1 You also, son of man, take a tile, and lay it before yourself, and portray on it a city, even Jerusalem: 2 and lay siege against it, and build forts against it, and cast up a mound against it; set camps also against it, and plant battering rams against it all around. 3 Take for yourself an iron pan, and set it for a wall of iron between you and the city: and set your face toward it, and it shall 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. 5 For 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: forty days, each day for a year, have I appointed it to you. 7 You shall set your face toward the siege of Jerusalem, with your arm uncovered; and you shall prophesy against it. 8 Behold, I lay bands on you, and you shall not turn you from one side to the other, until you have accomplished the days of your siege. 9 Take for yourself also wheat, and barley, and beans, and lentils, and millet, and spelt, and put them in one vessel, and make bread of it; (according to) the number of the days that you shall lie on your side, even three hundred ninety days, you shall eat of it. 10 Your food which you shall eat shall be by weight, twenty shekels a day: from time to time you shall eat it. 11 You shall drink water by measure, the sixth part of a hin: from time to time you shall drink. 12 You shall eat it as barley cakes, and you shall bake it in their sight with dung that comes out of man. 13 Yahweh said, Even thus shall the children of Israel eat their bread unclean, among the nations where I will drive them. 14 Then I said, Ah Lord Yahweh! behold, my soul has not been polluted; for from my youth up even until now have I not eaten of that which dies of itself, or is torn of animals; neither came there abominable flesh into my mouth. 15 Then he said to me, Behold, I have given you cow's dung for man's dung, and you shall prepare your bread thereon. 16 Moreover he said to me, Son of man, behold, I will break the staff of bread in Jerusalem: and they shall eat bread by weight, and with fearfulness; and they shall drink water by measure, and in dismay: 17 that they may want bread and water, and be dismayed one with another, and pine away in their iniquity.
In Ezek. 4-5, the coming siege of Jerusalem and the dispersion of its inhabitants is foretold under divers symbols. If the 5th year of Jehoiachins captivity be taken (as is most probable) for the year in which Ezekiel received this communication, it was a time at which such an event would, according to human calculation, have appeared improbable. It could scarcely have been expected that Zedekiah - the creature of the king of Babylon and ruling by his authority in the place of Jehoiachin - would have been so infatuated as to provoke the anger of the powerful Nebuchadnezzar. It is indeed to infatuation that the sacred historian ascribes the act 2-Kings 24:20.
Ezekiel delineates Jerusalem, and lays siege to it, as a type of the manner in which the Chaldean army should surround that city, Ezekiel 4:1-3. The prophet commanded to lie on his left side three hundred and ninety days, and on his right side forty days, with the signification, Ezekiel 4:4-8. The scanty and coarse provision allowed the prophet during his symbolical siege, consisting chiefly of the worst kinds of grain, and likewise ill-prepared, as he had only cow's dung for fuel, tended all to denote the scarcity of provision, fuel, and every necessary of life, which the Jews should experience during the siege of Jerusalem, Ezekiel 4:9-17.
INTRODUCTION TO EZEKIEL 4
This chapter contains a prophecy of the siege of Jerusalem, and of the famine that attended it. The siege is described by a portrait of the city of Jerusalem on a tile, laid before the prophet, Ezekiel 4:1; by each of the actions, representing a siege of it, as building a fort, casting a mount, and setting a camp and battering rams against it, and an iron pan for a wall, between the prophet, the besieger, and the city, Ezekiel 4:2; by his gesture, lying first on his left side for the space of three hundred ninety days, and then on his right side for the space of forty days, pointing at the time when the city should be taken, Ezekiel 4:4; and by setting his face to the siege, and uncovering his arm, and prophesying, Ezekiel 4:7; and by bands being laid on him, so that he could not turn from one side to the other, till the siege was ended, Ezekiel 4:8; the famine is signified by bread the prophet was to make of various sorts of grain and seeds, baked with men's dung, and eaten by weight, with water drank by measure, which is applied unto the people; it is suggested that this would be fulfilled by the children of Israel's eating defiled bread among the Gentiles, Ezekiel 4:9; but upon the prophet's concern about eating anything forbidden by the law, which he had never done, cow's dung is allowed instead of men's, to prepare the bread with, Ezekiel 4:14; and the chapter is concluded with a resolution to bring a severe famine on them, to their great astonishment, and with which they should be consumed for their iniquity, Ezekiel 4:16.
(Ezekiel 4:1-8) The siege of Jerusalem.
(Ezekiel 4:9-17) The famine the inhabitants would suffer.
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