Ezekiel 4:9-17

New Catholic Bible

^9 [a]Then take wheat and barley, beans and lentils, millet, and spelt. Put them all into the same pot and make bread for yourself. You are to eat it for as many days as you lie upon your side—three hundred and ninety days. ¹⁰ The food that you shall eat shall weigh twenty shekels a day, and you are to eat it at fixed times. ¹¹ You are also to measure out and drink the same amount of water each day at fixed times—one-sixth of a hin. ¹² The food that you eat shall be in the form of a barley cake. Bake it in the sight of the people with human dung as fuel.

¹³ The Lord then said: Thus will the Israelites be forced to eat defiled food among the nations to which I will banish them. ¹⁴ “Lord God,” I protested, “from my youth until this very day I have never defiled myself. I have never eaten an animal that died a natural death or was torn to pieces by wild beasts. No unclean meat has ever entered my mouth.” ¹⁵ He replied: Very well. I will permit you to use cow dung instead of human dung to prepare your bread.^[b]

¹⁶ Then he said to me: Son of man, I intend to reduce greatly the supply of food in Jerusalem. The people will ration anxiously the bread they eat and sip carefully the measure of water they are allotted each day. ¹⁷ Because of the scarcity of bread and water, they will be overwhelmed with fear and waste away because of their iniquity.