Ezekiel 4:2

2 and lay siege against it, and build forts against it, and cast a mound against it, and set camps against it, and place battering-rams against it 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 thee a brick, and lay it before thee, and portray upon it a city, -- Jerusalem:
2 and lay siege against it, and build forts against it, and cast a mound against it, and set camps against it, and place battering-rams against it round about.
3 And take thou unto thee an iron plate, and put it [for] a wall of iron between thee and the city; and set thy face against it, and it shall be besieged, and thou shalt lay siege against it: this shall be a sign to the house of Israel.
4 And thou, lie upon thy left side, and lay the iniquity of the house of Israel upon it: the number of the days that thou liest upon it, thou shalt bear their iniquity.
5 And I have appointed thee the years of their iniquity, according to the number of the days, three hundred and ninety days; and thou shalt bear the iniquity of the house of Israel.

Footnotes 1

  • [a]. Or 'siege-towers:' see chs. 17.17; 21.22; 26.8; 2Kings 25.1.
The Darby Translation is in the public domain.