Ezekiel 5:1-2

The prophet was to shave the hair of his head and beard with a sword symbolizing the defilement and humiliation that would come on Jerusalem because of her sin. Shaving the head and beard was forbidden for Israelites in their law (Deuteronomy 14:1). It was a pagan practice that expressed great grief and humiliation (cf. Ezekiel 9:3; Ezekiel 27:31; 2 Samuel 10:4-5; Isaiah 15:2; Isaiah 22:12; Jeremiah 16:6; Jeremiah 41:5-6; Jeremiah 48:37; Amos 8:10). If an Israelite priest shaved his head, he was defiled and no longer holy to the Lord (Leviticus 21:5-6). Thus Ezekiel’s action pictured the unclean condition of Israel before the Lord as well as its removal in judgment by Babylon’s king (cf. Isaiah 7:20).

Then Ezekiel was to divide his cut hair using a scale to measure it in three equal piles. Weighing symbolized discriminating evaluation and impending judgment (cf. Proverbs 21:2; Jeremiah 15:2; Daniel 5:27). When the days of the siege were over, after 430 days (Ezekiel 4:5-6), he was to burn one-third of the hair in the center of the model of Jerusalem that he had built with the brick (Ezekiel 4:1). He should chop up another third of the hair with his sword outside the model city. The remaining third he was to throw up into the air so the wind would blow it away. This represented the fate of the Jews in Jerusalem during the siege. One third would die in the burning and destruction of the city (cf. 2 Kings 25:9), another third would die at the hand of the Babylonian soldiers outside the city (cf. 2 Kings 25:18-21; 2 Chronicles 36:17), and one third would go into captivity (cf. 2 Kings 25:11; 2 Kings 25:21) driven by soldiers that Yahweh would send after them.