Gather your belongings together and prepare to leave the land, you people of Jerusalem ¹  who are being besieged. ² 

At that time the generals ¹  of King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon marched to Jerusalem and besieged the city. ² 

The city remained under siege until King Zedekiah’s eleventh year.

“This is what King Sennacherib of Assyria says: ‘Why are you so confident that you remain in Jerusalem while it is under siege? ¹ 

The city remained under siege until Zedekiah’s eleventh year.

You will then eat your own offspring, ¹  the flesh of the sons and daughters the Lord your God has given you, because of the severity of the siege ²  by which your enemies will constrict you.

“I am about to make Jerusalem ¹  a cup that brings dizziness ²  to all the surrounding nations; indeed, Judah will also be included when Jerusalem is besieged.

If you besiege a city for a long time while attempting to capture it, ¹  you must not chop down its trees, ²  for you may eat fruit ³  from them and should not cut them down. A tree in the field is not human that you should besiege it! ⁴ 

He will withhold from all of them his children’s flesh that he is eating (since there is nothing else left), because of the severity of the siege by which your enemy will constrict ¹  you in your villages.

and will secretly eat her afterbirth ¹  and her newborn children ²  (since she has nothing else), ³  because of the severity of the siege by which your enemy will constrict you in your villages.

I will reduce the people of this city to desperate straits during the siege imposed on it by their enemies who are seeking to kill them. I will make them so desperate that they will eat the flesh of their own sons and daughters and the flesh of one another.”’” ¹ 

Then for your part take an iron frying pan ¹  and set it up as an iron wall between you and the city. Set your face toward it. It is to be under siege; you are to besiege it. This is a sign ²  for the house of Israel.