¹ And thou, son of man, take thee a sharp knife that shaveth the hair: and cause it to pass over thy head, and over thy beard: and take thee a balance to weigh in, and divide the hair.

² A third part thou shalt burn with fire in the midst of the city, according to the fulfilling of the days of the siege: and thou shalt take a third part, and cut it in pieces with the knife all round about: and the other third part thou shalt scatter in the wind, and I will draw out the sword after them.

³ And thou shalt take thereof a small number: and shalt bind them in the skirt of thy cloak.

⁴ And thou shalt take of them again, and shalt cast them in the midst of the fire, and shalt burn them with fire: and out of it shall come forth a fire into all the house of Israel.

⁵ Thus saith the Lord God: This is Jerusalem, I have set her in the midst of the nations, and the countries round about her.

⁶ And she hath despised my judgments, so as to be more wicked than the Gentiles; and my commandments, more than the countries that are round about her: for they have cast off my judgments, and have not walked in my commandments.

⁷ Therefore thus saith the Lord God: Because you have surpassed the Gentiles that are round about you, and have not walked in my commandments, and have not kept my judgments, and have not done according to the judgments of the nations that are round about you:

⁸ Therefore thus saith the Lord God: Behold I come against thee, and I myself will execute judgments in the midst of thee in the sight of the Gentiles.

⁹ And I will do in thee that which I have not done: and the like to which I will do no more, because of all thy abominations.

¹⁰ Therefore the fathers shall eat the sons in the midst of thee, and the sons shall eat their fathers: and I will execute judgments in thee, and I will scatter thy whole remnant into every wind.

¹¹ Therefore as I live, saith the Lord God : Because thou hast violated my sanctuary with all thy offences, and with ail thy abominations: I will also break thee in pieces, and my eye shall not spare, and I will not have any pity.

¹² A third part of thee shall die with the pestilence, and shall be consumed with famine in the midst of thee: and a third part of thee shall fall by the sword round about thee: and a third part of thee will I scatter into every wind, and I will draw out a sword after them.

¹³ And I will accomplish my fury, and will cause my indignation to rest upon them, and I will be comforted: and they shall know that I the Lord have spoken it in my zeal, when I shall have accomplished my indignation in them.

¹⁴ And I will make thee desolate, and a reproach among the nations that are round about thee, in the sight of every one that passeth by.

¹⁵ And thou shalt be a reproach, and a scoff, an example, and an astonishment amongst the nations that are round about thee, when I shall have executed judgments in thee in anger, and in indignation, and in wrathful rebukes.

¹⁶ I the Lord have spoken it: When I shall send upon them the grievous arrows of famine, which shall bring death, and which I will send to destroy you: and I will gather together famine against you: and I will break among you the staff of bread.

¹⁷ And I will send in upon you famine, and evil beasts unto utter destruction: and pestilence, and blood shall pass through thee, and I will bring in the sword upon thee. I the Lord have spoken it.

¹ In the first year of Darius the son of Assuerus of the seed of the Medes, who reigned over the kingdom of the Chaldeans:

² The first year of his reign, I Daniel understood by books the number of the years, concerning which the word of the Lord came to Jeremias the prophet, that seventy years should be accomplished of the desolation of Jerusalem.

³ And I set my face to the Lord my God, to pray and make supplication with fasting, and sackcloth, and ashes.

⁴ And I prayed to the Lord my God, and I made my confession, and said: I beseech thee, O Lord God, great and terrible, who keepest the covenant, and mercy to them that love thee, and keep thy commandments.

⁵ We have sinned, we have committed iniquity, we have done wickedly, and have revolted: and we have gone aside from thv commandments, and thy judgments.

⁶ We have not hearkened to thy servants the prophets, that have spoken in thy name to our kings, to our princes, to our fathers, and to all the people of the land.

⁷ To thee, O Lord, justice: but to us confusion of face, as at this day to the men of Juda, and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and to all Israel to them that are near, and to them that are far off in all the countries whither thou hast driven them, for their iniquities by which they have sinned against thee.

⁸ O Lord, to us belongeth confusion of face, to our princes, and to our fathers that have sinned.

⁹ But to thee, the Lord our God, mercy and forgiveness, for we have departed from thee:

¹⁰ And we have not hearkened to the voice of the Lord our God, to walk in his law, which he set before us by his servants the prophets.

¹¹ And all Israel have transgressed thy law, and have turned away from hearing thy voice, and the malediction, and the curse, which is written in the book of Moses the servant of God, is fallen upon us, because we have sinned against him.

¹² And he hath confirmed his words which he spoke against us, and against our princes that judged us, that he would bring in upon us a great evil, such as never was under all the heaven, according to that which hath been done in Jerusalem.

¹³ As it is written in the law of Moses, all this evil is come upon us: and we entreated not thy face, O Lord our God, that we might turn from our iniquities, and think on thy truth.

¹⁴ And the Lord hath watched upon the evil, and hath brought it upon us: the Lord our God is just in all his works which he hath done: for we have not hearkened to his voice.

¹⁵ And now, O Lord our God, who hast brought forth thy people out of the land of Egypt with a strong hand, and hast made thee a name as at this day: we have sinned, we have committed iniquity,

¹⁶ O Lord, against all thy justice: let thy wrath and thy indignation be turned away, I beseech thee, from thy city Jerusalem, and from thy holy mountain. For by reason of our sins, and the iniquities of our fathers, Jerusalem, and thy people are a reproach to all that are round about us.

¹⁷ Now therefore, O our God, hear the supplication of thy servant, and his prayers: and shew thy face upon thy sanctuary which is desolate, for thy own sake.

¹⁸ Incline, O my God, thy ear, and hear: open thy eyes, and see our desolation, and the city upon which thy name is called: for it is not for our justifications that we present our prayers before thy face, but for the multitude of thy tender mercies.

¹⁹ O Lord, hear: O Lord, be appeased: hearken and do: delay not for thy own sake, O my God: because thy name is invocated upon thy city, and upon thy people.

²⁰ Now while I was yet speaking, and praying, and confessing my sins, and the sins of my people of Israel, and presenting my supplications in the sight of my God, for the holy mountain of my God:

²¹ As I was yet speaking in prayer, behold the man Gabriel, whom I had seen in the vision at the beginning, flying swiftly touched me at the time of the evening sacrifice.

²² And he instructed me, and spoke to me, and said: O Daniel, I am now come forth to teach thee, and that thou mightest understand.

²³ From the beginning of thy prayers the word came forth: and I am come to shew it to thee, because thou art a man of desires: therefore do thou mark the word, and understand the vision.

²⁴ Seventy weeks are shortened upon thy people, and upon thy holy city, that transgression may be finished, and sin may have an end, and iniquity may be abolished; and everlasting justice may be brought; and vision and prophecy may be fulfilled; and the saint of saints may be anointed.

²⁵ Know thou therefore, and take notice: that from the going forth of the word, to build up Jerusalem again, unto Christ the prince, there shall be seven weeks, and sixty-two weeks: and the street shall be built again, and the walls in straitness of times.

²⁶ And after sixty-two weeks Christ shall be slain: and the people that shall deny him shall not be his. And a people with their leader that shall come, shall destroy the city and the sanctuary: and the end thereof shall be waste, and after the end of the war the appointed desolation.

²⁷ And he shall confirm the covenant with many, in one week: and in the half of the week the victim and the sacrifice shall fall: and there shall be in the temple the abomination of desolation: and ihe desolation shall continue even to the consummation, and to the end.