Ezekiel 4:2

2 and hast placed against it a siege, and builded against it a fortification, and poured out against it a mount, and placed against it camps, yea, set thou against it battering-rams round about.

Ezekiel 4:2 Meaning and Commentary

Ezekiel 4:2

And lay siege against it
In his own person, as in ( Ezekiel 4:3 ) ; or draw the form of a siege, or figure of an army besieging a city; or rather of the instruments and means used in a siege, as follows: and build a fort against it:
Kimchi interprets it a wooden tower, built over against the city, to subdue it; Jarchi takes it to be an instrument by which stones were cast into the city; and so the Arabic version renders it, "machines to cast stones"; the Targum, a fortress; so Nebuchadnezzar in reality did what was here only done in type, ( 2 Kings 25:1 ) ; where the same word is used as here: and cast a mount about it;
a heap of earth cast up, in order to look into the city, cast in darts, and mount the walls; what the French call "bastion", as Jarchi observes: set the camp also against it;
place the army in their tents about it: and set [battering] rams against it round about;
a warlike instrument, that had an iron head, and horns like a ram, with which in a siege the walls of a city were battered and beaten down. Jarchi, Kimchi, and Ben Melech, interpret the word of princes and generals of the army, who watched at the several corners of the city, that none might go in and out; so the Targum seems to understand it F2. The Arabic version is, "mounts to cast darts"; (See Gill on Ezekiel 21:22).


FOOTNOTES:

F2 So R. Sol. Urbin. Ohel Moed, fol. 50. 9.

Ezekiel 4:2 In-Context

1 `And thou, son of man, take to thee a brick, and thou hast put it before thee, and hast graven on it a city -- Jerusalem,
2 and hast placed against it a siege, and builded against it a fortification, and poured out against it a mount, and placed against it camps, yea, set thou against it battering-rams round about.
3 And thou, take to thee an iron pan, and thou hast made it a wall of iron between thee and the city; and thou hast prepared thy face against it, and it hath been in a siege, yea, thou hast laid siege against it. A sign it [is] to the house of Israel.
4 `And thou, lie on thy left side, and thou hast placed the iniquity of the house of Israel on it; the number of the days that thou liest on it, thou bearest their iniquity.
5 And I -- I have laid on thee the years of their iniquity, the number of days, three hundred and ninety days; and thou hast borne the iniquity of the house of Israel.
Young's Literal Translation is in the public domain.