famine within you, a third will fall by the sword outside your walls, and a third I will scatter to every wind and unleash a sword behind them.
But I will scatter you among the nations and will draw out a sword after you as your land becomes desolate and your cities are laid waste.
And I will scatter to every wind all the attendants around him and all his troops, and I will draw a sword to chase after them.
If they ask you, ‘Where shall we go?’ you are to tell them that this is what the LORD says: ‘Those destined for death, to death; those destined for the sword, to the sword; those destined for famine, to famine; and those destined for captivity, to captivity.’
I will scatter them among the nations that neither they nor their fathers have known, and I will send a sword after them until I have finished them off.”
“This is what the LORD says: Whoever stays in this city will die by sword and famine and plague, but whoever surrenders to the Chaldeans will live; he will retain his life like a spoil of war, and he will live.
And I will send against them sword and famine and plague, until they have perished from the land that I gave to them and their fathers.’”