When I cut off your supply of bread, ten women will bake your bread in a single oven and ration out your bread by weight, so that you will eat but not be satisfied.
‘Son of man, suppose a land sins against me by acting faithlessly, and I stretch out my hand against it to cut off its supply of bread, to send famine through it, and to wipe out both people and animals from it.
‘My lord the king, these men have been evil in all they have done to the prophet Jeremiah. They have dropped him into the cistern, where he will die from hunger, because there is no more bread in the city.’
So King Zedekiah gave orders, and Jeremiah was placed in the guard’s courtyard. He was given a loaf of bread each day from the bakers’ street until all the bread was gone from the city. So Jeremiah remained in the guard’s courtyard.
This is what your Lord says – the Lord, even your God, who defends his people – ‘Look, I have removed from your hand the cup that causes staggering; that goblet, the cup of my fury. You will never drink it again.
But the royal spokesman replied, ‘Has my master sent me to speak these words to your master and to you, and not to the men who are sitting on the wall, who are destined with you to eat their own excrement and drink their own urine? ’
The Lord also says: Because the daughters of Zion are haughty, walking with heads held high and seductive eyes, prancing along, jingling their ankle bracelets,
They carve meat on the right, but they are still hungry; they have eaten on the left, but they are still not satisfied. Each one eats the flesh of his arm.
Because of the Lord’s anger, it came to the point in Jerusalem and Judah that he finally banished them from his presence. Then Zedekiah rebelled against the king of Babylon.
I gave you absolutely nothing to eat , in all your cities, a shortage of food in all your communities, yet you did not return to me. This is the Lord’s declaration.