Ezekiel 4

Ezekiel 4:9-17

To silence the presumption of those who fastened themselves with a speedy return to Jerusalem, as the false prophets assured them, we have here, 1. Jerusalem befieged in a figure, and taken, ver. 1—8. 2. The raging famine typically represented by the prophet, ver. 9—17.

On chief fiances. On a flat plate. § Chap. vii. 4.

THOU also, son of man, take thee a tile, and lay it before thee, and pourtray upon it the city, roar Jerusalem; 2. And lay siege against it, and build a fort against it, and cast a mount against it: for the camp also against it, and set a battering ramp against it round about. 3. Moreover, take thou unto thee I an iron pan, and set it for a wall of iron between thee and the city, and set thy face against it, and it shall be befieged, and thou shalt lay siege against it: this shall be a sign to the house of Israel. 4. Let thou also 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 laid upon thee the years of their iniquity, according to the number of the days, I three hundred and ninety days: so shalt thou bear the iniquity of the house of Israel. 6. And when thou hast accomplished them, lie again on thy right side, and thou shalt bear the iniquity of the house of Judah forty days: I have appointed thee 5 each day for a year. 7. Therefore thou shalt set thy face toward the siege of Jerusalem, and thine arm shall be uncovered, and thou shalt prophesy against it. 8. And behold, I will lay bands upon thee, and thou shalt not turn thee from one side to another, till thou hast ended the days of thy siege.

9. 1—8. Whether the transactions mentioned in this chapter were done in reality or in vision only is dubious. It is contended against the reality, that the petition, 9. a. without a mistake, could not be kept so long, and that the prophet is spoken of as sitting in his house before the expiration of the days. Compare chap. i. 1, 2. viii. 1. for from the fifth of the fourth month in the fifth year, to the fifth of the sixth month in the sixth year, are but four hundred and thirteen days, and seven of those must be at least deducted, chap. iii. 15. Whilst three hundred and ninety, and forty, make four hundred and thirty days: and as for the bread which the prophet is commanded to eat, it forms a feverish and indolence which he could scarce be called to submit to. Others, and those two of ground weight, support the reality of the transactions; the things are spoken of as facts, by these he was to prophesy, 9. 7. when his lips were silent, he was to do this, 9. 12. in the sight of the people. His situation or disagreeable diet being enjoined of God for purposes of his glory, he would be comfortably supported under it; and that he really used the bread spoken of 9. 9. his prayer 9. 14. strongly implies. The days may be accounted for, by supposing an intercalated month that year, as was common; or that the forty days for Judah are included in the three hundred and ninety for Israel.

10. On a tyle he is commanded to pourtray the siege of Jerusalem, surrounded with mounts, bulwarts, and battening rams; and the iron pan set between him and the city, against which, as the representative of the Chaldeans army he lays siege, signifies the strength of their works, as a wall of iron comprising the city; and the safety in which the befiegers lay being thus covered; and their fixed resolution to carry the place it implied by the prophet’s face set against Jerusalem, and his arm made bare.

11. He is ordered to lie on his left side three hundred and ninety days, and forty days on his right; or to accomplish the number of three hundred and ninety days for Israel, with forty for Judah, bearing their iniquity, the punishment of it, a day for a year; which years are reckoned from the revolt of Jerusalem to the destruction of the temple; and the forty years of Judah’s peculiar iniquity are either the reign of Mianahos, or from the thirteenth of Judah, when Jeremiah began to prophesy: nothing contributing so much to a prophet’s guilt and ruin, as the rejecting God’s ministers, and the warnings he vouchsafes to them.

12. Bound thus by the divine order as Ezekiel was, so should the Chaldean army be, nor stir from the place till they had carried it; and the three hundred and ninety days, during which the prophet lay on his side, may signify the duration of the siege; for though it continued seventeen months in all, 2 Kings xxv. 1—4. yet if the interruption given to it by the Egyptians, Jer. xxxvii. 5. be deducted, the close siege might not last more than those days.

13. In this way Ezekiel must prophesy, 9. 7. not in words but by works, which speak strongest, and would leave them inexcusable if they refused to pay attention to them.

14. ¶ Take thou also unto thee, wheat, and barley, and beans, and lentiles, and millet, and fitches, and put them in one vessel, and make thee bread thereof, according to the number of the days that thou shalt lie upon thy side: three hundred and ninety days shalt thou eat thereof. 10. And thy meat which thou shalt eat shall be by weight twenty shekels a day: from time to time shalt thou eat it. 11. Thou shalt drink also water by measure, the sixth part of an hin: from time to time shalt thou drink. 12. And thou shalt eat it as barley-cakes, and thou shalt bake it with dung that cometh out of man in their sight. 13. And the LORD said, Even thus I shall the children of Israel eat their defiled bread among the Gentiles, whither I will drive them. 14. 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 in pieces, neither came there abominable flesh into my mouth. 15. Then he said unto me, Lo, I have

given thee cows dung, for mans dung, and thou shalt prepare thy bread therewith. 16. Moreover, he had unto me, Son of man, behold, I will break the staff of bread in Jerusalem, and they shall eat bread by weight, and with care, and they shall drink water by measure, and with astonishment. 17. That they may want bread and water, and be astonished one with another, and consumed away for their iniquity.

To affect their minds with the servilements of the famine, which would be the consequence of the siege, the prophet, during the three hundred and ninety days, must use the most wretched provision, and in the most happy measure.

1. His bread is ordered him of the vilest fort, beans, lentils, millet, flocks, mixed with wheat and barley. To such distress would they be reduced, that the very provender for their cattle would be greedily devoured. They who now live daintily, know not what fruits they may be driven to ere they die.

2. He is to be very sparing of this vile food, eating his bread by weight, and drinking water by measure, allowed but ten ounces of the former, and a pint of the latter each day, barely a sufficiency to keep him alive; a token of their great fruits, and their sufficiency to hold out to the very last month, Jer. xxxviii. 21. Note, When God’s glory requires it of us, we must not hesitate to endure any hardness, and deny ourselves the lawful comforts of life.

3. He is to bake his bread with human ordure dried, in the light of the people, that they might be affected with the grievances of the famine, where fuel as well as food would be warring, and no distinction to made between clean and unclean. The prophet makes no objection to the wretchedness of the food, but apprehending ceremonial defilement would thence accrue to him, which, as a priest, he had ever carefully ablained from every kind, v. 14. he prays, if God pleases, for some mitigation to this point, and the Lord permits him to use one’s deep instead of man’s. Note, (1.) The fear of sin affects the gracious fool more than any thing before. (2.) God’s condemnation to the scruples of Ezekiel should teach us to use the like tenderness towards our brethren, and not to grieve their weak condicences.

4. The intention of God’s orders to Ezekiel is explained. He is a sign unto them. So how shall he the famine during the siege of Jerusalem, that the little bread which remained should be used with the strictest care, in order to enable them the longer to hold out; yet, with astonishment they will find all their measures broken, their resistance fruitless, and their affairs growing each day more desperate, pining away in their iniquities, and astonished one with another, unable to relieve or help each other, and shocked to behold the dire effects of famine, fatigue, and sickness, which made the belligerent appear rather as specters than men. And at last delivered into the hands of the heathen, they should be compelled to eat the defiled bread of the Gentiles, as loathsome as the cakes the prophet baked. Such are the sad effects of sin, and abused plenty thus justly ends in pining want.