Ezekiel 4: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

God tells Ezekiel to act out the siege of Jerusalem: he draws the city on a clay brick, sets up model siege works against it, and places an iron plate between himself and it as a sign to Israel. He is then to lie on his left side 390 days bearing the guilt of Israel, and on his right side 40 days bearing the guilt of Judah, one day for each year, tied so he cannot turn. During that time he eats a weighed ration of mixed-grain bread and drinks a measured amount of water, baked over human waste until God allows cow dung instead, picturing how Israel will eat defiled food in exile and how food and water in Jerusalem will be cut short.

Claim by Claim

1. 4:1
   • God addresses the prophet as son of man.
   • God commands him to take a brick or clay tablet.
   • God commands him to set it before himself.
   • God commands him to engrave on it a city, namely Jerusalem.
2. 4:2
   • God commands him to lay siege against the city on the brick.
   • God commands him to build a siege wall against it.
   • God commands him to pour out a ramp of earth against it.
   • God commands him to set camps against it.
   • God commands him to place battering rams against it all around.
3. 4:3
   • God commands him to take an iron griddle or plate.
   • God commands him to set it as an iron wall between himself and the city.
   • God commands him to set his face toward the city.
   • The city is to be in a state of siege.
   • God commands him to besiege the city.
   • This is a sign to the house of Israel.
4. 4:4
   • God commands him to lie on his left side.
   • God commands him to lay the iniquity of the house of Israel upon it.
   • He will bear their iniquity for the number of days he lies on that side.
5. 4:5
   • God says he has assigned to him the years of their iniquity as a number of days.
   • The number is three hundred and ninety days.
   • He will bear the iniquity of the house of Israel.
6. 4:6
   • When he has completed those days, he is to lie down a second time, on his right side.
   • He will bear the iniquity of the house of Judah.
   • The period is forty days.
   • God has assigned him a day for each year.
7. 4:7
   • God commands him to set his face toward the siege of Jerusalem.
   • His arm is to be bared.
   • God commands him to prophesy against Jerusalem.
8. 4:8
   • God says he will put ropes on him.
   • He will not be able to turn from one side to the other.
   • The restraint lasts until he has completed the days of his siege.
9. 4:9
   • God commands him to take wheat, barley, beans, lentils, millet, and spelt.
   • God commands him to put them in a single vessel.
   • God commands him to make them into bread for himself.
   • He is to eat it for the number of days he lies on his side.
   • That number is three hundred and ninety days.
10. 4:10
    • His food is to be eaten by weight.
    • The amount is twenty shekels a day.
    • He is to eat it at set times from day to day.
11. 4:11
    • He is to drink water by measure.
    • The amount is a sixth of a hin.
    • He is to drink it at set times from day to day.
12. 4:12
    • He is to eat the food as a barley cake.
    • He is to bake it over human excrement.
    • He is to do this in their sight.
13. 4:13
    • The LORD said the Israelites will eat their bread defiled in this manner.
    • They will do so among the nations.
    • God will drive them to those nations.
14. 4:14
    • The prophet cried out, Ah, Lord GOD.
    • He said his soul has not been defiled.
    • He said from his youth until now he has not eaten anything that died of itself or was torn by beasts.
    • He said no foul or rejected flesh has come into his mouth.
15. 4:15
    • God replied, telling him to look.
    • God has given him cow's dung in place of human excrement.
    • He is to prepare his bread over it.
16. 4:16
    • God addressed him as son of man.
    • God said he is about to break the staff of bread in Jerusalem.
    • They will eat bread by weight.
    • They will eat with anxiety.
    • They will drink water by measure.
    • They will drink in horror.
17. 4:17
    • The purpose is that they will lack bread and water.
    • They will be appalled at one another.
    • They will waste away in their iniquity.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

4:1

"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.

4:2

These 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.

4:3

The "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.

4:4

In 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.

4:5

The 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.

4:6

"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.

4:7

Baring 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.

4:8

"Bands" in the King James means bonds or ropes. Ezekiel is describing being tied so that he cannot shift position, which fits the sign he is acting out: a besieged city cannot move either.

4:9

The 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.

4:10

Twenty 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.

4:11

A 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.

4:12

Dried 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.

4:13

KJV "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.

4:14

Ezekiel 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.

4:15

Dried cow manure was a normal fuel for a cooking fire. So this was much less shameful for Ezekiel.

4:16

"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.

4:17

KJV "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.