Ezekiel 4

1"Now you, son of man, take a clay brick, set it in front of you, and carve on it a picture of a city, the city of Jerusalem.

1Thou also, son of man, take thee a tile, and lay it before thee, and pourtray upon it the city, even Jerusalem:

Note"Son of man" is simply Hebrew for "human being" or "mortal"; it is God's regular way of addressing Ezekiel throughout the book, marking him out as a man over against the God who speaks to him. The "tile" or brick is a slab of soft, sun-dried clay of the kind used everywhere in Babylonia for building and for writing; while still damp it can be scratched with a map or plan, and city plans drawn on clay have been found from this period.

2Then set up a siege against it: build a siege wall around it, pile up a ramp against it, set enemy camps around it, and place battering rams against it on every side.

2And lay siege against it, and build a fort against it, and cast a mount against it; set the camp also against it, and set battering rams against it round about.

NoteThese are the standard elements of ancient siege warfare. A siege wall was a line of earthworks thrown up around a city to seal it off and starve it out; a ramp (KJV "mount") was a great mound of packed earth and rubble piled against the wall so that attackers could climb to the top of it; battering rams were heavy beams, often mounted in wheeled sheds, used to punch through the wall or gate. Ezekiel is to model all of this in miniature around his brick.

3Then take an iron plate and stand it up like an iron wall between you and the city. Turn your face toward the city, so that it is under siege, and lay siege to it. This will be a sign for the people of Israel.

3Moreover take thou unto thee 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 besieged, and thou shalt lay siege against it. This shall be a sign to the house of Israel.

NoteThe "iron pan" is a flat iron griddle, an ordinary kitchen item used for baking bread over a fire. "To set your face against" someone is a Hebrew idiom for a fixed, hostile stare, turning toward an enemy with settled intent. A "sign" here means an acted-out message: prophets sometimes performed their message in public as a kind of street theater rather than only speaking it.

4Then lie down on your left side, and put the guilt of the people of Israel on yourself. You are to carry their guilt for as many days as you lie on that side.

4Lie 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.

NoteIn these verses "the house of Israel" and "the house of Judah" are two different things. After Solomon the kingdom split: the ten northern tribes kept the name Israel and were destroyed by Assyria in 722 BC, while the south, ruled from Jerusalem, was the kingdom of Judah. Ezekiel lies on one side for each. "Bearing iniquity" is legal language for carrying the liability for wrongdoing, taking on the consequences that belong to another party, and here it is performed as a posture rather than described.

5I have assigned you 390 days, one day for each year of their guilt. In this way you will carry the guilt of the people of Israel.

5For 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.

NoteThe number is uncertain in the manuscript tradition: the Hebrew text reads 390 days, while the ancient Greek translation reads 190. What span of years the figure is meant to count, and whether it looks backward over past wrongdoing or forward to a period of exile, is not stated in the text and has never been settled.

6When you have finished those days, lie down again, this time on your right side, and carry the guilt of the people of Judah. I have assigned you 40 days, one day for each year.

6And 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 each day for a year.

Note"A day for a year" makes the performance a scale model in time, as the brick is a scale model in space: each day Ezekiel lies there stands for one year of the guilt he is carrying.

7You are to turn your face toward the siege of Jerusalem, with your arm bared, and speak my message against the city.

7Therefore thou shalt set thy face toward the siege of Jerusalem, and thine arm shall be uncovered, and thou shalt prophesy against it.

NoteBaring the arm, pushing back the loose sleeve of a robe to free the arm, was the gesture of a man about to strike or to do hard work. Applied to a besieging army or to God it signals force about to be used.

8Look, I will tie you with ropes so that you cannot turn from one side to the other until you have finished the days of your siege.

8And, 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.

9Also take wheat, barley, beans, lentils, millet, and spelt. Put them all in one container and make them into bread for yourself. You are to eat it during the 390 days you lie on your side.

9Take 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.

NoteThe point of the list is scarcity. Bread was normally made from wheat or barley alone; scraping together beans, lentils, millet and spelt into a single container to grind is what people do when the good grain has run out. KJV "fitches" is an old English word here rendering spelt, a coarse older kind of wheat.

10The food you eat is to be weighed out, twenty shekels a day, and you are to eat it at set times each day.

10And thy meat which thou shalt eat shall be by weight, twenty shekels a day: from time to time shalt thou eat it.

NoteTwenty shekels is roughly eight ounces, about 230 grams, a day, a starvation ration, not a meal. Weighing food out rather than simply taking it from the store is itself the sign of famine.

11You are also to measure out the water you drink, a sixth of a hin, and drink it at set times each day.

11Thou shalt drink also water by measure, the sixth part of an hin: from time to time shalt thou drink.

NoteA hin was a liquid measure of roughly a gallon, so a sixth of a hin is somewhere near two-thirds of a liter, about a pint and a bit: far less than a person needs in that climate.

12You are to eat the food the way you would eat a barley cake, baking it over dried human waste where the people can see you do it."

12And thou shalt eat it as barley cakes, and thou shalt bake it with dung that cometh out of man, in their sight.

NoteDried animal dung was ordinary fuel in a land with little firewood, so cooking over dung is not in itself shocking. Human excrement is the shocking part: Israelite law required it to be buried outside the camp and treated as defiling (Deuteronomy 23:12–14), so bread baked over it would be unclean, and doing it publicly makes the uncleanness a display.

13Then the LORD said, "This is how the people of Israel will eat unclean food, among the nations where I will drive them."

13And the LORD said, Even thus shall the children of Israel eat their defiled bread among the Gentiles, whither I will drive them.

NoteKJV "Gentiles" simply means the nations other than Israel. Away from their own land, exiles could not keep the food laws (the meat sold there was not slaughtered or handled as the law required), so their ordinary daily bread would count as defiled.

14Then I said, "Oh, Lord GOD! I have never made myself unclean. From the time I was young until now I have never eaten an animal that died on its own or was torn apart by wild animals. No forbidden meat has ever gone into my mouth."

14Then 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.

NoteEzekiel was a priest (see chapter 1), bound by stricter food rules than other Israelites. An animal found dead, or killed by predators, still held its blood and was forbidden (Leviticus 17:15; 22:8). His protest is a professional one: he has kept these rules his whole life, and is being told to break them.

15Then he said to me, "All right. I will let you use cow dung instead of human waste, and you may bake your bread over that."

15Then he said unto me, Lo, I have given thee cow’s dung for man’s dung, and thou shalt prepare thy bread therewith.

16He also said to me, "Son of man, I am going to cut off the supply of bread in Jerusalem. The people will eat bread weighed out in small amounts, and they will be full of worry. They will drink water measured out in small amounts, and they will be filled with dread.

16Moreover he said 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:

Note"Break the staff of bread" is a Hebrew idiom found also in Leviticus 26:26. The staff is a walking stick, the thing a person leans on; bread is what human life leans on, and to break it is to cut off the food supply so that the support gives way.

17They will run short of bread and water. They will look at one another in horror, and they will waste away because of their guilt."

17That they may want bread and water, and be astonied one with another, and consume away for their iniquity.

NoteKJV "want" means to lack, not to desire, and "astonied" is an older spelling of astonished, which in 1611 carried its full force (stunned, struck numb with horror), not the mild surprise the word now suggests.