Ezekiel 4:5

For I have laid upon thee the years of their iniquity,.... Or the iniquity which for so many years they have been guilty of; that is, the punishment of it: according to the number of the days; a day

For I have laid upon thee the years of their iniquity, according to the number of the days, three hundred and ninety days: so shalt thou bear the iniquity of the house of Israel. Three hundred and ninety days.

This verse explains the former. I have pointed out the number of years wherein apostate Israel sinned against me, and I did bear with them according to the number of days, wherein thou must lie on thy left side. Three hundred and ninety days. See . There is some difference, though of no great moment, in fixing the periods of beginning and ending these prophetic days. These years some begin at Solomon’ s falling to idolatry, in the twenty-seventh year of his reign, and end them in the fifth of Zedekiah’ s captivity. Others begin at the fourth year of Rehoboam, and end them in the twenty-first year of the captivity. Others begin them in the first of Rehoboam and Jeroboam, when the kingdom was divided, and then they must end about the seventeenth year of the captivity. The first supputation to me is much the likeliest, and agrees nearest with the year wherein this prophet begins his prophecy. It is not altogether unlikely that the prophet may intimate, though obscurely, the continuance of the siege of Jerusalem, which the Chaldeans began on the tenth day of the tenth month of the ninth year of Zedekiah, and lasted the remaining two months of the ninth year, and the whole tenth year except some five months, wherein the Babylonians retired to fight the Egyptians, beat them, spoiled them, and returned to the siege of Jerusalem, which lasted to the ninth day of the fourth month of Zedekiah’ s eleventh year. So that one whole year, and three weeks, and four days, or thirteen months, at thirty days in each month, taking up three hundred and ninety days, and discounting the five months and odd days in the Egyptian expedition, you come to the continuance of three hundred and ninety days in the threatened siege, and possibly this may be the intent of the prophecy.

Ezekiel 4:5 For I have laid upon thee the years of their iniquity, according to the number of the days, three hundred and ninety days: so shalt thou bear the iniquity of the house of Israel.Ver. 5. Three hundred and ninety days.] That is, say some, the siege of Jerusalem shall continue so many days - via, thirteen months, or thereabouts. But they do better, who, taking a day for a year in both the accounts, and making the forty of Judah to run along with the last year of Israel’ s 390, end both at Nabuzaradan’ s carrying away to Babylon the last relics of Israel and Judah: and begin Israel’ s years at Jeroboam’ s apostasy, and Judah’ s at Huldah’ s prophecy in the eighteenth of Josiah’ s reign, when the law was found but not observed by that idolatrous people, as appeareth by the complaints made of them by Zephaniah and Jeremiah; neither were they warned by their brethren’ s miseries, the ten tribes being now carried into captivity. Compare Ezekiel 1:1-2; Ezekiel 3:15; Ezekiel 3:24-27; Ezekiel 8:1.

(5) The years of their iniquity, according to the number of the days.—Comp. Numbers 14:34. In regard to the number of the years, see Excursus II. at the end of this book. (6) The iniquity of the house of Judah forty days.—This forty days is clearly subsequent and additional to the 390 days, making in all a period of 430 days. (On these numbers see Excursus II. at the end of this book.) The great disproportion between the two is in accordance with the difference in the two parts of the nation, and the consequent Divine dealings with them. Judah had remained faithful to its appointed rulers of the house of David, several of whose kings had been eminently devout men; through whatever mixture with idolatry it had yet always retained the worship of Jehovah, and had kept up the Aaronic priesthood, and preserved with more or less respect the law of Moses. It was now entering upon the period of the Babylonish captivity, from which, after seventy years, a remnant was to be again restored to keep up the people of the Messiah. Israel, on the other hand, had set up a succession of dynasties, and not one of all their kings had been a God-fearing man; they had made Baal their national god, and had made priests at their pleasure of the lowest of the people, and in consequence of their sins had been carried into a captivity from which they never returned. B: ON CHAPTER 4:5, 6.The explanation of the periods of time here mentioned has occasioned great difficulty and difference of opinion among the commentators. The subject may be best approached by first observing what points are clearly determined in the text itself, and then excluding all interpretations which are inconsistent with these. In the first place, it is expressly stated in each of these verses that these days represent years. No interpretation, therefore, can be admitted which requires them to be literal days. Secondly, it is plain that the period is one of “bearing their iniquity”; not a period in which they are becoming sinful, but one in which they are suffering the punishment of their sin. Thirdly, it is plain from the whole structure of the symbolism that this period is in some way intimately connected with the siege of Jerusalem. Finally, the two periods of 390 and of forty days are distinct. If the symbolism was carried out in act, they must have been consecutive, and it is still the natural inference that they were so, even if it was only in vision. The two periods together, then, constitute 430 days; yet this is not to be emphasised, since no express mention is made of the whole period. These points of themselves exclude several of the explanations that have from time to time been put forward.

5. Read with R.V., for I have appointed the years of their iniquity to be unto thee a number of days, even 390 days. The number of years during which the people shall bear their iniquity is symbolized by the number of days during which Ezekiel lies on his side, as is said explicitly in Ezekiel 4:6 “a day for a year.”

According to the number of the days - Or, “to be to thee as a number of days (even as)” etc. Compare the margin reference.

4, 5. Lie thou also upon thy left side… three hundred and ninety days — LXX., one hundred and ninety days.