Moreover he said to me: God continues to speak to Ezekiel here, so this clause may be omitted (so Contemporary English Version). But like verse 13, the content of this verse is a bit different from the previous verse, and it is an important statement of judgment. These might be the reasons why this introductory statement has been included. Good News Translation says “And he added,” which is an effective way of handling this clause. Translators will have to decide what is most effective and natural in their own languages.

Son of man, behold …: For son of man, International Children’s Bible translates “Human being.”

Behold (hinneh in Hebrew) provides emphasis at the beginning of the important statement here (see the comments on 4.8). Translators may say “look” or “listen.”

I will break the staff of bread in Jerusalem: The metaphor staff of bread may come from the custom of hanging round loaves of bread on a horizontal pole, either to store them or to sell them (Zimmerli). To break the staff of bread, then, means to drop all the bread in the dirt and make it inedible, and also to make it impossible to keep any more bread. Whatever the origin of the metaphor, the meaning here is quite clear. God will “cut off the supply of bread” (Good News Translation), so that there will be no food in Jerusalem and the people will starve. Traduction œcuménique de la Bible has “I will get rid of the supply of bread.” The Hebrew word for bread actually means “food” in general, especially the staple diet of a community, and many translations will use “food” here to make that point clear. Starvation is the real point of the metaphor here, and this must be reflected in translations. Contemporary English Version captures this meaning well by rendering the clause as “the people of Jerusalem will starve,” but it leaves out the important fact that God will cause this scarcity of food. It is better to say “I am going to make the people of Jerusalem starve” or “I am going to cause a lack of food in Jerusalem so that the people will starve.”

They shall eat bread by weight … and they shall drink water by measure …: These expressions refer back to verses 10 and 11, where God rationed the amount of food and water Ezekiel consumed during the time he was lying on his side. Here they refer to the way the people inside the besieged city of Jerusalem had to ration their food and water. The exact amounts of food and water they were able to have are not stated, but we can be sure that they were very small. These clauses may be translated “They will weigh out a small amount of food for each person to eat and carefully measure a small amount of water for each person to drink,” or more simply, “The people will have a very small amount of food to eat, and a very small amount of water to drink.”

The people of Jerusalem will eat the food with fearfulness and drink the water in dismay. This is a picture of the great “anxiety” (New International Version, New King James Version , New Jewish Publication Society’s Tanakh) and “worry” (New Century Version) of the people as they see their stocks of food and water diminish, and they realize with “shock” (New Century Version), “horror” (New Jerusalem Bible, New Jewish Publication Society’s Tanakh) and “despair” (New International Version) that soon they won’t have anything left. King James Version translates fearfulness and dismay as “care” and “astonishment,” which are misleading renderings now, because their meanings are archaic and they no longer mean what the translators understood when they used them. Although most translations still apply the fearfulness to the eating and the dismay to the drinking, there is no need to keep these two emotions rigidly separated; for example, Good News Translation renders the last two sentences of this verse as “The people there will be distressed and anxious as they measure out the food they eat and the water they drink,” Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch says “They will weigh it [the bread] and measure the water accurately and they will be in a state of constant worry,” and Bible en français courant has “The people will severely ration their food and drink; they will be very anxious.” Another possible model is “The people will be very anxious and greatly distressed to see the very small amount of food they have to eat and the small amount of water they have to drink.”

Quoted with permission from Gross, Carl & Stine, Philip C. A Handbook on Ezekiel. (UBS Helps for Translators). Miami: UBS, 2016. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .