Ezekiel 4

4 : 1 THOU also, son of man, take thee a tile, and lay it before thee, and pourtray upon it 2 a city, even Jerusalem : and lay siege against it, and build forts against it, and cast up a mount against it ; set camps also against it, and plant battering rams against it round about. 3 And take thou unto thee an iron pan, and set it for a wall of iron between thee and the city : and set thy face toward it, and it shall be besieged, and thou shalt lay siege against it. This shall be a sign to the house of Israel. 4 Moreover lie thou upon thy left side, and lay the iniquity of the house of Israel upon it : according to the number of the days that thou shalt lie upon it, thou shalt bear their iniquity. 5 For I have appointed the years of their iniquity to be unto thee a number of days, even three 6 hundred and ninety days : so shalt thou bear the iniquity of the house of Israel. And again, when thou hast accomplished these, thou shalt lie on thy right side, and shalt bear the iniquity 7 of the house of Judah : forty days, each day for a year, have I appointed it unto thee. And thou shalt set thy face toward the siege of Jerusalem, with thine arm uncovered ; and thou 8 shalt prophesy against it. And behold, I lay bands upon thee, and thou shalt not turn thee 9 from one side to another, till thou hast accomplished the days of thy siege. Take thou also unto thee wheat, and barley, and beans, and lentils, and millet, and spelt, and put them in one vessel, and make thee bread thereof ; according to the number of the days that thou shalt 10 lie upon thy side, even three hundred and ninety days, shalt thou eat thereof. And thy meat which thou shalt eat shall be by weight, twenty shekels a day : from time to time shalt thou 11 eat it. And thou shalt drink water by measure, the sixth part of an hin : from time to time 12 shalt thou drink. And thou shalt eat it as barley cakes, and thou shalt bake it in their sight 13 with dung that cometh out of man. And the LORD said, Even thus shall the children of 14 Israel eat their bread unclean, among the nations whither I will drive them. Then said I, Ah Lord God ! behold, my soul hath not been polluted : for from my youth up even till now have I not eaten of that which dieth of itself, or is torn of beasts ; neither came there abomi- 15 nable flesh into my mouth. Then he said unto me, See, I have given thee cow’s dung for 16 man’s dung, and thou shalt prepare thy bread thereon. Moreover he said unto me, Son of man, behold, I will break the staff of bread in Jerusalem : and they shall eat bread by weight, 17 and with carefulness ; and they shall drink water by measure, and with astonishment : that they may want bread and water, and be astonished one with another, and pine away in their iniquity.5 : 1 And thou, son of man, take thee a sharp sword, as a barber’s razor shalt thou take it unto thee, and shalt cause it to pass upon thine head and upon thy beard : then take thee bal- 2 ances to weigh, and divide the hair. A third part shalt thou burn in the fire in the midst of the city, when the days of the siege are fulfilled ; and thou shalt take a third part, and smite with the sword round about it ; and a third part thou shalt scatter to the wind, and I will 3 draw out a sword after them. And thou shalt take thereof a few in number, and bind them 4 in thy skirts. And of these again shalt thou take, and cast them into the midst of the fire, and burn them in the fire ; therefrom shall a fire come forth into all the house of Israel. 5 Thus saith the Lord God : This is Jerusalem : I have set her in the midst of the nations, 6 and countries are round about her. And she hath rebelled against my judgements in doing wickedness more than the nations, and against my statutes more than the countries that are round about her : for they have rejected my judgements, and as for my statutes, they have 7 not walked in them. Therefore thus saith the Lord God : Because ye are turbulent more than the nations that are round about you, and have not walked in my statutes, neither have kept my judgements, neither have done after the ordinances of the nations that are round 8 about you ; therefore thus saith the Lord God : Behold, I, even I, am against thee ; and I 9 will execute judgements in the midst of thee in the sight of the nations. And I will do in thee that which I have not done, and whereunto I will not do any more the like, because of 10 all thine abominations. Therefore the fathers shall eat the sons in the midst of thee, and the sons shall eat their fathers ; and I will execute judgements in thee, and the whole remnant of 11 thee will I scatter unto all the winds. Wherefore, as I live, saith the Lord God, surely, be- cause thou hast defiled my sanctuary with all thy detestable things, and with all thine abominations, therefore will I also diminish thee; neither shall mine eye spare, and I also will 13 have no pity. A third part of thee shall die with the pestilence, and with famine shall they be consumed in the midst of thee; and a third part shall fall by the sword round about thee; and a third part I will scatter unto all the winds, and will draw out a sword after them. 13 Thus shall mine anger be accomplished, and I will satisfy my fury upon them, and I will be comforted: and they shall know that I the LORD have spoken in my zeal, when I have ac- 14 complished my fury upon them. Moreover I will make thee a desolation and a reproach, 15 among the nations that are round about thee, in the sight of all that pass by. So it shall be a reproach and a taunt, an instruction and an astonishment, unto the nations that are round about thee, when I shall execute judgements in thee in anger and in fury, and in furious 16 rebukes: I, the LORD have spoken it: when I shall send upon them the evil arrows of famine, that are for destruction, which I will send to destroy you; and I will increase the 17 famine upon you, and will break your staff of bread; and I will send upon you famine and evil beasts, and they shall bereave thee; and pestilence and blood shall pass through thee; and I will bring the sword upon thee: I the LORD have spoken it.

Chaps. 4, 5. The coming siege of Jerusalem and dispersion of its inhabitants foretold under divers symbols. If we accept the fifth year of Jehoiachin’s captivity (as is most probable) for the year in which Ezekiel received this communication, we may observe that it was a time at which such an event would, according to human calculation, have appeared improbable. Zedekiah was the creature of the king of Babylon, ruling by his authority in the place of Jehoiachin, who was still alive; and it could scarcely have been expected that Zedekiah 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 K. 24: 20), God in this way carrying out His purpose of punishing the iniquity of the people by the folly of their king. B. C.

4. The object of the symbolic transactions recorded in this chapter was to impress the exiles with the facts that Jerusalem was soon to be besieged; that this siege would be exceedingly severe, involving great famine and distress; and that it was to come upon the city and the people for their great sins. The date of the prophecies in chaps. 4-7 cannot be much later than the fifth year of Jehoiachin’s captivity, since no new date appears between chaps. 1: 2 and 8: 1. The latter was the sixth year and sixth month. Zedekiah’s reign began very soon after the captivity of Jehoiachin. The siege of Jerusalem commenced in the tenth month of his ninth year (Jer. 52: 4). Hence this prophecy preceded the beginning of the siege by some four or four and a half years only. The two significant symbolic transactions recorded in this chapter are closely related to each other—are indeed parts of the same whole—viz., (1) the delineation of the city of Jerusalem on a tile, and formally laying siege to it; and (2) the prophet’s lying on his left side three hundred and ninety days, and on his right forty, and taking his bread and water by measure during those periods—to indicate both the straitness of the siege and its moral causes in the nation’s great sins. H. C.

Ezekiel, having prepared his representation of Jerusalem, proceeded to conduct the operations of a siege against it. Having finished his fort, his mount, and set his battering rams, the prophet proceeds to lay close siege to the city, with an iron baking-pan between him and it. This pan must be taken as a symbol of the Divine wrath—like the seething-pot in Jer. 1: 13; and it seems to stand for an iron or metallic wall, set up against the too late prayers and complaints of a people given over to destruction. Before this symbolic wall the prophet impersonates another set of symbols, in which he represents the condition of the besieged: thus undergoing a double representative action—a thing not unusual in Scripture. In doing this he is enjoined to lie first upon his left side for three hundred and ninety days, bearing the iniquity of the house of Israel; and then to turn and lie upon his right side forty days, bearing the iniquity of the house of Judah. As this lying upon the right side is connected with the immediate action, whereas the lying on the left side represents, in part at least, that which had already passed, it seems designed to bear a peculiar significance and to denote the severer calamity of the two. This significance lying on the right side still retains in the East, although it is, we think, contended by our medical authorities that men in general lie naturally on the right side, and that it is most wholesome for them to do so.

Thus lying, the prophet has to represent the famishing condition to which the besieged shall be reduced, by the nature and quantity of his food and by the mode in which he prepares it. He is directed to take different kinds of substances capable of being made into bread, from the best to the worst—from wheat to lentils and beans—and to mix them together for his bread, as if to show that the people should be reduced to the mere sweepings of their stores, and get so little even of this that they should be constrained to mix them together to form a loaf of bread. This is further shown by the careful weighing out every day of the small quantity of this food he may take, and measuring out the water he may drink. Further, to indicate the scarcity of fuel in a besieged town, when supplies from the country can be no longer brought in, the prophet was directed to bake his food by the heat of the most offensive kind of fuel. Against this his soul revolted, and he allowed himself to remonstrate; and that the burden of his representative commission might not be too onerous to him, he was graciously permitted to use the dried dung of animals to dress his food. Kitto.

1-3. The ruins of Nineveh and of Babylon have furnished the world during the present century large quantities of “tile,” sun-baked or kiln-burnt brick, covered with inscriptions. Hence this symbol was perfectly familiar to Ezekiel and to his fellow-exiles. To portray a city on a tile and let it represent Jerusalem was altogether in harmony with the usages of the Chaldean people. This symbolic transaction was throughout in keeping with the modes of ancient warfare. Towers were built, mounds raised, often to the full height of the walls of the besieged city; a camp was fitted up, battering-rams provided. Then, to protect the besiegers, strong ramparts were raised between them and the city, indicated in this transaction by the “iron pan.” All this was for a “sign” to the house of Israel, a thoroughly symbolic process, to signify the siege of their beloved city. There can be no reasonable doubt that this was really done as here stated, and not merely seen in vision without being done in fact. For the record has none of the usual intimations of a vision—e.g., “I looked;” “I saw;” “the Lord showed me;” “I was in the spirit and saw,” etc. H. C.

3. The prophet here applies the general term Israel to the kingdom of Judah. So also 3:7, 17; 5:4; 8:6, and elsewhere. So in the Books of Chronicles written in the time of or after the Captivity, 2 Chron. 21:2, Jehoshaphat, king of Israel, and 28. After the Captivity of the Ten Tribes the kingdom of Judah represented the whole nation, and we find both Hezekiah and

Josiah calling on such of the tribes of Israel as had been left in the land to join their brethren of Judah in keeping a most solemn Passover (2 Chron. 30:1; 35:18). Hence prophets writing after this event constantly address their countrymen as the house of Israel without distinction of tribes. It is only on such occasions as below (verses 5, 6) that the distinction between Israel and Judah is kept up. B. C.

4-6. In the same strain as the previous symbol, it is a simple command to do. Manifestly this lying on either side, as well as the preparation and eating of his food, were to be done “in the sight of the people” (see verse 12). Now, since the people are in the external world only, and not in prophetic vision, this must have been an actual proceeding, and not a thing of mere vision. It cannot be supposed that this lying on one side was absolutely continuous and unbroken by any rising up during the entire thirteen months in the former case and one and one third months in the latter. For, according to the record, the prophet prepared his own food and ate it from to time. The three hundred and ninety years of Israel began with the revolt of Jeroboam. In that revolt Israel, as distinct from Judah, was prominent. There, in her revolt and in the idolatrous decree of the golden calves, the terrible relapse of the whole nation into idolatry began. On the other hand the forty years’ period related specially to Judah, marking the period of her last guilty relapse from God, and suggesting the great light she had sinned against. That God’s special appointment should make each day’s lying by the prophet on his side symbolic of one year need occasion no surprise or difficulty. Once indicated, the significance was clear and unmistakable. But, that interpreters of prophecy should find here authority for the theory that in all prophetic notations of time, “day” means “year,” and “year” means three hundred and sixty years, is in the last degree capricious and unfounded. How can those who embrace this theory fail to see that throughout this passage the words “day” and “year” are used evermore in their ordinary and common sense, and not at all with the special extension or rather multiplication which they claim for them? Did the prophet lie on his left side three hundred and ninety years, and on his right side forty years? In the present case the only reason why each day’s confined posture on the side represents a year lies in the symbol (not in the word day), and is there by special Divine arrangement. It is not at all in the sense of the words “day” and “year.” The Lord told the prophet and also the people that his lying a certain number of days on either side should remind the people of so many years of their national sin. H. C.

All this that the prophet sets before the children of his people concerning the destruction of Jerusalem is designed to bring them to repentance, by showing them sin, the provoking cause of this destruction—sin, the ruin of that once flourishing city, than which surely nothing could be more effectual to make them hate sin and turn from it; while he thus in lively colors describes the calamity with a great deal of pain and uneasiness to himself, he is bearing the iniquity of Israel and Judah. “Look here,” says he, “and see what work sin makes, what an evil and bitter thing it is to depart from God; this comes of sin, your sin and the sin of your fathers; let that therefore be the daily matter of your sorrow and shame now in your captivity, that you may make your peace with God, and He may return in mercy to you.” H.

7,8. This is a remarkable combination of symbols—a man lying prostrate on one side, to signify that he bears the iniquity of the house of Israel; yet setting his face toward his tile, which represents Jerusalem, to indicate that he is (in symbol) besieging the city, and having his arm bare and his loins girded to show that the assailing party is alert and unimpeded in his assault.

16,17. The phrase, “to eat bread with care,” should take the stronger sense of extreme anxiety, dreadful apprehension. Famine and terror should consume them—a fearful doom! Before we pass from this chapter let us note the fact that the scenes it describes filled out (at three hundred and sixty-five days per year) one year, two months and a fraction of five days over, while the interval between the dates in chap. 1:1, 2, and in chap. 8:1, is one year and two months. As the numbers in chap. 4 are obviously round numbers, it can scarcely be doubted that the two periods are identically the same. That is, the symbolic transaction, representing the siege of Jerusalem and the bearing of the iniquities of Israel and Judah, filled up the first stage of his prophetic life—the entire interval between his call, with the vision accompanying it, and the second great vision recorded (chaps. 8-11). This symbolical scene, therefore, was properly his introduction before the people in his new character as a prophet. As such, it was adapted to make strong impressions on their minds. Let us also note that these symbolic transactions recorded in this chap. 4 are the text for the sermon which fills chaps. 5, 6 and 7. These latter chapters for the most part drop all symbol, and announce in plain but terrible words the judgments of siege, conquest and destruction, then within four or five years of being realized upon the long guilty and doomed city of the Jews. These lessons were full of terrible significance to their captive brethren now in Chaldea, as we shall see.

Chap. 5. This chapter presents a new symbol, but continues the same course of thought. Manifestly, the destiny of the doomed city and people of Jerusalem is the theme illustrated here by the prophet’s cutting off the hairs of his head and of his beard, dividing the mass into three equal parts, and then by a triple process destroying them. The body of the chapter explains this symbolic transaction and unfolds in various forms this revealed destiny of ruin to the people and the city. H. C.

1-4. We have here the sign by which the utter destruction of Jerusalem is set forth; and here, as before, the prophet is himself the sign, that the people might see how much he affected himself with and interested himself in the case of Jerusalem, and how near it lay to his heart even then, when he foretold the desolations of it; he was so much concerned about it, as to take what was done to it as done to himself, so far was he from desiring the woful day. H.

1,2. This cutting of the prophet’s hair was a real transaction, having a symbolic import to the people. The balances were to divide the hair into three equal parts, each of which was to have its own peculiar mode of destruction. “The days of the siege” form a connecting link between this chapter and the preceding one. Verse 12 is God’s own interpretation of this symbol. One third part of the people are to die with pestilence and famine in the city; another third by the sword in the siege and capture; and the remaining third were to be scattered to every wind of heaven, and the sword of the Lord would pursue even these to their destruction. H. C.

3,4. Of the third part a few are yet to be taken and kept in the fold of the garment (representing those still to remain in their native land), and yet even of those few some are to be cast into the fire. Such was the fate of those left behind after the destruction of Jerusalem (Jer. 40, 41). The whole prophecy is one of denunciation. We are not therefore to think so much of a remnant preserved by grace as of the number exempted from the

former judgments and yet not destined to escape; though, as not all are cast into the fire, the sentence is not without some reservation. B. C.