Ezekiel 4
1“You also, son of man, take a tile, and lay it before yourself, and portray on it a city, even Jerusalem. 2Lay siege against it, build forts against it, and cast up a mound against it. Also set camps against it and plant battering rams against it all around. 3Take for yourself an iron pan and set it for a wall of iron between you and the city. Then set your face toward it. It will be besieged, and you shall lay siege against it. This shall be a sign to the house of Israel. 4“Moreover lie on your left side, and lay the iniquity of the house of Israel on it. According to the number of the days that you shall lie on it, you shall bear their iniquity. 5For I have appointed the years of their iniquity to be to you a number of days, even three hundred ninety days. So you shall bear the iniquity of the house of Israel. 6“Again, when you have accomplished these, you shall lie on your right side, and shall bear the iniquity of the house of Judah. I have appointed forty days, each day for a year, to you. 7You shall set your face toward the siege of Jerusalem, with your arm uncovered; and you shall prophesy against it. 8Behold, I put ropes on you, and you shall not turn yourself from one side to the other, until you have accomplished the days of your siege. 9“Take for yourself also wheat, barley, beans, lentils, millet, and spelt, and put them in one vessel. Make bread of it. According to the number of the days that you will lie on your side, even three hundred ninety days, you shall eat of it. 10Your food which you shall eat shall be by weight, twenty shekels a day. From time to time you shall eat it. 11You shall drink water by measure, the sixth part of a hin. From time to time you shall drink. 12You shall eat it as barley cakes, and you shall bake it in their sight with dung that comes out of man.” 13Yahweh said, “Even thus will the children of Israel eat their bread unclean, among the nations where I will drive them.” 14Then I said, “Ah Lord Yahweh! Behold, my soul has not been polluted; for from my youth up even until now I have not eaten of that which dies of itself, or is torn of animals. No abominable meat has come into my mouth!” 15Then he said to me, “Behold, I have given you cow’s dung for man’s dung, and you shall prepare your bread on it.” 16Moreover he said to me, “Son of man, behold, I will break the staff of bread in Jerusalem. They will eat bread by weight, and with fearfulness. They will drink water by measure, and in dismay; 17that they may lack bread and water, be dismayed one with another, and pine away in their iniquity.
Introduction
Ezekiel 4
Ezekiel was now among the captives in Babylon, but they there had Jerusalem still upon their hearts; the pious captives looked towards it with an eye of faith (as Dan 6:10), the presumptuous ones looked towards it with an eye of pride, and flattered themselves with a conceit that they should shortly return thither again; those that remained corresponded with the captives, and, it is likely, bouyed them up with hopes that all would be well yet, as long as Jerusalem was standing in its strength, and perhaps upbraided those with their folly who had surrendered at first; therefore, to take down this presumption, God gives the prophet, in this chapter, a very clear and affecting foresight of the besieging of Jerusalem by the Chaldean army and the calamities which would attend that siege. Two things are here represented to him in vision: - I. The fortifications that should be raised against the city; this is signified by the prophet's laying siege to the portraiture of Jerusalem (Eze 4:1-3) and laying first on one side and then on the other side before it (Eze 4:4-8). II. The famine that should rage within the city; this is signified by his eating very coarse fare, and confining himself to a little of it, so long as this typical representation lasted (Eze 4:9-17).
Cross-references: Dan 6:10 · Ezek 4:1 · Ezek 4:4 · Ezek 4:9