Ezekiel 4--The Siege of Jerusalem Symbolized

Ezekiel 4
English Standard Version

The Siege of Jerusalem Symbolized
4 “And you, son of man, take a brick and lay it before you, and engrave on it a city, even Jerusalem. 2 And put siegeworks against it, and build a siege wall against it, and cast up a mound against it. Set camps also against it, and plant battering rams against it all around. 3 And you, take an iron griddle, and place it as an iron wall between you and the city; and set your face toward it, and let it be in a state of siege, and press the siege against it. This is a sign for the house of Israel.

4 “Then lie on your left side, and place the punishment of the house of Israel upon it. For the number of the days that you lie on it, you shall bear their punishment. 5 For I assign to you a number of days, 390 days, equal to the number of the years of their punishment. So long shall you bear the punishment of the house of Israel. 6 And when you have completed these, you shall lie down a second time, but on your right side, and bear the punishment of the house of Judah. Forty days I assign you, a day for each year. 7 And you shall set your face toward the siege of Jerusalem, with your arm bared, and you shall prophesy against the city. 8 And behold, I will place cords upon you, so that you cannot turn from one side to the other, till you have completed the days of your siege.

9 “And you, take wheat and barley, beans and lentils, millet and emmer, and put them into a single vessel and make your bread from them. During the number of days that you lie on your side, 390 days, you shall eat it. 10 And your food that you eat shall be by weight, twenty shekels a day; from day to day you shall eat it. 11 And water you shall drink by measure, the sixth part of a hin; from day to day you shall drink. 12 And you shall eat it as a barley cake, baking it in their sight on human dung.” 13 And the LORD said, “Thus shall the people of Israel eat their bread unclean, among the nations where I will drive them.” 14 Then I said, “Ah, Lord GOD! Behold, I have never defiled myself. From my youth up till now I have never eaten what died of itself or was torn by beasts, nor has tainted meat come into my mouth.” 15 Then he said to me, “See, I assign to you cow's dung instead of human dung, on which you may prepare your bread.” 16 Moreover, he said to me, “Son of man, behold, I will break the supply of bread in Jerusalem. They shall eat bread by weight and with anxiety, and they shall drink water by measure and in dismay. 17 I will do this that they may lack bread and water, and look at one another in dismay, and rot away because of their punishment.

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Ezekiel had been taken into exile before Jerusalem was destroyed (there was a group taken into exile once Jerusalem was destroyed as well).  Therefore, part of Ezekiel's prophecy to the exiles was that Jerusalem would be destroyed, but, one day, it would be rebuilt.  The LORD tells Ezekiel to symbolize the siege against Jerusalem with a brick, an iron griddle, and other objects so that the battle would be mapped out for the people watching.

The symbolism of the next part where Ezekiel is told to lay on his side for a certain number of days to represent both the length of the siege and the period of the guilt of the nations of Israel and Judah takes a little bit of explanation.  I'll be taking some guidance from Matthew Henry's commentary.  First, recall that a month in the lunar calendar (which is used in these kinds of prophecies) is roughly 30 days.  Therefore, 390 days would represent 13 months.  We know from the book of Jeremiah (Jeremiah 52:4-6) that the total time lapsed from when Babylon started its siege on Jerusalem until when Jerusalem was destroyed was 18 month.  So the question becomes, where are the other 3 months?  If we look back carefully at Jeremiah, we see that there was a time when the LORD put fear into the heart of the Babylonians that the Egyptians were going to come against them, and they ran away for a period of 3 months.  Therefore, the 15 months given here is the total number of days that Jerusalem was actually under siege.  This didn't just represent the days of the siege though.  It also represented the time since the northern kingdom first entered into idolatry with the sin of Jeroboam the first making the two golden calves and setting them up for the people of the northern kingdom to worship.

The southern kingdom of Judah lagged behind the northern kingdom in their pursuit of idolatry, but they we guilty of the same king of idolatry for the past 40 years.  The LORD had made sure the people of Judah uncovered the book of the Law and called them to repentance through good kings and priests and through His prophets like Jeremiah during this time, but the people refused to return to the LORD and continued to do what was evil.  They would not listen to the LORD's message and sought to kill His messengers.  So it is that Jerusalem, the capital city for the united kingdom of all Twelve Tribes is punished for the sins of the northern and southern kingdoms.

The LORD even instructs Ezekiel what kind of food he is to eat during this time, how to prepare his food and what his rations of food and water are to be for each day.   He was to cook it over a fire with human dung as fuel so that the bread would be unclean because this is what the LORD said about the bread (and all the food they would eat) while in captivity because they would eat food that was sacrificed to idols which was unclean.  Ezekiel protested that as a priest, he had never eaten anything unclean before and didn't want to start now, so the LORD said he would instead let Ezekiel prepare his food made with a fire of cow dung (which would be clean) so that he would not defile himself in the way that the exiles would.  We see others like Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah that would refuse to defile themselves by eating meat from the king's table that they knew had been sacrificed to idols.

This sign that the LORD gave to Ezekiel about food rations was a sign of what would happen to Jerusalem when it was under siege.  The food supply would be dried up, and food and water would be rationed (though it would become much worse than this as we discussed before, as people would eventually turn to cannibalism for a source of food).  Even though the pain and suffering would be great, the LORD was not going to relent on the siege laid on the city until the full number of days had been completed.