Translations
F.O.G.MPrimary
F.O.G MessageAnd you, son of man—take a sharp sword, use it as a barber's razor and pass it over your head and your beard. Then take a balance scale and divide the hair.
F.O.GSecondary
The F.O.GAnd you, ben-adam—take yourself a sharp sword; use it as a barber's razor and draw it across your head and your beard. Then take scales for weighing and divide the hair.
KJV
King James VersionAnd thou, son of man, take thee a sharp knife, take thee a barber's razor, and cause it to pass upon thine head and upon thy beard: then take thee balances to weigh, and divide the hair.
BSB
Berean Standard Bible“As for you, son of man, take a sharp sword, use it as a barber’s razor, and shave your head and beard. Then take a set of scales and divide the hair.
Footnotes
The sword pressed into service as a ta'ar hagalabim (תַּעַר הַגַּלָּבִים, 'barber's razor') is itself a sign of violence-become-shame. In the ancient Near East, forcible shaving of head and beard was an act of public humiliation and mourning (cf. Isa. 7:20, where Assyria functions as YHWH's hired razor shaving the land). The prophet's own body becomes the enacted map of Jerusalem's judgment—the instrument of war repurposed for disgrace. FOG retains 'barber's razor' to preserve the specific term; FOG Message renders the same but frames the prophet's body as the living enactment of the city's fate.
