Ezekiel 4:5-15

5 For I am assigning you one day for each year of their guilt; thus you are to bear the guilt of the house of Isra'el for 390 days.

6 Then, when you have finished that, you are to lie on your right side and bear the guilt of the house of Y'hudah for forty days, each day corresponding to a year; this is what I am assigning you.

7 You are to fix your gaze on the siege of Yerushalayim, and, with your arm bared, prophesy against it.

8 I am tying you down with ropes, and you are not to turn from one side to the other until you have completed the days of your siege.

9 "Take wheat, barley, beans, lentils, millet and buckwheat; put them together in one bowl; and make bread from it. For as long as you lie on your side, 390 days, this is what you are to eat.

10 Each day the food you eat must weigh only three-quarters of a pound; you may eat it from time to time [during the day].

11 You are also to drink a limited amount of water, two-thirds of a quart; you may drink it from time to time [during the day].

12 [The bread] you eat is to be baked like barley cakes; you are to bake it before their eyes, using human dung as fuel."

13 ADONAI said, "This is how the people of Isra'el will eat their food - unclean - in the nations where I am driving them."

14 I objected: "No, Adonai ELOHIM! I have never defiled myself - from my youth until now I have never eaten anything that died by itself or was killed by wild animals; no such disgusting food has ever entered my mouth."

15 He answered, "All right, I will give you cow dung to use instead of human dung, and you can prepare your bread on it."

Ezekiel 4:5-15 Meaning and Commentary

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, Eze 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, Eze 4:2,3; 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, Eze 4:4-6; and by setting his face to the siege, and uncovering his arm, and prophesying, Eze 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, Eze 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, Eze 4:9-13; 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, Eze 4:14,15; 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, Eze 4:16,17.