“You also, son of man, take a tile, and lay it before yourself, and portray on it a city, even Jerusalem. Lay siege against it, build forts against it, and cast up a mound against it. Also set camps against it and plant battering rams against it all around. Take for yourself an iron pan, and set it for a wall of iron between you and the city. Then set your face toward it. It will be besieged, and you shall lay siege against it. This shall be a sign to the house of Israel.
“Moreover lie on your left side, and lay the iniquity of the house of Israel on it. According to the number of the days that you shall lie on it, you shall bear their iniquity. For I have appointed the years of their iniquity to be to you a number of days, even three hundred ninety days. So you shall bear the iniquity of the house of Israel.
“Again, when you have accomplished these, you shall lie on your right side, and shall bear the iniquity of the house of Judah. I have appointed forty days, each day for a year, to you. You shall set your face toward the siege of Jerusalem, with your arm uncovered; and you shall prophesy against it. Behold, I put ropes on you, and you shall not turn yourself from one side to the other, until you have accomplished the days of your siege.
“Take for yourself also wheat, barley, beans, lentils, millet, and spelt, and put them in one vessel. Make bread of it. According to the number of the days that you will lie on your side, even three hundred ninety days, you shall eat of it. Your food which you shall eat shall be by weight, twenty shekels a day. From time to time you shall eat it. You shall drink water by measure, the sixth part of a hin. From time to time you shall drink. You shall eat it as barley cakes, and you shall bake it in their sight with dung that comes out of man.” Yahweh said, “Even thus will the children of Israel eat their bread unclean, among the nations where I will drive them.”
Then I said, “Ah Lord Yahweh! Behold, my soul has not been polluted; for from my youth up even until now I have not eaten of that which dies of itself, or is torn of animals. No abominable meat has come into my mouth!”
Then he said to me, “Behold, I have given you cow’s dung for man’s dung, and you shall prepare your bread on it.”
Moreover he said to me, “Son of man, behold, I will break the staff of bread in Jerusalem. They will eat bread by weight, and with fearfulness. They will drink water by measure, and in dismay; that they may lack bread and water, be dismayed one with another, and pine away in their iniquity.
John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain On vv1, 4, 7, 9, 10, 12, 14, 16 Here God begins to speak more openly by means…
Here God begins to speak more openly by means of his servant, and not to speak only, but to signify by an outward symbol what he wishes to be uttered by his mouth. Hence he orders the Prophet to paint Jerusalem on a brick Take therefore, he says, a brick, and place it in thy sight: then paint on it a city, even Jerusalem This is one command: then erect a tower against it. He describes the form of ancient warfare; for then when they wished to besiege cities, they erected mounds from which they filled up trenches: then they moved about wooden towers, so that they might collect the soldiers into close bands, and they had other machines which are not now in use. For fire-arms took away that ancient art of warfare. But God here Simply wishes the picture of a city to be besieged by Ezekiel. Then he orders him to set up a pan or iron plate, like a wall of iron This had been a childish spectacle, unless God had commanded the Prophet to act so. And hence we infer, that sacraments cannot be distinguished from empty shows, unless by the word of God. The authority of God therefore is the mark of distinction, by which sacraments excel, and have their weight and dignity, and whatever men mingle with them is frivolous. For this reason we say that all the pomps of which the Papal religion is full are mere trifles. Why so? because men have thought out whatever dazzles the eyes of the simple, without any command of God.
But if any one now objects, that the water in baptism cannot penetrate as far as the soul, so as to purge it of inward and hidden filth, we have this ready answer: baptism ought not to be considered in its external aspect only, but its author must be considered. Thus the whole worship under the law had nothing very different from the ceremonies of the Gentiles. Thus the profane Gentiles also slew their victims, and had whatever outward splendor could be desired: but that was entirely futile, because God had not commanded it. On the other hand, nothing was useless among the Jews. When they brought their victims, when the blood was sprinkled, when they performed ablutions, God’s command was added, and afterwards a promise: and so these ceremonies were not without their use. We must therefore hold, that sacraments at first sight appear trifling and of no moment, but their efficacy consists in the command and promise of God. For if any one reads what Ezekiel here relates, he would say that it, was child’s play. He took a brick, he painted a city on it: it was only a figment: then he had imaginary machines by which he besieged the city: why boys do better than this: next he set up a plate of iron like a wall: this action is not a whit more serious than the former. Thus profane men would not only despise, but even carp at this symbol. But when God sends his Prophet, his authority should be sufficient for us, which is a certain test for our decision, and cannot fail, as I have said. First, he says, paint a city, namely Jerusalem: then lay siege to it, and move towards it all warlike instruments: place even כרים, kerim, which some interpret “leaders,” but they are “lambs,” or “rams,” for the Hebrews metaphorically name those iron machines by which walls are thrown down “rams,” as the Latins do. Some indeed prefer the rendering “leaders,” but I do not approve of their opinion. At length he says, this shall be a sign and on this clause we must dwell: for, as I already said, the whole description may be thought useless, unless this testimony be added: indeed the whole vision would be insipid by itself, unless the savor arose from this seasoning, since God says, this should be a sign to the Israelites.
Read full note →
When God pronounces that the Prophet should do nothing in vain, this ought to be sufficient to lead us to acquiesce in his word. If we then dispute according to our sense, he will show that what seems foolish overcomes all the wisdom of the world, as Paul says. (1 Corinthians 1:25.) For God sometimes works as if by means of folly: that is, he has methods of action which are extraordinary, and by no means in accordance with human judgment. But that this folly of God may excel all the wisdom of the world, let this sentence occur to our minds, when it is here said, Let this be for a sign to the house of Israel. For although the Israelites could shake their heads, and put out their tongues, and treat the Prophet with unbridled insolence, yet this alone prevailed sufficiently for confounding them, that God said, this shall be for a sign And we know of what event it was a sign, because the Israelites who had been drawn into captivity thought they had been too easy, and grieved at their obedience: then also envy crept in when they saw the rest of the people remaining in the city. Therefore God meets them and shows them that exile is more tolerable than to endure a siege in the city if they were enclosed in it. Besides, there is little doubt that this prophecy was directed against the Jews who pleased themselves, because they were yet at ease in their rest. For this reason, therefore, God orders the Prophet to erect towers, then to pitch a camp, and to prepare whatever belongs to the siege of a city, because very soon afterwards the Chaldeans would arrive, who had not yet oppressed the city, but are just about to besiege it, as we shall afterwards see at length.
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16 Which signified the stubbornness and hardness of their heart.
Which signified the stubbornness and hardness of their heart.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv1–17 Eze 4:1 Thou also, son of man, take thee…
Eze 4:1 Thou also, son of man, take thee a tile, and lay it before thee, and pourtray upon it the city, [even] Jerusalem:
Ver. 1. Thou also, son of man.] Hitherto we have had the preface: followeth now the prophecy itself, which is both concerning the fall of earthly kingdoms, and also the setting up of Christ’s kingdom among men. The siege, famine, and downfall of Jerusalem is here set forth to the life, four years at least before it occurred, not in simple words, but in deeds and pictures, as more apt to affect men’s minds: like as he is more moved who seeth himself painted as a thief or scoundrel hanged, than he who is only called so. This way of teaching is ordinary with the prophets, and was used also by our Saviour Christ; as when he set a child in the midst, washed his disciples’ feet, instituted the sacraments, &c. {a}
Read full note →
Take thee a tile.] An unburnt tile, saith Lyra, and so fit to portray anything upon. Some take it for a four square table, like a tile or brick, that will admit engravement. Jerusalem, the glory of the East, was here pictured upon a tile sheard. How mean a thing is the most stately city on earth to that city of pearl, the heavenly Jerusalem!
And portray upon it the city.] Not with the pencil, but with the graving tool. Where yet, as in Timanthes’ works, more was ever to be understood than was delineated.
{a} Oecolampadius.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv1–17 Hitherto the preface, containing the call and commission of…
Hitherto the preface, containing the call and commission of the prophet; now he begins. This is the first prophecy, and it is against Jerusalem.
A tile, or brick, or any square tablet on which he might engrave or carve.
Read full note →
Lay it before thee, as carvers use to do, as engravers and painters do.
Portray upon it the city; draw a map of Jerusalem, delineate or describe the city Jerusalem, whence they were come, who now are in Babylon, and probably repented that they had left Judea and Jerusalem, and murmured against them that advised to it: but let them know by this sign that Jerusalem should suffer much more than ever they suffered, that those who remained there sinning against God should bear a long siege, a very grievous famine, and cruel slaughters.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain On vv1, 9 The prophet is here ordered to represent to himself…
The prophet is here ordered to represent to himself and others by signs which would be proper and powerful to strike the fancy and to affect the mind, the siege of Jerusalem; and this amounted to a prediction.
I. He was ordered to engrave a draught of Jerusalem upon a tile, Eze 4:1. It was Jerusalem's honour that while she kept her integrity God had graven her upon the palms of his hands (Isa 49:16), and the names of the tribes were engraven in precious stones on the breast-plate of the high priest; but, now that the faithful city has become a harlot, a worthless brittle tile or brick is thought good enough to portray it upon. This the prophet must lay before him, that the eye may affect the heart.
Read full note →
II. He was ordered to build little forts against this portraiture of the city, resembling the batteries raised by the besiegers, Eze 4:2. Between the city that was besieged and himself that was the besieger he was to set up an iron pan, as an iron wall, Eze 4:3. This represented the inflexible resolution of both sides; the Chaldeans resolved, whatever it cost them, that they would make themselves masters of the city and would never quit it till they had conquered it; on the other side, the Jews resolved never to capitulate, but to hold out to the last extremity.
III. He was ordered to lie upon his side before it, as it were to surround it, representing the Chaldean army lying before it to block it up, to keep the meat from going in and the mouths from going out. He was to lie on his left side 390 days (Eze 4:5), about thirteen months; the siege of Jerusalem is computed to last eighteen months (Jer 52:4-6), but if we deduct from that five months' interval, when the besiegers withdrew upon the approach of Pharaoh's army (Jer 37:5-8), the number of the days of the close siege will be 390. Yet that also had another signification. The 390 days, according to the prophetic dialect, signified 390 years; and, when the prophet lies so many days on his side, he bears the guilt of that iniquity which the house of Israel, the ten tribes, had borne 390 years, reckoning from their first apostasy under Jeroboam to the destruction of Jerusalem, which completed the ruin of those small remains of them that had incorporated with Judah. He is then to lie forty days upon his right side, and so long to bear the iniquity of the house of Judah, the kingdom of the two tribes, because the measure-filling sins of that people were those which they were guilty of during the last forty years before their captivity, since the thirteenth year of Josiah, when Jeremiah began to prophesy (Jer 1:1, Jer 1:2), or, as some reckon it, since the eighteenth, when the book of the law was found and the people renewed their covenant with God. When they persisted in their impieties and idolatries, notwithstanding they had such a prophet and such a prince, and were brought into the bond of such a covenant, what could be expected but ruin without remedy? Judah, that had such helps and advantages for reformation, fills the measure of its iniquity in less time than Israel does. Now we are not to think that the prophet lay constantly night and day upon his side, but every day, for so many days together, at a certain time of the day, when he received visits, and company came in, he was found lying 390 days on his left side and forty days on his right side before his portraiture of Jerusalem, which all that saw might easily understand to mean the close besieging of that city, and people would be flocking in daily, some for curiosity and some for conscience, at the hour appointed, to see it and to take their different remarks upon it. His being found constantly on the same side, as if bands were laid upon him (as indeed they were by the divine command), so that he could not turn himself from one side to another till he had ended the days of the siege, did plainly represent the close and constant continuance of the besiegers about the city during that number of days, till they had gained their point.
IV. He was ordered to prosecute the siege with vigour (Eze 4:7): Thou shalt set thy face towards the siege of Jerusalem, as wholly intent upon it and resolved to carry it; so the Chaldeans would be, and neither bribed nor forced to withdraw from it. Nebuchadnezzar's indignation at Zedekiah's treachery in breaking his league with him made him very furious in pushing on this siege, that he might chastise the insolence of that faithless prince and people; and his army promised themselves a rich booty of that pompous city; so that both set their faces against it, for they were very resolute. Nor were they less active and industrious, exerting themselves to the utmost in all the operations of the siege, which the prophet was to represent by the uncovering of his arm, or, as some read it, the stretching out of his arm, as it were to deal blows about without mercy. When God is about to do some great work he is said to make bare his arm, Isa 52:10. In short, The Chaldeans will go about their business, and go on in it, as men in earnest, who resolve to go through with it. Now, 1. This is intended to be a sign to the house of Israel (Eze 4:3), both to those in Babylon, who were eye-witnesses of what the prophet did, and to those also who remained in their own land, who would hear the report of it. The prophet was dumb and could not speak (Eze 3:26); but as his silence had a voice, and upbraided the people with their deafness, so even then God left not himself without witness, but ordered him to make signs, as dumb men are accustomed to do, and as Zacharias did when he was dumb, and by them to make known his mind (that is, the mind of God) to the people. And thus likewise the people were upbraided with their stupidity and dulness, that they were not capable of being taught as men of sense are, by words, but must be taught as children are, by pictures, or as deaf men are, by signs. Or, perhaps, they are hereby upbraided with their malice against the prophet. Had he spoken in words at length what was signified by these figures, they would have entangled him in his talk, would have indicted him for treasonable expressions, for they knew how to make a man an offender for a word (Isa 29:21), to avoid which he is ordered to make use of signs. Or the prophet made use of signs for the same reason that Christ made use of parables, that hearing they might hear and not understand, and seeing they might see and not perceive, Mat 13:14, Mat 13:15. They would not understand what was plain, and therefore shall be taught by that which is difficult; and herein the Lord was righteous. 2. Thus the prophet prophesies against Jerusalem (Eze 4:7); and there were those who not only understood it so, but were the more affected with it by its being so represented, for images to the eye commonly make deeper impressions upon the mind than words can, and for this reason sacraments are instituted to represent divine things, that we might see and believe, might see and be affected with those things; and we may expect this benefit by them, and a blessing to go along with them, while (as the prophet here) we make use only of such signs as God himself has expressly appointed, which, we must conclude, are the fittest. Note, The power of imagination, if it be rightly used, and kept under the direction and correction of reason and faith, may be of good use to kindle and excite pious and devout affections, as it was here to Ezekiel and his attendants. "Methinks I see so and so, myself dying, time expiring, the world on fire, the dead rising, the great tribunal set, and the like, may have an exceedingly good influence upon us: for fancy is like fire, a good servant, but a bad master." 3. This whole transaction has that in it which the prophet might, with a good colour of reason, have hesitated at and excepted against, and yet, in obedience to God's command, and in execution of his office, he did it according to order. (1.) It seemed childish and ludicrous, and beneath his gravity, and there were those that would ridicule him for it; but he knew the divine appointment put honour enough upon that which otherwise seemed mean to save his reputation in the doing of it. (2.) It was toilsome and tiresome to do as he did; but our ease as well as our credit must be sacrificed to our duty, and we must never call God's service in any instance of it a hard service. (3.) It could not but be very much against the grain with him to appear thus against Jerusalem, the city of God, the holy city, to act as an enemy against a place to which he was so good a friend; but he is a prophet, and must follow his instructions, not his affections, and must plainly preach the ruin of a sinful place, though its welfare is what he passionately desires and earnestly prays for. 4. 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 colours 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 form God; this comes of sin, your sins 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." But observe, It is a day of punishment for a year of sin: I have appointed thee each day for a year. The siege is a calamity of 390 days, in which God reckons for the iniquity of 390 years; justly therefore d they acknowledge that God had punished them less than their iniquity deserved, Ezr 9:13. But let impenitent sinners know that, though now God is long-suffering towards them, in the other world there is an everlasting punishment. When God laid bands upon the prophet, it was to show them how they were bound with the cords of their own transgression (Lam 1:14), and therefore they were now holden in the cords of affliction. But we may well think of the prophet's case with compassion, when God laid upon him the bands of duty, as he does on all his ministers (Co1 9:16, Necessity is laid upon me, and woe unto me if I preach not the gospel); and yet men laid upon him bonds of restraint (Eze 3:25); but under both it is satisfaction enough that they are serving the interests of God's kingdom among men.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv1–17 Thou also, son of man, take thee a tile,....…
Thou also, son of man, take thee a tile,.... Or "brick" (z). The Targum renders it, a "stone"; but a tile or brick, especially one that is not dried and burned, but green, is more fit to cut in it the figure of a city. Some think that this was ordered because cities are built of brick; or to show the weakness of the city of Jerusalem, how easily it might be demolished; and Jerom thinks there was some design to lead the Jews to reflect upon their making bricks in Egypt, and their hard service there; though perhaps the truer reason may be, because the Babylonians had been used to write upon tiles. Epigenes (a) says they had celestial observations of a long course of years, written on tiles; hence the prophet is bid to describe Jerusalem on one, which was to be destroyed by the king of Babylon;
and lay it before thee: as persons do, who are about to draw a picture, make a portrait, or engrave the form of anything they intend:
Read full note →
and portray upon it the city; even Jerusalem; or engrave upon it, by making incisions on it, and so describing the form and figure of the city of Jerusalem.
(z) "laterem", V. L. Pagninus, Montanus, Junius & Tremellius, Polanus. Piscator. (a) Apud Plin. Nat. Hist. l. 7. c. 56.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 17 Two things are here represented to the prophet in…
Two things are here represented to the prophet in vision,
1. The fortifications that shall be shortly raised against the city, signified by his laying siege to the portrait of Jerusalem, ver. 1-3. And lying first on one side, and then on the other side before it, ver. 4-8.
Read full note →
2. The famine that would rage therein, signified by his eating coarse fare, and little of it, so long as this typical representation lasted, ver. 9-17.
Portray - Draw a map of Jerusalem.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 9, 10, 12, 14, 16 Ezekiel delineates Jerusalem, and lays siege to it, as…
CHAPTER IV
Ezekiel delineates Jerusalem, and lays siege to it, as a type
Read full note →
of the manner in which the Chaldean army should surround that
city, 1-3.
The prophet commanded to lie on his left side three hundred and
ninety days, and on his right side forty days, with the
signification, 4-8.
The scanty and coarse provision allowed the prophet during his
symbolical siege, consisting chiefly of the worst kinds of
grain, and likewise ill-prepared, as he had only cow's dung for
fuel, tended all to denote the scarcity of proviswn, fuel, and
every necessary of life, which the Jews should experience during
the siege of Jerusalem. 9-17.
NOTES ON CHAP. IV
Verse 1. Take thee a tile] A tile, such as we use in covering houses, will give us but a very inadequate notion of those used anciently; and also appear very insufficient for the figures which the prophet was commanded to pourtray on it. A brick is most undoubtedly meant; yet, even the larger dimensions here, as to thickness, will not help us through the difficulty, unless we have recourse to the ancients, who have spoken of the dimensions of the bricks commonly used in building. Palladius, De Re Rustica, lib. vi. c. 12, is very particular on this subject:-Sint vero lateres longitudine pedum duorum, latitudine unius, altitudine quatuor unciarum. "Let the bricks be two feet long, one foot broad, and four inches thick." Edit. Gesner, vol. iii. p. 144. On such a surface as this the whole siege might be easily pourtrayed. There are some brick-bats before me which were brought from the ruins of ancient Babylon, which have been made of clay and straw kneaded together and baked in the sun; one has been more than four inches thick, and on one side it is deeply impressed with characters; others are smaller, well made, and finely impressed on one side with Persepolitan characters. These have been for inside or ornamental work; to such bricks the prophet most probably alludes.
But the tempered clay out of which the bricks were made might be meant here; of this substance he might spread out a sufficient quantity to receive all his figures. The figures were,
1. Jerusalem.
2. A fort.
3. A mount.
4. The camp of the enemy.
5. Battering rams, and such like engines, round about.
6. A wall round about the city, between it and the besieging army.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 4, 7, 9, 10, 13, 14, 16 Eze 4:1. Take a tile, &c., and lay it…
Eze 4:1. Take a tile, &c., and lay it before thee — The prophets often foreshowed impending judgments by significant emblems, which usually strike more powerfully than words. So Jeremiah was commanded to go down to the potter’s house, and observe how frequently vessels were marred in his hands, (chap. 18.,) and to take one of those earthen vessels and break it in the sight of the elders of the Jews, (chap. 19.,) that they might thereby be sensibly taught the greatness of God’s power, and their own frailty. So here God commands Ezekiel to take a tile, or such a slate as mathematical lines, or figures, are usually drawn upon, and there to make a portraiture of Jerusalem, thereby to represent it as under a siege. We may observe, that God often suited prophetical types and figures to the genius and education of the prophets themselves: so the figures which Amos makes use of are generally taken from such observations as are proper to the employment of a shepherd, or a husbandman. Ezekiel had a peculiar talent for architecture, therefore several of his representations are suitable to that profession. And they that suppose the emblem here made use of to be below the dignity of the prophetical office, may as well accuse Archimedes of folly for making lines in the dust: see Lowth.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 16 A tile - Rather, a brick. Sun-dried or kiln-burned…
A tile - Rather, a brick. Sun-dried or kiln-burned bricks were from very early times used for building walls throughout the plain of Mesopotamia. The bricks of Nineveh and Babylon are sometimes stamped with what appears to be the device of the king in whose reign they were made, and often covered with a kind of enamel on which various scenes are portrayed. Among the subjects depicted on such bricks discovered at Nimroud are castles and forts.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 Tile, very large. (Calmet) --- Those of Italy were…
Tile, very large. (Calmet) --- Those of Italy were two feet large and one broad. (Pallad.) --- This might be soft clay; (Grotius; Menochius) or the siege might be marked out upon it with chalk or a sharp stile. (Calmet)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain On v1 2. The Four Signs, and their Interpretation (Eze_4:1 to…
2. The Four Signs, and their Interpretation (Eze_4:1 to Eze_5:17)
1And thou, son of man, take thee a brick, and give [lay] it before thee, and 2portray upon it the city, [viz.] Jerusalem. And give [lay] siege against it, and build a siege-tower against it, and cast a mound against it, and make a camp 3against it, and set battering-rams against it round about. And do thou take thee a pan in [of] iron, and give [set] it as a wall in [of] iron between thee and the city; and direct thy face against it, and it is in siege, and thou layest siege against it: 4this is a sign to the house of Israel. And lie thou on thy side, the left one, and lay the guilt of the house of Israel upon it; according to the number of the days 5that thou shalt lie upon it thou shalt bear their guilt. And I have given thee the years of their guilt, according to the number of the days, three hundred and 6ninety days; and thou bearest the guilt of the house of Israel. And thou accomplishest these, and liest upon thy side, the right one, a second time, and bearest the guilt of the house of Judah forty days; a day for a year, a day 7for a year, have I given it to thee. And toward the siege of Jerusalem thou shalt set thy face, and thine uncovered arm, and thou prophesiest against it. 8And, behold, I have laid bands upon thee, and thou shalt not turn from one side 9to another, till thou endest the days of thy siege. And do thou take 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 art lying upon thy side, three hundred and ninety days shalt thou eat 10it. And thy food which thou shalt eat is by weight, twenty shekels a day; from 11time to time thou shalt eat it. And water shalt thou drink by measure, the sixth 12part of an hin; from time to time shalt thou drink it. And barley cake, that shalt thou eat, and in [with] dung that cometh out of man shalt thou bake it 13before their eyes. And Jehovah said, So shall the children of Israel eat their 14bread defiled among the heathen, whither I will drive them. And I said, Ah, Lord Jehovah! behold, my soul hath not been polluted, and neither carcase nor what is torn in pieces have I eaten from my youth up till now; neither hath 15abominable flesh come into my mouth. And He said unto me: Behold, I give thee dung of cattle for dung of man, and thou makest [preparest] thy bread thereon. 16And He said unto me, Son of man, behold, I break the staff of bread in Jerusalem, and they eat bread by weight, and in anxiety; and water by measure, and in 17anguish shall they drink; Because bread and water shall be wanting, and man and his brother are struck dumb [from anguish], and pine away in their guilt.
Read full note →
Eze_4:4. Sept.: ... κατα ἀριθμον τ. ἡμερων πεντηκοντα κ. ἑκατον ἡμερας ἁς κοιμθηση ἐπ̓ αὐτου κ. ἀδικιας.
Eze_4:5. ... τας δυο ἀδικιας αὐτ. ἐς ἀριθμον ἡμερων ἐνενηκοντα κ. ἡμερας—
Eze_4:8. Anoth. read.: מצוריך plur.
Eze_4:9. ... ἐνενηκοντα κ. ἑκατον—(Some mss. חטים.)
Eze_4:16. ... κυριος—
Eze_4:17. ὁπως ἐνδεεις γενωνται ἀρτου … (Anoth. read.: באחיו). Vulg.: ad fratrem—
EXEGETICAL
What the silence of the prophet is intended to signify, in case their own bad conscience should not set it before them vividly, is now represented in emblem to their curiosity by four symbolical actions, of which three are contained in our chapter; the explanatory inscription at the end is always given in shorter or longer terms, according to the expressiveness and completeness of each separate picture. According to Eze_3:24 sq., and as is clear from themselves, the carrying out of these symbolical actions takes place in the house of Ezekiel. Next to his family, and perhaps called in by them, we have to think of his countrymen as spectators. The sections Eze_4:1-3, Eze_4:4-8, Eze_4:9-17, have a connection with one another (Eze_4:7-9 sqq.), and supplement one another. While the siege of Jerusalem, as the theme in the first section, is at the same time carried into further detail, and made more graphic in the second and third, after the inward, the outward condition of the parties concerned is indicated to us. Hengstenberg again transfers everything to the “sphere of the subjective” (similarly Hitzig: allegory), on which account also (according to him) the carrying out of the prophet’s instructions is not mentioned, and agrees with Ewald, with whom likewise the “literary activity” of Ezekiel is the principal thing, for which the objectivity (or not) of the symbolical action is a matter of pure indifference. Calvin, likewise, makes Eze_4:4 sqq. take place in vision. As regards the “almost childish impression” of the action in question as an objective reality, this has to be attributed to Hengstenberg’s exposition itself; but that a publication of what takes place in the house of Ezekiel is not to be a matter of anxiety, follows from the well-known lively intercourse between those in exile and the great mass in the fatherland. (“Meanwhile, as the man of God, though full, is not permitted to speak, he is to employ the silent language of writing. But his writing is in symbol. His heart is with Jerusalem; there he portrays upon a brick the picture of the beloved city.”—Umbreit. “The heavy judgment which is to burst upon Jerusalem is announced, in harmony with the vision of Ezekiel 1, which already held out in prospect the approach of God to judgment.”—Hengst.)
Eze_4:1-3.—The First Sign
Eze_4:1. ואתה applies the foregoing special instruction to the prophet; and, at the same time, the imperative passes over into the description of what Ezekiel is to do, hence the perfects with ו consec. “Just the year before Zedekiah had journeyed to Babylon, for the purpose of testifying his submission to Nebuchadnezzar” (J. D. Mich.).—As to לְבֵנָה, comp. Winer, Realw. 2 p. 731 sqq. We are not to think of real stone, but of something baked from clay (white? chalky?), dried in the sun, or burnt white in the furnace. The walls of ancient Babylon were of bricks, and these Babylonian bricks are one foot long and broad, five inches thick and square. “Such bricks as the Assyrians and Babylonians, just in those districts where Ezekiel lived, filled so often with inscriptions” (Ewald). Besides, there is the significant allusion to Egypt and the bondage of Israel there, Exo_1:14; Exo_5:7 sqq. “In order to be able to engrave a delineation that will last,” Hitzig requires the “clay-brick,” which is likewise common in Canaan (Isa_9:10). Just so Keil: “white clayey substance.” Others: a brick-shaped slate.—As is usual with those who are thinking about anything, he is to lay the brick before him.—חקק is neither more nor less than: to fix, which may be done just as well by drawing as by engraving. “First of all only a city; Jerusalem would be the last of all the cities of the earth to be thought of, when the subject in hand is a city to be besieged by the Lord. After Jerusalem we are to suppose, as it were, a mark of exclamation” (Hengst.).—But to the brick there belongs not merely, as Hengstenberg maintains, the picture of the city, but also (in accordance with Ewald’s view) what follows, describing “how in all regular order, through all the steps from the beginning onwards to the end, one would open a siege against it.” It would be to press the letter, to make the execution of it from the outset impossible or “childish,” if one were to imagine the contents of Eze_4:2 to be outside the brick; and how does Eze_4:3 (comp. Eze_4:7) suit such a view? The stone itself is not Jerusalem! (Hitzig.)
Eze_4:2. מצור from צור, to press, to straiten. Hitzig: siege-work in general. דּוּק is Aramaic (Hitzig: it thus belongs to a land whose masters were thoroughly acquainted with fortress warfare, Hab_1:10; Isa_23:13) and modern Hebrew: to look out, to fix the eyes upon; whence the noun, probably a Chaldee technical term, דָּיֵק, watch-tower (except in Ezekiel, elsewhere only in 2Ki_25:1 and Jer_52:4), for the most part collectively, and so also here for the (wooden) towers of observation equal or superior in height to the walls round about the city to be besieged, from which weapons were thrown and shot by means of the ballistæ, as well as in other ways. [J. D. Mich.: two lines of circumvallation, a mound and rampart furnished with palisades. W. Neumann: the all prostrating storming-machine.] The plural מחנות, because several separate camps. ברים, from the iron ram’s head in front of beams, which, hanging in ropes or chains inside a scaffolding to be moved upon wheels, were directed against the walls and gates in order to push them in. Hävernick traces back the word to בּוּר ,ברה ,ברר, “to bore through.” Comp. besides, Josephus, De Bello Jdg_3:7, § 19. (Others have understood by the expression, the “he-goats,” i.e. the leaders of the army divisions in the different camps.)—If, then, the prophet, as commissioned by God, enters on such a siege, the real besieger of Jerusalem is the Lord God; and while the Chaldeans appear as mere instruments in the divine hand, Eze_4:3—which brings to a close the first symbolical action—intimates what state of mind, on the part of the Lord, Ezekiel has to represent.—ואתה (just as elsewhere also) introduces a new element, put on a parallel with Eze_4:1 by means of קח־לך.—מחבת signifies something bent together, which may be flat for frying or roasting; in such saucepans the flat cakes were fried, Lev_2:5. As he is to set the iron pan as an iron wall, it is clear that he has to set it up perpendicularly; it is likewise clear, from the expression between thee and the city, that a relation of separation, of division, between Jerusalem as portrayed upon the brick and the representative of God is meant to be expressed. Only on the ground of such a relation between God and Jerusalem can we explain alike the hostile attitude of the prophet’s face, and specially the clause, and it is in siege, and along with that Eze_4:1-2. But as the wall is to be after the manner of iron (ב), the iron pan cannot be taken as a fascine protecting the besieger, because such a thing, as a rule, was not of iron, and because certainly there could be no need of a protection for God the Besieger, but rather of a protection from Him; nor are we to think with Ewald (1st edit.) of the “very strong iron-like wall of Jerusalem” (Raschi), since the suffix also in אליה does not refer to the pan, but to the city, and the strength of the city wall is not certainly to be made prominent. Ewald also in his very recent 2d edition approaches the view of Hävernick (who with Ephraem understands “the mass of misfortune which is coming upon Jerusalem”), inasmuch as he makes the prophet put “the merely painted siege more strongly and palpably by means of the picture of a wall, as it were, of iron.” But in this way also the so express attitude of separation, which Hitzig recognises, is lost. The allusion to Jer_1:13 for “the horrors of the siege” (Häv.) is too far-fetched [a Lapide: the burning of the city; Origen: the horrible tortures of the inhabitants, Jer_29:22; 2Ma_7:5; others: the army-fire of the Chaldeans]. Jerome (that the wrath of God is represented) nearly approaches the correct view, to which Kimchi points by referring to Isa_59:2. The pan, therefore, as a wall, symbolizes the strong (Jer_1:18, alike in accordance with God’s decree, and in consequence of the corruption of Israel) wall of separation, which finally explains everything, what precedes and also what follows. Vatablus and Grotius bring in, besides, “their hardness of heart and the blackness of their sins,” just as Hitzig also, “the base metal” and (in accordance with Eze_24:6) “the rust as a picture of defilement through sin.” (Hengst.: first the refusal of divine help, then God Himself even the assailant.) Not so much the preparation of food which follows (Klief.), as the circumstance that such a pan (according to Ewald: “the nearest iron plate”) was at hand in every household (Keil), suggested the choice of the same. As the siege is described with the prophet as besieger, so “certainly it will be carried out, not hundreds of years afterwards, but in the lifetime of Ezekiel, during his labours” (Klief.). The significance of the iron pan would certainly disappear if we imagined that the prophet had grouped the siege in little figures round about the brick. Moreover, what is portrayed upon the stone, and is here spoken of as the city, is called in Eze_4:7 “the siege of Jerusalem.”—The house of Israel is here the same as in Ezekiel 3 Comp. on the other hand, Eze_4:5.—If the symbolical action is to be a sign (in the sense of foreshadowing), then the view, that it was also shown them, that, as it was for them, so it made its appearance objectively before them, is certainly more probable than Hengstenberg’s subjective view, more probable than with Stäudlein, Hävern., Hitzig, to make the action one that was not really performed, but only discoursed about (Isa_20:3). Klief.: “an important action, even when besides it is a silent one, must be performed; although the text does not mention it expressly, a thing that quite explains itself in the case of one who has received a command from God.”
Additional Note on Eze_4:1-3
[In regard to the part required to be played by the prophet himself, however it may have been understood in former times, we should suppose few now will be disposed to doubt that the successive actions spoken of took place only in vision, and are no more to be ranked among the occurrences of actual life than the eating of the prophetic roll mentioned in the preceding chapter. Indeed, such actions as are described here, though well fitted, when rehearsed as past, and read as narratives of things ideally done, to make a strong and vivid impression upon the mind, would probably have had an opposite effect if transacted in real life. It would have been impossible for ordinary spectators to see Ezekiel conducting a miniature siege with a tile and a saucepan, and such like implements of war, without a feeling of the puerile and ludicrous being awakened; and the other symbolical actions mentioned, especially his lying for 390 days motionless on one side, if literally understood, can scarcely be regarded as coming within the limits of the possible. And along with the physical impossibility of one part of the requirement there was the moral impossibility of another, since to eat bread composed of such abominable materials would have been, (if performed in real life) a direct contravention of the law of Moses,—that law, respectful submission to which was ever held to be the first and most essential characteristic of a true prophet (compare Deu_14:3; Deu_23:12-14, with Eze_13:1-5). Besides, we find the prophet (Eze_8:1) represented as sitting in his house before the number of the days to be spent in a lying posture could have been completed. So that, on every account, it is necessary to consider the actions to have taken place in vision, as, indeed, was usually the case in prophetical actions, and uniformly so, as we shall find in Ezekiel.—Fairbairn’s Ezekiel.—W. F.]
Eze_4:4-8.—The Second Sign
Once more a new appointment, which onwards to Eze_4:8, carrying into further detail the above indicated destiny of Jerusalem, gives us a more vivid picture of it as respects the inner condition of the parties concerned, after the manner of a second symbolic action on the part of Ezekiel. In the position of a prophet, it is implied that such an one may be the representative alike of God and of the people; and as, therefore, Ezekiel represents Jehovah in Eze_4:1-3, so now, and in Eze_4:9 sqq., he represents Israel. “Where in this way Jehovah Himself fights against His people, their downfall is certain; the prophet immediately assumes this position” (Häv.). The mere circumstance, that he is to lie on the one side and the other (“to sleep,” as the Sept. and Vulg. make it, plainly contradicts the context), is symbolical as regards those whom he represents, a picture of the political situation (Isa_28:20; Isa_50:11; Amo_5:2; Psa_20:8; Psa_44:25); not “as a sick person who can lie only on one side, and must always without shifting lie upon it” (Ewald), not as a figure for a state of political languishing, but in contrast with standing upright, a lying down in consequence of a fall (Hitz.).—As the period fixed is days (which, however, mean years), the reference generally to the besieged (“the frightful constraint from without, during which one cannot move or stir,” Ewald) is to be held fast in the first place; but then, farther, the carrying captive which follows, and the sojourn in exile, is at the same time to be kept in view. First the left side is made prominent when the reference is to the severed house of Israel,—according to Ewald, Hitzig, because of the geographical situation to the north of Judah (Eze_16:46), while the latter lay in the south,—according to Grot., Hävernick, Keil, because of the superiority of the latter over the former (comp. Ezekiel 23.), Ecc_10:2. Maldon.: it had the priesthood and the kingdom.—עון is the guilt, thus the sin in its consciousness of punishment; neither the former alone nor the latter alone, but the transition from the one to the other in process of being effected for the subjective consciousness. The consciousness of guilt on the part of the people is to be awakened.—Inasmuch as Ezekiel is to lay the guilt upon it, i. e. his left side, the side upon which he himself has to lie, the problem can only be solved when we regard Ezekiel himself, in virtue of his lying upon his left side, as the bearer of the guilt, which is also immediately said. According to Keil, he would come to lie upon the guilt, and not the guilt upon him! That נשא cannot here mean “to bear,” as Hengstenberg asserts, one cannot see, because, if he is to lay the guilt upon himself, he will have to bear it also, and the matter in hand is not at all an official and mediatorial or atoning substitution, but only a symbolical bearing of a burden which has to lie heavily upon the people, whom he only represents. As many days as he shall lie upon his left side, so long will he represent the burden of guilt of the ten tribes. This is not certainly meant to signify the number of the years which they have sinned (Rosenm.). Is this, then, asserted by Eze_4:5? The number of the days of his lying means, of course, “the years of their guilt;” but what is carefully to be noticed, as a period given him by God (ואני נתתי לך), yet not surely as a period selected by God from their course of sinning for the purpose of being represented by him? is such a divine formulating of the period of their sinning well conceivable? but as the guilt measured by God, to be represented by Ezekiel, and thus to be announced in actual fact, which they have brought upon themselves, and have to bear in years. What comes upon them in years, Ezekiel is to represent to them in days, thus bearing the guilt of the house of Israel. This explanation, simply arrived at from the text, will have to be tested by the interpretation of the periods given. For Israel there are appointed 390 days, and the prophet has accomplished these.
Eze_4:6. For his lying on his right side, a second time. to bear the guilt of the house of Judah, 40 days are appointed. The question, whether the 40 days are to be supposed as included in the 390 (with Cocc. and others), is expressly answered in the negative by the שנית (“for the second time”); there are 390 and 40, in all 430 days, which sum the text certainly does not add together. For the special reason, that the season of punishment has begun long ago in the case of the ten tribes, just as it is already touching Judah also, a division of time readily suggested itself, while the division of collective Israel into Israel and Judah presented itself historically. In getting the 390 years to correspond in respect of sinning, and especially the 40, if they are to be reckoned as actual years, and therefore exactly, even the most diverse modes of explanation have found themselves helpless. The whole kingdom of Israel did not last for 390 years; and we must therefore go back beyond the ten tribes, into the period of the judges, pot to mention other modes of reckoning by means of omissions. Rosenm., therefore, made the distinction between Israel and Judah step into the background as regards the 390 years; and inasmuch as he gets at 386 years from the division of the kingdom down to the eleventh year of Zedekiah (the conquest of Jerusalem), he consoles himself for what is wanting with the poetic rounding off of prophetic language; but Judah’s 40 years of sin are reckoned from the twelfth year of the reign of the pious king Josiah! Hengstenberg understands Israel as collective Israel, begins with 2Ch_12:1 (comp. 2Ch_11:17), i.e. from the fourth year of Rehoboam, “the year of the falling into sin of the whole nation,” and supports himself in this view by Vitringa’s reckoning of 430 years 6 months from the founding of the temple to the destruction of the state; and deducting 37 years of Solomon’s and 3 of Rehoboam’s, there remain 390 years; and Judah, according to him, is contrasted with the whole people, the 40 years being 40 from the collective Eze 390: “the despising of the grace of God in the raising up of king Josiah (2Ki_23:25), and the frustration of the last attempt made by Jeremiah,” beginning with the thirteenth year of Josiah, the first appearance of Jeremiah on the stage, whose labours down till the destruction of Jerusalem lasted 40 years. The connection with Eze_4:1-3 manifestly makes the time of punishment more probable than a time of sin; and the computation of the number 390 for the days which the siege of the city lasted, from the 10th day of the 10th month of the 9th year of Zedekiah down to the 9th day of the 4th month of the 11th year, can very simply be made to correspond by making a deduction for the temporary raising of the siege on account of the Egyptians (Jer_37:5). On the other hand, every calculation of 390 and of 40 years—which is certainly involved—fails as a time of exile for Israel and Judah. In this state of matters, if one reckons by literal days and years, but still more considering the all-pervading symbolical character of the whole and of the details, the acceptance of symbolical formulas of time for the divinely-awarded punishment of the guilt alike of Israel and of Judah commends itself. For the number 390 in reference to Israel, Kliefoth, by comparing Deu_25:3 with 2Co_11:24, in accordance with the number of the ten tribes, arrives at 10 × 39 years of punishment as just so many strokes of divine chastisement; and for Judah, on the other hand, as he does not treat it as two tribes, by a fair adjustment he arrives at the highest legal number of just 40 strokes, i.e. years. What Keil remarks in opposition to this view may be said, but is less decisive than the certainly surprising character of such a mode of reckoning for the prophetic symbolism of an Ezekiel. Klief. has been driven to his ingenious attempt at interpretation, because the number 390 baffled every other interpretation. But this number also, which stands for Israel, can claim no peculiar symbolism for itself. The ten tribes, as Klief. himself calls them “torn off branches, atoms of a nation,” have, in view of the longer historical duration of their exile, as well as by reason of their greater liability to punishment, only in general a claim to be more heavily punished. In particular, they do not come into consideration as regards the siege in our verses which applies to Jerusalem, nor in any other way, save that the national prophetic spirit must include them in its conception of collective Israel, for which Judah with Jerusalem is the title. With such a historical meaning also for Judah, with which also the right side of the prophet standing for it corresponds, one need not be stumbled with Kliefoth, although the number 390 should be “in itself quite meaningless.” It is the same as with the left side of Ezekiel, so quite peculiarly taking the lead in Eze_4:4-5, for this reason only, because his misery as an exile, long ago begun, and already entered upon in part by Judah likewise, is fitted to exhibit before the eyes of the remnant of Judah what will not be wanting to them just as visibly. For the symbolism the number 40, which is applied to Judah, is the determining element. The relation of the 40 to 390 may be similar to the case in which Bähr (2. p. 491) does not allow the numbers 33 and 66 as such to come into consideration, but only in their connection with 7 and 14, bringing them up to 40 and 80. As respects the number 40 itself, Bähr says convincingly, according to it, almost universally, such periods are fixed as bring with them a state of more or less constraint and oppression, and yet somehow at the same time a state having a bearing on religious affairs. Keil is right in basing the symbolical meaning of a definite term of divine visitation not simply on the 40 years’ leading of the people through the wilderness (Numbers 14), which properly amounted to 38 years only, but on the earlier passage Gen_7:12; Gen_7:17 Comp., in order to determine the meaning of the number 40, Exo_34:28 (Deuteronomy 9); 1Ki_19:8; Jon_3:4; Matthew 4. As in this way the 40 for Judah, which alone properly came under consideration, threw light on the 390, the summing up might be let alone; with some reflection it was done, as a matter of course, and this all the more that the number 390 in itself must of necessity appear meaningless. The possible connection with the actual period of the siege of Jerusalem, or a portion of it (comp. on Eze_4:9), may be regarded as a subordinate reference. “The sufferings of the siege will, in the general sense of severe constraint, certainly continue during the whole exile also,” etc. (Ew.) The addition of 390 and 40 gives (according to Exo_12:40) the period of sojourn of the children of Israel in Egypt, 430 years, significant for all after periods of the nation, on account of the parallel of this period with the exile (Introd. p. 19), and in the law even (Deu_28:68), as well as in Eze_9:3; Eze_9:6; Eze_8:13, brought into significant prominence. That the sojourn in Egypt, which sprang from quite a different cause, suits badly as a type for a period of punishment (Klief.), cannot accordingly be maintained. Comp. besides, Gen_15:13 (Act_7:6), where we have it in round numbers! “The period of the first heathen tyranny over the people of Jehovah repeats itself in the history of the nation: the old, everlastingly memorable time becomes to the seer—himself already living amid heathen surroundings—a type of the oppressions rushing in anew upon them with irresistible violence; hence the punishment of the exile is intensified by the circumstance that it appears as the antitype of the ancient 430 years’ Egyptian bondage” (Häv.). But here Klief. is right, when, against a special reference of the 40 years for Judah to the 40 years’ leading of the people collectively through the wilderness (for which Häv. points to Eze_20:13 sqq., 23 sqq., 35, 36), he raises the objection, that in this way another occurrence lying outside the 430 years is drawn in, while the 40 years must certainly lie within the 430. We must therefore either abide by the general symbolical character of the number 40, or like Keil, who very ingeniously draws attention to the circumstance, that the last 40 years of the Egyptian bondage furnished a reason for a division of the 430 into 390 and 40, find again in the 40 the 40 years of his exile which Moses spent in Midian. Comp. Exo_7:7 with Act_7:23; Act_7:30—not as Keil, Exo_2:11—3. 10; Act_7:23-30. “These 40 years,” remarks Keil, “were not only for Moses a season of testing and purification for his future calling, but doubtless for the Israelites also the period of their severest oppression by the Egyptians, and in this respect quite appropriate as a type for the future period of Judah’s punishment; so that as Israel in Egypt lost in Moses her helper and protector, so now Judah was to lose her king, and to be given up to the tyranny of the heathen world-power.” [See Additional Note at the close of the Exegetical Remarks.—W. F.] Instead of the Kethib הימיני (elsewhere only in 2Ch_3:17) we must read, with the Qeri, הַיְמָנִי.—Comp. on Eze_4:5.—The suffix in נתתין refers to עון. Hengst., who takes למספר as=for just as many days (Klief., Keil: for the number of, for a number of), translates: so that for every day there comes a year, I give it thee. [The 190 of the Sept. for the whole, and 40 for Judah, Hävernick explains to himself by the bringing in of another type, viz. the deluge, Gen_7:24; Gen_7:12. They read Exo_12:40 differently from the Hebrew text. Hitzig makes them reckon their 150 from the year 738 to 588.]
By means of Eze_4:7 our section goes back upon the first (Eze_4:3), and harmonizes the two symbolical actions. Inasmuch as the prophet represented the people before, and not so much Jerusalem, he can in representing Jehovah set his face toward the siege of Jerusalem (viz. as that was to be represented in Eze_4:1-3), fixedly, sharply, as an enemy. The bared arm,—(Isa_52:10) as of a warrior, for the purpose of fighting, stripping it of the garment up to the shoulder,—according to Raschi, prefiguring Nebuchadnezzar, is at the same time the free arm of the prophet, who is lying upon the other. As it must be the right arm for the warlike object in view, we shall have (as against Hitz.) to think of the 390 days in Eze_4:4-5, during which Ezekiel lies upon the left side, with which Eze_4:8 also agrees. The arm outstretched in the same direction strengthens as well as gives effect to the permanence of the look; if it were to be understood as occasionally lifted up, then the על, which is certainly usual elsewhere also in the case of threatening announcements, would be explained still more definitely.—In accordance with Eze_3:25, the expositors understand the prophesying as not so much orally in words, but virtually by means of this very symbolical acting. Comp. however, on Eze_5:5 sqq.
Eze_4:8. והנה נתתי־ in contrast with נתנו הנה, Eze_3:25; there in order to move him along, here in order to make him fast. The bands are not the same as there; but whereas those bands of men do not make the prophet obedient to them, a slave to their will, the bands here, on the other hand, which God throws over him, answer their purpose of fixing him according to God’s will. The outward literal bands become in the divine speech a figurative expression for the divine power which will hold him down, and at the same time (Klief.) make him bear it with patience. [According to Häv., a new element is introduced by וִהנה; the prophet, in a vivid manner, is placed in the condition of the besieged. According to Calv.: indicating the stability and firmness of the divine decree.]—The turning which is hindered in such wise is that from the left to the right side, onwards till the accomplishment of the days of his besieging; so that he has to represent the siege of the city, which may in this way be specified as lasting 390 days (comp. on Eze_4:6-7), unless what follows was intended to suggest a still more special reference. [Klief. refers Eze_4:7-8 to the whole period of 430 days; Hitz. refers the prophesying to the 40 days merely.]
Eze_4:9-17.—The Third Sign.
Eze_4:9. A new charge, as in Eze_4:4; a still more detailed amplification, now especially of the outward condition; a third symbolic action, by which also provision is made for the sustenance of Ezekiel while the above described state of affairs lasts; and thus in connection with it. A representation of the people. If already in Eze_4:8 “the state of restraint of the besieged” (Hengst.) were thought of, then an immediate transition would be made from this more general calamity to the more special want of sustenance.—חטִּין, a Chaldaic plural; ן instead of ם, wheat in grains (in the sing especially wheat on the stalk, in the field). Hengst.: as wheat is the usual means of sustenance among the exiles, the Chaldaic form pushes itself forward. Manifestly from a better time (Häv.: descending from what is better to what is worse and worse); for now there follows what,—however good and in part delicious the ingredients in themselves are,—when baked into bread, as is the case here, is prison-bread,—barley in grains, 1Ki_4:28 (Jdg_7:13; 2Ki_4:42; Joh_6:9), beans as well as lentils, a favourite dish (Gen_25:34), of the latter of which down to the present day the poor in Egypt, in time of dearth, make use as food; דָּגָן millet (from דח, to swell in water, or from the dark colour, allied with דָּגָן, “grain”), yielding a bad kind of bread; and נֻּסְּמִים fitches, spelt (Exo_9:32), as being one of the poorest sorts of grain, which produces a dry and not very nourishing kind of bread.—The circumstance that Ezekiel is to take of all together does not indeed run counter to the law (Lev_19:19; Deu_22:9), but comes very near the prohibition, possibly indicating circumstances of a lawless character, where one is not so rigid. More expressly it is suggested in this way, that the besieged will in their distress be compelled to gather together everything that can possibly be turned into bread. (Απανπα γάρ τοι βρωτὰ πολιορκουμένοις.) This state of matters is represented yet more strongly by means of the one vessel, which shows that of each separate sort not much more is to be had (Eze_4:10).—The length of time (=מִסְפַר הימים as many days as there are) is given definitely as 390 days. It is therefore “inadmissible,” with Keil, to get rid of this clear and definite statement by the supposition that the greater number merely is given (Prado), and that the 40 days are to be understood with the rest, but (Ewald) are omitted for brevity’s sake (in the case of Ezekiel!!). It is conceivable that for 390 days exactly the famine would make itself specially felt. (2Ki_25:3; Lam_2:20; Lam_4:9-10.) At all events, the prophet has to calculate his prison-fare for 390 days, for so many days is he to eat it. (390 loaves, Jer.)—על־עדך is accordingly his left side (Eze_4:5), before he turned to the right one. Comp. on Eze_4:7-8. Klief. is right as against the including of the 40 days in the 390, not, however, in the extended application which he asserts for these 390 days, viz. on to Eze_4:17, as will soon appear. It is a very good remark of Klief., that the prophet was not altogether prohibited from letting service be rendered to him.
Additional Note on Eze_4:9
[At Eze_4:9, he is ordered to “make bread according to the number of the days that he should lie upon his side; three hundred and ninety days shalt thou eat thereof.” Here the 40 days are left out, although during them also he was to lie upon his side—not, as commentators generally, and still also Hävernick, suppose, from the first period being by much the larger of the two, and as such standing for the whole; but to keep the reference clear to the distinctive character of the wilderness-period, which was the point chiefly to be had in view by the Jewish exiles. The eating of polluted bread as a symbol, properly implied a constrained residence in a Gentile country—an unclean region; hence, in the explanation given of the symbol at Eze_4:13, it is declared of the house of Israel, that “they shall eat their defiled bread among the Gentiles.” But in the wilderness Israel stood quite separate from the Gentiles, though still under penal treatment, and in a sense still connected with Egypt (hence “the wilderness of Egypt,” Eze_20:36); and so they who were in a manner to return to that state again were merely to “eat bread by weight, and with care, and drink water by measure, and in desolateness:” a state of chastisement and trouble, but not by any means so heathen-like, so depressed and helpless, as the other.—Fairbairn’s Ezekiel.—W. F.]
Eze_4:10. His food is this bad mixed food (Ewald), not the definite portion which he will have to eat (Keil), for it is defined as portions only by what follows. Ezekiel is to have to eat, not as much as he likes, but, as usually happens in a time of scarcity during sieges, by weight (Eze_4:16). 20 shekels (shekel, what is weighed, hence a definite weight, just as mishkol is weight in general)—according to Ewald, about 20 ounces; according to Keil, 22–23 ounces of bread; according to Philippson, equivalent to 400 beans in weight (Lev_26:26). Although in those warmer countries a man needs less than in our climate, yet here it is at most the half of what is usually necessary that is specified for each day. The definition from time to time strengthens the daily element, as distinguished from the hunger which is continually making itself known, never satisfied; he will not be at liberty to give heed to this latter, but will have to consider the time, that he has only 20 shekels for each day, hence—seldom, at long intervals, sparingly! [Keil supposes: at the different hours of the daily meal time. He makes Ezekiel provide himself with a store of grain and legumes, and prepare his bread daily therefrom. Precisely so Klief., who brings in, besides, the pan from Eze_4:3 for the purpose.] And as the food is by weight, so the drink—the water is by measure.
Eze_4:11 (Eze_4:16). A whole hin is reckoned by the Rabbins at 72 egg-shellfuls; hence one-sixth the same as two logs 12 egg-shells. Too much for dying, too little for living. As in this way food and drink are specified for the 390 days, the idea readily suggests itself, with Grotius and others, of referring Eze_4:12 to the 40 days that still remain. The express mention of the number was not necessary here, because its symbolism (comp. on Eze_4:5-6) in general sways the whole, and because in particular it is, of course, understood as the residue after the 390 had been so expressly made prominent (Eze_4:9). The description may the more readily dispense with the number, as from the facts of the ease it becomes sufficiently clear, on the one hand, by means of the new element of uncleanness, especially after the divine explanation which immediately follows in Eze_4:13, and, on the other hand, by means of that freer movement on the part of the prophet which is demanded by Eze_4:12. The 40 certainly symbolizes (comp. on Eze_4:4-6) chiefly the exile among the heathen, as it was to begin for Judah after the taking of besieged Jerusalem. Hengst. excellently remarks: “the barley cake here has nothing at all to do with the pot in Eze_4:9; that is gone.” Ewald finds in it an “exceptional sort of thing, as if for a feast;” certainly too much, and not in accordance with the character of the period of exile. עֻגָּה, the warm cake of bread baked in the hot ashes, just as is usual down even to the present day in eastern lands, especially on journeys, is distinguished as something more common, what is more in order, from the preceding unusual and extraordinary mixed food. The poor standing of exiles causes it to be of barley (comp. Eze_4:9), unless such cakes baked in ashes were as a rule of barley, of which Keil has by no means proved the contrary, as against Hitzig. [Keil, Hitzig, and others translate predicatively: as a barley cake, prepared in that manner, shalt thou eat it. (Is the suffix neuter? is it to be referred to לחם in Eze_4:10?)] Since the important thing here, as regards the sense, is merely the emphasizing of the uncleanness of the food, and since the use of dry animal dung as fuel (Eze_4:15) is at least nothing unusual in the East, האדם גללי צאת was the strong term for it. As fuel (comp. for בגללי, ver Ezekiel 15 : עליהם), unlike Isa_36:12, it has nothing to do with the siege, beyond which, as regards the symbol, we have now come, as if i were pointing to a scarcity of wood; but at most, it refers to the harassing, immured condition of Ezekiel in his own house. Filth and misery round about on every side: what an overwhelmingly vivid sermon for his countrymen this situation before their eyes! Comp. besides, Deu_23:12-14. תעגנה from עוג, a technical word for עגה, either: to make round, to curve, to bend, in reference to the form of these cakes, or: because they were surrounded with hot ashes. (Sept.: ὁ ἐγκρυφίας.)
Eze_4:13. The divine interpretation, which is immediately annexed to this quite extraordinary demand, and just because it is so, lays stress (for the reference is not to the siege, but it is already the exile that is spoken of), not on the difficulty as to fuel, but on its uncleanness, and that not so much in a Levitical as in a moral point of view, as judged by the universal human instinct of decency. Man’s dung signifies the profane sojourn in the heathen world in general with its idols (גלולים!). Comp. Eze_9:3. The prophet raises his objection—in Eze_4:14—in the sense: if I have never eaten that which is unclean according to the law of Israel, how should I have anything to do with a thing unclean generally! (Grot.)—אֲהָהּ, an exclamation of astonishment, fear, horror. My soul—not so much as: I myself; it expresses rather the living consciousness of the prophet in his feelings, alike as to his antipathies and sympathies (Mat_26:38). A lively expression of feeling, especially characteristic of a priest! Comp. as to the subject-matter, Deu_14:21; Exo_22:31; Act_10:14; Act_11:8; Dan_1:8.—פּגּוּלִ, according to Ges.: something made fetid, stinking; hence, on the one hand: unpalatable, on the other: forbidden to be used by the laws of food, something abominable, disgusting, or: something rejected, worthy of rejection (Lev_7:18); also without בשׂר, Isa_65:4. According to Häv.: especially characterizing the priest, inasmuch as in the case of the sacrificial meals flesh left over till the third day was reckoned פגול, Lev_19:7. God makes the concession to him
Eze_4:15—with רְאֵה, corresponding to his הִנֵּה, of cow’s dung (Kethib: צְפוּעֵי, Qeri: צְפִיעֵי), like camel’s dung—a very common, odourless fuel. The objection and concession (Hav.: an impressive episode) give a distinctness of their own to the matter in hand; and thereafter Eze_4:16 returns to the beginning, not merely of this third symbolical action (Eze_4:9 sqq.), but, in winding up, of the whole chapter (Eze_4:1 sqq.), and in this way to what is most closely impending, viz. to the siege of Jerusalem. And to this corresponds in point of form the בן־אדם, and, as regards the subject-matter, the participial construction הנני־שבר, of what is as it were shown in the act of being broken in pieces.—As in Isa_3:1 bread and also water are named as that which supports (Delitzsch), or more exactly, that on which one supports himself, so here the staff of bread, since bread supports, i.e. nourishes, strengthens, refreshes the heart of man, Psa_104:15; Gen_18:5; Jdg_19:5; Lev_26:26. This staff being broken on which the earthly man leans, he falls into the dust of death. Defined more exactly, and, at the same time, set forth vividly by means of ואבלו־לחס־. Comp. Eze_4:10-11.—בשממון strengthens בדאגה, the anxiety about the means of subsistence (Mat_6:31-32) rising up into silent, speechless pain, caused by the impending starvation.
Eze_4:17. Either dependent on the principal thought in Eze_4:16 : “in order that” (Ewald), or, as this is limited to bread, dependent on the amplification of the same there: because.—The brother also in Psa_49:7.—In other respects, a quotation from Lev_26:39; Lam_2:12; Lam_2:19 (Luk_21:26).
Additional Note on Ch. 4.
[Jerusalem in a state of siege represents the covenant-people, as a whole, straitened and oppressed by the powers of this world, as the instruments of God’s just displeasure. And the prophet being appointed to bear, during its continuance, the iniquity of the people, with stinted and foul provisions, points in another form to the same visitation of evil—only with a more particular respect to the cause from which it was to spring, and the penal character it should wear. That the time specified should have been in all 430 years, denoted that the dealing was to form a kind of fresh Egyptian exile and bondage to the elements of the world; but much more so in the case of the one house than in that of the other. The house of Israel having cast off nearly all that was distinctive in the position and privileges of the covenant-people, they had consequently sunk into a condition of greatest danger, one bordering on heathen darkness and perdition—nigh unto cursing. What they might expect was to be bruised and crushed to the dust, as if under the rod of Egypt. But Judah was not so far gone; she had the true priesthood to minister at her altars, and the house of David to rule by divine right over the heritage of God; so that her subjection to the powers of evil was only to be like the time of chastisement and trial in the wilderness, out of which she might again emerge into a state of peace and blessing. As the prophet also again declared, in a later prophecy, “And I will bring you into the wilderness of the peoples (not the wilderness merely, but the wilderness of the peoples, to show that it was to be the same only in character as of old, but not in geographical position), and there will I plead with you face to face; like as I pleaded with your fathers in the wilderness of the land of Egypt, so will I plead with you, saith the Lord God” (Eze_20:35-38). A new time of chastisement, but mingled, as of old, with mercy; severe and earnest dealing, but for a gracious result—that they might be refined and purified, so as to become fit for enjoying the good which, as a redeemed people, was secured to them for a heritage of blessing. And if any hope remained for the other branch, the house of Israel—if they were ever to escape from their state of Egyptian darkness and bondage, it must be by their going to join their brethren of Judah in the wilderness, and sharing in their peculiar treatment and prospects. On which account, it is not the whole of the 430 years of the Egypt-state that is appointed toward the house of Israel in the vision, but this shortened by the 40 years of the wilderness sojourn, to teach them that a way still lay open for their return to life, but only by their having the Egypt-state merged into that of the wilderness; in other words, by ceasing from their rank idolatries and open apostasy from the way of God, and coming to seek, along with Judah, through God’s covenant and ordinances, a restoration to righteousness and peace and blessing.
But why should the prophet, in thus announcing the future dealings of God, have thrown the delineation into so peculiar, so enigmatical a form? Why should he have presented it to the view as a returning again “of the years of former generations”? Not, certainly, on the principle of a bald and meagre literalism, as if he meant us to understand that the clock of Providence was actually to be turned back, and the identical ground trodden over again, the precise measures of time filled up anew, of which we read in the earlier history of the chosen race. He who would interpret in such a style the symbolical visions of an Ezekiel is incapable of entering into the rapt emotions of such a mind, and must necessarily flounder at every step. For here we have to do, not only with a lively and fervid spirit, which is ever breathing life, as it were, into the dead, but that spirit in a state of ecstatic elevation, in which the mind naturally served itself of the more remarkable facts and providences in the past; yet only as aids to the utterance of prophetic thought—appropriate forms wherein to clothe the new things concerning God’s kingdom, that were through the Spirit imaging themselves to the prophet’s vision. And, indeed, the very imperfection that usually appears in the frame of such historical visions, as compared with the past realities,—the partial mingling together here, for example, of the two great consecutive periods of past judgment and trial in the history of the covenant-people, so as to make the second begin before the first had ended,—this very imperfection shows, as it was doubtless intended to do, that an exact reproduction of the past was not in the eye of the prophet, and that the nature of God’s contemplated designs, rather than any definite bounds and limits respecting them, were imaged under those ancient periods of tribulation in Egypt and the wilderness.
There were three reasons chiefly why the prophets in general, and this prophet in particular, might be often led to speak of the future under the form and image of the past. In the first place, as the meaning obviously did not lie upon the surface, it called for serious thought and inquiry regarding the purposes of God. A time of general backsliding and corruption is always a time of superficial thinking on spiritual things. And just as our Lord, by His parables, that partly veiled while they disclosed the truth of God, so the prophets, by their more profound and enigmatical discourses, sought to arouse the careless from their security, to awaken inquiry, and stir the depths of thought and feeling in the soul. It virtually said to them, You are in imminent peril; direct ordinary discourse no longer suits your case; bestir yourselves to look into the depths of things, otherwise the sleep of death shall overtake you.
Then, again, it conveyed in a few words—by means of a brief allusion—what the most lengthened description without it could scarcely have accomplished. It was employing a device which the most powerful and effective orators have sometimes resorted to with the greatest effect—as in the memorable words of Mirabeau, when, wishing to repel the thought of danger, he flashed out the pregnant interrogation: “Is Hannibal at the gates?” In like manner, the prophet here, seeking to impress upon his countrymen the certainty and the awfulness of God’s impending judgments on account of sin, carries them back to the past; he brings up to their view Egypt and the wilderness as ready to renew themselves again in their experience. What thoughts of terror and alarm were these fitted to awaken in their minds! Centuries of bondage and oppression! A wearisome sojourn amid drought and desolation! And then this foreshadowing of the future, not only rendered more distinct, but also strengthened as to its credibility, authenticated by those stern realities of the past! It assuredly has been; shall it not be again?
But this suggests another and, indeed, still deeper reason for such a mode of representation having been adopted; for such renewed exhibitions of the past were among the means specially chosen by God for the purpose of enforcing on men’s notice the uniformity of His dealings, and teaching them to regard the providential facts of one age as substantial predictions of what are to be expected in another. It told men then, and it tells us now (only it was more peculiarly adapted to those who lived in ancient times, as the revelations they possessed consisted, much more than now, in the records of history—yet it tells all alike), that the forms alone are transitory in which divine truth and righteousness manifest themselves, while the principles embodied in these forms are eternal, and can never cease, amid all outward varieties, to be giving forth similar exhibitions of their life and power to those which have already appeared. The eye that can thus look through the shell into the kernel, may see the future things of God’s administration mirrored in the past—not, indeed, the exact copy and image of what is to be, yet its essential character and necessary result. Even those very periods of bygone tribulation and chastisement, which the prophet here represents as coming to life again in his day—have they not also a voice for other times? Are they not still reiterating their lessons, and perpetually renewing their existences, in the case of impenitent transgressors now, as well as formerly, in that of drooping exiles in the cities of the Medes, or on the banks of Chebar? One of these periods—the sojourn in the wilderness—the Baptist still finds prolonging itself to the era of his own ministry. His word of stern expostulation and solemn warning makes itself heard as “the voice of one crying in the wilderness;” for he sees everywhere around him trackless deserts where ways of God need to be opened up—elements of corruption working which require to be purged away by the searching application of divine righteousness, before the Canaan of God’s inheritance can be properly entered and enjoyed. And the lukewarm and fruitless professor still—so long as he cleaves to the ways of iniquity, and refuses to yield a hearty surrender to the will of God—what else is his condition? He is in bondage to the elements of the world, and therefore can have no part in that good inheritance which floweth with milk and honey. The doom of Heaven’s condemnation hangs suspended over his head; and if not averted by a timely submission to the righteousness of God, and a cordial entrance into the bond of the covenant, he shall infallibly perish in the wilderness of sin and death.—Fairbairn’s Ezekiel, pp. 57–61.—W. F.]
DOCTRINAL REFLECTIONS
1. In the case of a prophet of Ezekiel’s peculiarity, it must be granted that the boundary between symbolic representation in mere forms of speech, and by means of action in real life, may be a movable one. Where, however, the prophet, just as in the case before us, is not to speak, but to be silent, what he relates as a series of facts can hardly be otherwise understood than as actually so. Preaching by means of things done as a mere form of speech is a contradiction in itself. He is to act as He who has sent him will also act. There is, in the first place, enough of words. And then it would perhaps be difficult to reconcile with the “honesty and uprightness of the prophet,” which, however, Hengst. maintains, what he asserts of his symbolical actions, that they are “only pictures executed in a lively manner, calculated to make an indelible impression on the imagination.” For example, Eze_4:14-15. [But see Note on Eze_4:1-3.—W. F.]
2. “If any one reads what Ezekiel reports here, it will perhaps appear to him like a childish play, which it would also be, if God had not commanded the prophet to make it so. From this we may learn that the sacraments also are distinguished from empty illusions by means of the word of God alone. The authority of God for them is the mark of distinction, by which the sacraments are singled out, and have their meaning. It is not the outward appearance, but the Author that is to be looked at. So also the whole system of divine worship under the law differed almost in no respect from the ceremonies of the heathen; yea, these latter brought their sacrifices, and that even with the greatest possible pomp; but Israel had God’s command and promise on their side” (Calv.).
3. The sinner will not get off so easily before God, however lightly he may appear to deal with his sin before men, and before the tribunal of his own conscience. Sin lies as guilt upon man’s conscience, as a burdensome consciousness that one deserves punishment, has to expect punishment. Between the past, when the sin was committed, and the future, when punishment is deservedly to be expected, guilt is the painful, burdensome present of the sinner. Guilt is an abiding thing, even if punishment is a past thing.
4. If every one in himself has to bear his guilt, this moral side is supplemented by the specifically religions one, that a freeing from the burden of it, an exculpation—not the denial, nor the lessening, the explaining away, but the removal of guilt—has been provided for. Without this thought, by means of which the forgiveness of sins is accomplished, true religion is inconceivable. Such a removal of guilt took place mediatorially in Israel by means of the priesthood. What lay in this case in the office, as of divine form for the period of shadows, lay also in the sacrifice, as of divine substance for the same period of types; by means of the sacrifice, the removal of guilt took place in the way of substitution, of atoning acceptance of that guilt. Everything was in a manner like a bill of exchange, of which God meant to get payment (realisiren) in His own time. This divine realization in the fulness of the times will thus have the form of a priest and the essence of a sacrifice. The Servant of Jehovah in Isaiah 53 is both, priest as well as sacrifice; but the prophet is not so, who has neither to mediate nor to make atonement, but who speaks God’s word or embodies it in action—in our case here the latter; that is to say, he symbolically represents the guilt of the people in his own person, not so much, of course, by action as by suffering.
5. As Ewald already points out, the 40 years for Judah are parallel with the 70 years of the Babylonian exile in Jeremiah. What the latter are in a predominantly numerical point of view, the 40 of Ezekiel are in a purely symbolical.
6. Hävernick, in connection with the episode of Eze_4:14-15, mentions the case of Daniel, who in deepest sorrow must eat the bread of affliction, and pine away in grief over the sins of his people, but an angel of God comes also, and comforts and strengthens him. So likewise here, as he says, Jehovah alleviates the punishment. The protest of Ezekiel not less closely resembles the εἰ δυνατόν of the Son of man in Gethsemane, and the strengthening by an angel from heaven.
7. The circumstance that they were to eat “their bread polluted” among the heathen, pointed at the same time, according to Cocc., to the entire want of the means of cleansing through sacrifice Hos_9:4). The land of the heathen far from the temple was an unclean land, because there was no possibility of cleansing according to the law of the Sanctifier of Israel.
HOMILETIC HINTS
Eze_4:1. Similar symbolic actions we find performed by Christ also, who places a child in the midst of His disciples, washes their feet, etc. And so God wishes here also to say to Israel: “Thou wilt not hear; open thine eyes at least!” (H. H.)—God sometimes demands things which appear to men foolish, nay, silly. But in God’s foolishness there is wisdom, while in all the wisdom of men there is mere foolishness in the end, 1Co_1:25.—“Elisha in 2 Kings 13 causes bow and arrows to be brought; Isaiah in Ezekiel 20 walks barefoot; Jeremiah in Ezekiel 27 wears a yoke, bonds, etc. The apostles shake the dust off their feet (Matthew 10), shake their clothes (Act_18:6); Agabus binds Paul with his girdle (Acts 21). Let us recal to mind the bundle of arrows wherewith that heathen preached concord to his sons” (L. L.).—“Most of all art thou besieged, when thou supposest that thou art not at all besieged. There is a security of the Christian which is storm; for, according to Job, man’s life upon earth is a warfare” (Jer.).—“Besieged Jerusalem is the soul in its sins, against which all the works of the divine righteousness are directed; but as the unburnt brick is easily dissolved in pieces by water, so also the soul in its sins by the tears of repentance” (a L.).
Eze_4:2. Titus confessed of the second destruction of Jerusalem, that the city was conquered more by the angry Deity than by means of the Roman weapons.—“Temptation may be called a spiritual siege” (Stck.).—The whole world round about us is, in the main, a siege of the soul; in the world we have tribulation. If only the iron pan does not stand between us and God! For if God be for us, who can be against us? But, on the other hand, if God must be against us, according to the testimony of our own conscience, what could peace even with all men help us!
Eze_4:3. “Preachers frequently appear to their hearers as their enemies, because they proclaim to them their ruin, and depict the punishment of their sin vividly before their eyes; and yet they do not wish their ruin, but the salvation of their souls” (Stck.).—“The Jews might shake their heads and thrust out their tongues, but this fact they could not alter, that it was a sign for Israel” (Calv.).—To him who has his soul before his eyes, everything, even if it is not said so expressly as here, may be a sign.—All things must, and in fact do, work for good to those who love God.
Eze_4:4 sqq. “Preachers are to grudge no trouble and inconvenience for the best interests of their hearers, 1Th_2:8-9” (St.).—“God does not always punish on the spot, when men deserve it with their sins” (O.).—Preachers are to preach not merely with the word, but by their example, in doing as well as in leaving undone, and also in suffering.—God’s patience and His servants’ patience is a fine sermon.—“We, for the most part, reckon up only our days of sorrow, but for our days of joy, and especially for our days of sin, we have neither reckoning nor remembrance” (Stck.).
Eze_4:7. How much longing, how much pain, but what righteousness also, lay in this look toward Jerusalem!—A prelude on Ezekiel’s part to Luk_19:41 sqq., but also a contrast—here the uncovered arm, there the weeping eyes of Jesus.—“Ah! if now Jerusalem and we who are in it were to judge ourselves, and were to look upon our sins and vices as our worst enemies, and to attack them; then it would not be necessary for God with those who are His to take up a position against us as enemies” (B. B.).
Eze_4:8. “Diseases and afflictions of every kind are such bands, wherewith God binds His own, and not merely the ungodly” (Stck.).—“And now, behold, I go bound in the spirit,” says Paul in Acts 20.—“Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us,” is a well known watchword of those who are mighty according to the flesh in this world.—“We bind ourselves with our sins, and Satan knows how to hold us fast in these bands of our own” (Stck.).
Eze_4:9 sqq. So the bread of misery is ever still of many sorts, and yet not much for each day.—“But our days also for the bread of misery are measured and numbered, and beyond them it is not to last” (B. B.).—Want of bread is to be endured, for man lives not by bread alone; but the want of God no man ought to be able to endure, not even for a single instant; and yet how many become old and grey without hunger on this account!
Eze_4:10-11. The high importance of bread and water in a bodily and spiritual point of view; and yet, for the most part, we are able to think only of prisoners in connection with bread and water.
Eze_4:12. “Nothing can be so loathsome to men as sin is to God” (Stck.).—“But what else, pray, are those doing but eating dirt, who delight themselves in earthly things, and do everything for the sake of the belly or the flesh?” (B. B.)—And in what is the daily intellectual food of so very many men, consisting as it does of newspapers and pamphlets, of social intercourse and conversation—in what is it baked? Paul reckoned everything but dung for Christ, Philippians 3.
Eze_4:13. Along with the Jews, all those, even at the present day, are eating defiled bread, who, like them, are despising the bread of life which came down from heaven.
Eze_4:14. He who must be silent to men, may yet open heart and mouth to his God.—“There is full permission to ask God for the alleviation of the cross” (O.).
Eze_4:15. “God is and remains gracious even in the midst of wrath; if He does not take the cross of His children entirely away, yet He alleviates it” (Cr.).
Eze_4:16 sq. “No one has less thought of it than the rich, that there was to be a possibility of the want becoming so great in their case, that bread and water were so easily to fail them, even although a famine should happen. But the rich man experienced it even in hell, and could not get a drop of water, however much he wished to have it” (B. B.).
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv2–17 forth--rather, "watch tower" (Jer 52:4) wherein the besieges could…
forth--rather, "watch tower" (Jer 52:4) wherein the besieges could watch the movements of the besieged [GESENIUS]. A wall of circumvallation [Septuagint and ROSENMULLER]. A kind of battering-ram [MAURER]. The first view is best.
a mount--wherewith the Chaldeans could be defended from missiles.
Read full note →
battering-rams--literally, "through-borers." In Eze 21:22 the same Hebrew is translated "captains."
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 16 1. A tile… portray upon it the city —…
1. A tile… portray upon it the city — It is a suggestive fact that on many of the bricks taken from Assyrian palaces are yet to be seen pictures of animals, forts, soldiers, royal offerings, etc.; while Gadea, one of the earliest kings, is seen seated with a tile or tablet in front of him on which is drawn a picture of the city of Babylon. Ezekiel need not have been much of an artist, but on the soft clay he could easily have drawn the walls and towers and temples of the city and an outline of the surrounding mountains so that every Israelite would recognize the place instantly. (Compare Psa_48:12-13.)
Jerusalem — It is not impossible, at least after the capture of Jerusalem, that such tiles might have been for sale in the Babylonian bazaars. It was not unusual for representations of captured forts or cities to be brought home by the victorious army. The cuneiform texts have considerable to say of Jerusalem — Assyrian, Urusalem; Tel Amarna, Ursalimmu, “Possessor of Peace,” or “Salim’s Possessions” (Brown’s Hebrew and English Lexicon).
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 16 1. take thee a tile] or, brick. The brick…
1. take thee a tile] or, brick. The brick would be such as those found in the ruins of the cities of Mesopotamia, covered with figures and inscriptions, engraved on them when still moist. Libraries of such bricks have been found by explorers in this region, and deciphered. For the city read a city.
Ch. Eze_4:1-3. Symbolical siege of Jerusalem
Read full note →
The prophet is commanded to take a brick (it is to be supposed still soft) and portray on it a city, even Jerusalem. Around the city he is to draw representations of siege operations, towers, a mound, camps and battering-rams. Between him and the city he is to set an iron plate to represent an iron wall. The determination of the besiegers is shewn by his attitude, he sets his face against the city. All this is symbol of a hard siege, carried on with great determination and apparatus against a lofty city.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16 (1) Take thee a tile.—The use of tiles for…
IV.
(1) Take thee a tile.—The use of tiles for such purposes as that here indicated was common both in Babylonia and in Nineveh. When intended for preservation the writing or drawing was made upon the soft and plastic clay, which was afterwards baked. It is from the remains of great libraries prepared in this way that most of our modern knowledge of Nineveh and Babylon has been derived. It is, of course, quite possible that Ezekiel may have drawn in this way upon a soft clay tile; but from the whole account in this and the following chapters it is more likely that he simply described, rather than actually performed, these symbolical acts.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv1–17 Prior to any detailed examination of the strange series…
Prior to any detailed examination of the strange series of acts recorded in this and the following chapter, we are met with the question whether they were indeed visible and outward acts, or only imagined by the prophet in a state of ecstasy and afterwards reported by him to the people. Each view has been maintained by commentators of repute. I adopt, with scarcely any hesitation, the former, and for the following reasons.
(1) On the other interpretation the acts recorded were not signs to the people (ver. 3) till the prophet reported them; but the whole context shows that they were to be substitutes for spoken teaching. They belong to the period of the prophet"s silence.
Read full note →
(2) This mode of teaching, though not carried to the same extent, was part of the normal method of a prophet"s work. Zedekiah"s horns of iron; (1Ki_22:11) Isaiah"s walking "naked and barefoot" for three years; (Isa_20:2, Isa_20:3) Jeremiah"s yokes of wood, (Jer_27:2) probably even the latter prophet"s journey to the Euphrates; (Jer_13:4) and Hosea"s marriage with a harlot (Hosea 1-3), were all outward objective facts. We are only disposed to take a different view of Ezekiel"s acts because they are more startling and repulsive; but to adopt a nonnatural interpretation on this a priori ground of feeling is not the act of an honest interpreter. We have to admit that outwardly the life of the prophets of Israel might present analogies to the phenomena of ether religions or other times. The acts of Ezekiel may find a parallel in those of Simeon Stylites or George Fox; of Jesus the son of Ananus, who for seven years and five months walked to and fro in Jerusalem, uttering his woes against the city and the holy house (Josephus, "Bell. Jud:," 6:6, 3); of Solomon Eagle, as he, in like manner, walked through the streets of London during the great Plague (Defoe. "Hist. of the Plague," p. 519, edit. 1869).
The first sign in this method of unspoken prophecy was to indicate to the exiles of Tel-Abib that which they were unwilling to believe. The day of uncertain hopes and fears, of delusive dreams and promises, (Jer_27:16 Jer_28:1-3 Jer_29:21) was nearly over. The siege of Jerusalem in spite of Zedekiab"s Egyptian alliance, was a thing decreed. Four years before it came we are now between the fourth month of the fifth year (Eze_1:2) and the sixth month of the sixth year (Eze_8:1) of Zedekiah. and the siege began in the ninth year (2Ki_25:1) Ezekiel, on the segnius irritant principle, brought it, as here narrated, before the eyes of the exiles. That he did so implies a certain artistic culture, in possessing which he stands alone, so far as we know, among the prophets of Israel, and to which his residence in the land of the Chaldees may have contributed. He takes a tile, or tablet of baked clay, such as were used in Babylon and Assyria for private contracts, historical inscriptions, astronomical observations (Pliny, "Hist. Nat.," 7:57), and the like, which were, in fact, the books of that place and time, and of which whole libraries have been brought to light in recent excavations (Layard, "Nineveh and Babylon," ch. 22) and engraves upon it the outlines of "a city" (Revised Version), in which the exiles would at once recognize the city of their fathers, the towers which they had once counted, (Psa_48:12) the temple which had been their glory and their joy. Bricks with such scenes on them were found among the ruins of Nimroud, now in the British Museum (Layard, ut supra, ch. 7, p. 167). It is not difficult to picture to ourselves the wondering curiosity with which Ezekiel"s neighbours would watch the strange proceeding. In this case the sign would be more impressive than any spoken utterance.
Vers. 1, 2A pictorial sermon.
The method of this prophecy is as instructive as the substance of it. Let us, therefore, consider this by itself.
I IT WAS NOVEL. Hitherto prophets had usually preached by word of mouth, though indeed occasionally they had given visible illustrations of their sermons. Thus Jeremiah had worn a symbolical yoke of iron. (Jer_28:10) But to draw a picture on a tile was a new method of prophecy. The pulpit is generally too conservative of old methods, too timid of innovation. The preacher should not be a slave of fashion. But, then, he should be careful not to be in bondage to an old fashion any more than to a new fashion. He ought to be ready to embrace any novel method that promises to make his work more effective.
II IT WAS ACCORDING TO THE MANNER OF THE TIMES. The great brick libraries which have been discovered in the very region where Ezekiel was living, and which include works of the very date of his ministry, contain similar pictorial representations inscribed representations of sieges. Therefore Ezekiel was adapting his teaching to the manners of his contemporaries. It is as though a modern preacher, unable to reach all the persons he desired to address from the pulpit, should write in the newspapers. Therefore the most effective weapon of the day should be secured by the preacher. The enemy have breech-loading rifles: why should the friends of the truth be content with old flint muskets?
III IT WAS EFFECTIVE. Mere novelty for its own sake is childish. Eccentricity may win notoriety, but it will not honour truth. Erratic methods lower the dignity of truth. The preacher has to remember the solemn, the awful character of his message. But, then, a novel and almost alarming method may be most suitable for conveying the message. In this matter the means must be subservient to the end. Now, Ezekiel"s method was remarkably suitable for his purpose.
1. It made his message intelligible to all. People who cannot read may understand a picture, and the same picture may speak to men of different languages. Raphael"s "Transfiguration" is intelligible to Englishmen who do not know a word of Italian. Pictorial preaching is easily understood.
2. It made the message vivid and impressive. We feel most strongly what we see in picture before our eyes. The failure of preaching is often owing to the fact that the truth proclaimed is accepted only in words which do not suggest clear, strong ideas. It may be admitted by the reason, but it is not embraced by the imagination. The truth which has power over us is not that which we consent to in cold, intellectual agreement, but that which stands to the eyes of the soul as a present reality. Therefore, after we have made our meaning clear and proved our preposition to demonstration, a large part of our work remains, viz. to impress the truth on the imagination and the heart of our hearers; and to be impressive, the truth must be vivid. There is always scope for pictorial preaching. All preachers who are effective with the multitudes resort to this method.
3. It made the message enduring. The brick libraries of Babylon which have been deposited in the British Museum are almost as fresh and sound today as when they were first produced three thousand years ago. It is just possible that some day Ezekiel"s tile may be dug up uninjured! Sermons may be forgotten, but truth endures; and it is the mission of the preacher so to bum the truth into the hearts of his hearers that it shall even outlast Babylonian libraries and be seen through all eternity.
HOMILIES BY J.D. DAVIES Vers. 1-8. Vicarious suffering.
Every true prophet is a forerunner of Jesus Christ. We do not detract from the work of the Saviour we magnify it when we discern that the same kind of work (though not equal in measure or effectiveness) had been done by the prophets. Ezekiel was called of God, not only to teach heavenly doctrine, but also to suffer for the people. "Thou shalt bear their iniquities." No one can be a faithful servant of God who does not suffer for the cause he serves. Suffering is the badge of a Divine commission.
I EVERY PROPHET IS A VICAR. He represents God before the people; he represents the people before God. In his whole person, action, suffering, mission, he is a type of Jesus Christ. When men will not listen to his words, he is commanded to speak to them by deeds. The life of the prophet is a prophecy. Ezekiel deals with these captives as with sullen children. To the ignorant he became as ignorant. He condescended to their low estate. Being made dumb by reason of their perversity, he pursues his heavenly task in another way he teaches them by pictures, object lesson and deed symbol. It is "line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little." So long as there remains an avenue to the heart, God will not abandon men.
II HIS SUFFERING IS VICARIOUS. This prophet was not himself free from sin, and suffering was its effect. Yet the suffering described in this chapter is wholly vicarious. What was justly due to others was laid upon him by God. "I have laid upon thee the years of their iniquity." Yet this was impossible without the prophet"s willing consent. In proportion as the prophet"s mind had expanded under the Divine afflatus, be had considered and comprehended the magnitude of Israel"s sin. Their past and their present iniquity was clear and vivid to his mind. He saw its extent and aggravation. He perceived the moral turpitude. He felt its baseness and criminality. He foresaw its bitter fruits. The burden of a nation"s sift pressed upon his conscience. He drew it in upon himself and confessed it before God. But, further, Ezekiel represented in himself the severity of Divine judgment God"s sense of sin. Hence he was required to lie upon one side for the space of three hundred and ninety days a pain to himself, a passive rebuke to the people, in order to represent in visible form God"s indignation. Yet there was pictured forth also Divine compassion. Just severity was alleviated; there was but a day for a year. Jerusalem was sacrificed, but it was in order that the people might be saved. Not an item was overlooked by God. The proportionate guilt of Israel and Judah was vividly symbolized in the several acts of the prophet. The one end sought wasrepentance.
III HIS ACTION IS VICARIOUS. The prophet was a Hebrew, a priest; he loved Jerusalem. Possibly affection was bestowed on the city, which belonged alone to God. For Ezekiel to represent the Babylonian invaders, for him to invest the city with fire and sword, this must have been gall and wormwood. Yet, in vision, he had eaten the roll of God"s behests, had digested and assimilated the knowledge of his will. Therefore, in his vicarious character, he has to set his face against the city as the impersonation of the foe; he has to "make bare his arm" to typify the resolute energy of the spoiler. Be the effect upon the Jewish chiefs, already in captivity, what it may; be the effect to exasperate feeling against the prophet or to produce repentance; the prophet is constrained to fulfil his task by a Divine necessity. "Bands are upon him.
IV HIS ENDURANCE OF RIDICULE IS VICARIOUS. We can well suppose that many who visited Ezekiel in his dwelling would fail to perceive the propriety or utility of this long and irksome penance. They would sneer and laugh at this toy siege, at this childish exposure of an outstretched arm, at this constant recumbence on one side. Be it so; the prophet continues his task unmoved. "The foolishness of God is wiser than men." Littleness and greatness are matters about which men egregiously err. Ezekiel, in his humiliation, was as magnanimous and noble an actor in life"s drama as Elijah on Carmel vindicating in solitary sublimity Jehovah"s power. What could be baser to the vulgar eye of the world than to bear a felon"s cross through the streets, and then to hang in nakedness and pain thereon? "But God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the mighty and things which are not, to bring to nought things which are." Like his Divine Master, Ezekiel "despised the shame. D.
HOMILIES BY W. JONES Vers. 1-17. The siege of Jerusalem and the sufferings of the people symbolized.
also, son of man, take thee a tile, and lay it before thee, and portray upon it the city, even Jerusalem," etc. This chapter presents difficulties to the student. There is the question whether it is to be understood literally or metaphorically; or, more correctly, whether the things here set forth were really done or were only visional. The commands given in vers. 1-3 might have been literally executed; but the directions of vers. 4-8 could not have been literally carried out. Hence Fairbairn and others conclude that the actions must have taken place in vision. "It is enough to suppose," says Dr. Currey, "that when the prophet was bidden to do such acts, they were impressed upon his mind with all the vividness of actual performance. In spirit, he grasped the sword and scattered the hair, (Eze_5:1-4) and saw herein the coming events thus symbolized. They would only have lost force by substituting bodily for mental action. The command of God gave to the sign the vividness of a real transaction, and the prophet communicated it to the people, just as it had been stamped on his own mind, with more impressiveness than could have been conveyed by the language of ordinary metaphor." Again, it is by no means easy to decide what is the precise reference of the three hundred and ninety days, and the forty days, each day in a year. The different interpretations have been so ably sustained by their respective advocates, that it seems to us that it would be presumptuous dogmatically to assert that it must mean either one or another. But let us endeavour to discover the homiletic aspects of this chapter.
I INQUIRE THE REASON WHY, IN THIS CHAPTER AND ELSEWHERE, GOD HAS MADE KNOWN HIS WILL BY REMARKABLE SYMBOLS. There are many such symbols in the prophecies by Ezekiel. And in those by Jeremiah we have the rod of an almond tree, and the seething pot (1:11-16), the linen girdle, and the bottles of wine (13), the potter"s earthen vessel (19), the two baskets of figs (24), and the yoke of iron. (Jer 28) Many other examples might be cited item other portions of the sacred Scriptures. We cannot think that these striking symbols were employed to conceal truth, or to make the apprehension of the truth more difficult. That would have been inconsistent with revelation the contradiction of revelation. And it seems to us that it would have been out of harmony with the character of God to have used remarkable symbols to obscure his Word. They were intended rather, we conceive, to arouse attention, to stimulate inquiry, and impress upon the mind the truths shadowed forth by them. Fairbairn has well said, "As the meaning obviously did not lie upon the surface, it called for serious thought and inquiry regarding the purposes of God. A time of general backsliding and corruption is always a time of superficial thinking on spiritual things. And just as our Lord, by his parables, that partly veiled while they disclosed the truth of God, so the prophets, by their more profound and enigmatical discourses, sought to arouse the careless from their security, to awaken inquiry, and stir the depths of thought and feeling in the soul. It virtually said to them, "You are in imminent peril; direct ordinary discourse no longer suits your case; bestir yourselves to look into the depths of things, otherwise the sleep of death shall overtake you.
II ENDEAVOUR TO SET FORTH THE MEANING OF THESE REMARKABLE SYMBOLS.
1. Here is a representation of the siege of Jerusalem. (Vers. 1-3.) Directions are given to Ezekiel to portray a siege of the holy city; and to prepare the fort or siege tower, and the mound, and the encampments, and battering rams, and lay siege to it. Notice:
(1) The great Agent in this siege. The prophet was to besiege it, acting as the representative of Jehovah. "If the prophet, as commissioned by God, enters on such a siege, the real besieger of Jerusalem is the Lord God; and the Chaldeans appear as mere instruments in the Divine hand" (Schroder). Nebuchadnezzar and his army unconsciously did the work of God. And the prophet was to do his work with resolution and might (ver. 7). The uucoveted arm indicates one about to engage in vigorous exertion. (cf. Isa_52:10) So the siege here foreshadowed would be prosecuted with determination and power.
(2) The cause of this siege, The sin of the people has brought it upon them. This is indicated by the iron pan or plate which Ezekiel was to set up between himself and the city (ver. 3). "It is clear from the expression, between thee and the city, that a relation of separation, of division, between Jerusalem as portrayed upon the brick and the representative of God is m, ant to be expressed. Only on the ground of such a relation between God and Jerusalem can we explain alike the hostile attitude of the prophet"s race, and especially the clause, and it is in siege, and along with that, vers. 1 and 2" (Schroder). "Their iniquities had separated between them and their God". (Isa_59:2) That their calamities were caused by their sins appears also from the prophet being called to bear the iniquity of the house of Israel and the house of Judah (vers. 5, 6). And in the last verse it is expressly stated that they should "consume away for their iniquity." Sin is the one great cause of suffering and sorrow, of calamity and loss.
2. Here is a representation of the sufferings of the inhabitants ofJerusalem.
(1) These are symbolized by the prostrate attitude of the prophet bearing the sins of the people (vers. 4-6). In the former portion of the chapter Ezekiel represents the Lord; but here and in subsequent verses he represents the besieged and suffering people. His lying down, and inability to turn from one side to another, "is a figure of the wretched condition of the people during the time of the siege". (cf. Psa_20:8; Amo_5:2)
(2) The miseries of the people are also represented by the scarcity of food and its loathsome associations. The prophet is directed to "take wheat, and barley, and beans," etc. (ver. 9). "It is suggested in this way that the besieged will in their distress be compelled to gather together everything that can possibly be turned into bread. This state of matters is represented yet more strongly by means of the one vessel, which shows that of each separate sort not much more is to be had" (Schroder). Ezekiel, moreover, has to take his food by weight and measure, and only at long intervals (vers. 10, 11). And although in that country less is needed to sustain life than in our colder climate, yet the quantity allowed the prophet is not more than half what is usually regarded as necessary. The quantity, as some one observes, was too much for dying, too little for living. So would the people suffer want and hunger during the long siege. From the scarcity of food we proceed to its impurity. It is represented as having been baked with fuel of the most offensive kind with human ordure (ver. 12). But in answer to a pathetic appeal of the prophet, he is allowed to use the dried ordure of cattle instead thereof. To this he made no objection. "He was, in fact, used to it; for the dried dung of beasts is used for fuel throughout the East wherever wood is scarce, from Mongolia to Palestine. Its use, indeed, extends into Europe, and subsists even in England." The significance of this symbol is stated: "Even thus shall the children of Israel eat their defiled bread among the Gentiles, whither I will drive them." The reference is to the impurities of heathenism. Those who in their own land had disregarded the commands of God would in their exile find the corruptions of heathenism a grievous offence unto them. And then in its close (vers. 16, 17) the chapter recurs to the sufferings during the siege. The misery was to grow and to become so great as to cause amazement and dismay. The people would take their scanty portion in deep sorrow; and so great would be the scarcity of the prime necessaries of life as to strike them dumb with anguish. Such were the miseries which they had brought upon themselves by their long course of sin.
III APPLY THE INSTRUCTIONS WHICH THIS SUBJECT HAS FOR US.
1. An impressive illustration of the omniscience of God. Nothing less than infinite knowledge could have foretold to Ezekiel the things symbolized in this chapter. They did not seem in the least degree probable when he published them. "If we accept," says Dr. Currey, "the fifth year of Jehoiachin"s captivity (as is most probable) for the year in which Ezekiel received this communication, 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." Yet he did so; and this prophecy was fulfilled. Nothing can be hidden from God. (Ps 139) To him the future is visible as the present. This is exhibited by Isaiah as an evidence that the Lord is the true God. (Isa_41:21-29 Isa_44:6-8 Isa_46:9-11)
2. Sin transforms persons and places in the sight of God. Think of what Jerusalem had been before him: "the city of God;" "the faithful city;" "the holy city;" "the perfection of beauty, the joy of the whole earth." But now, alas, how changed it is! Formerly he had been its Defender; now he has become its Besieger. Sin darkens and deforms human character; it takes away the glory of cities and covers them with shame.
3. The certainty of the punishment of sin. The chosen people shall not escape punishment if they persist in sin. The sacred city, with the temple which God had chosen as his dwelling place, (Psa_132:13, Psa_132:14) will afford no protection to a people who have obstinately rebelled against him. "Though hand join in hand, the wicked shall not go unpunished;" "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap," etc. Sin carries within itself the germ of its own punishment.
4 The power of God to inflict punishment upon the obstinately rebellious. He can use the heathen as his instruments for this purpose. He can break the staff of bread, and dry up the springs of water, etc.
5 The heinousness and perilousness of sin. (cf. Jer_2:19 Jer_44:4) Let us cultivate hearty obedience to the Lord God. W.J.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On vv1, 9 Take thee a tile.
Eze_4:1-8
Take thee a tile.
Read full note →
The ministry of symbolism
In this chapter there begins a series of symbols utterly impossible of modern interpretation. This ministry of symbolism has still a place in all progressive civilisation. Every age, of course, necessitates its own emblems and types, its own apocalypse of wonders and signs, but the meaning of the whole is that God has yet something to be revealed which cannot at the moment be expressed in plain language. If we could see into the inner meaning of many of the controversies in which we are engaged, we should see there many a divinely drawn symbol, curious outlines of thought, parables not yet ripe enough for words. How manifold is human life! How innumerable are the workers who are toiling at the evolution of the Divine purpose in things! One man can understand nothing but what he calls bare facts and hard realities; he has only a hand to handle, he has not the interior touch that can feel things ere yet they have taken shape. Another is always on the outlook for what pleases the eye; he delights in form and colour and symmetry, and glows almost with thankfulness as he beholds the shapeliness of things, and traces in them a subtle geometry. Another man gets behind all this, and hears voices, and sees sights excluded from the natural senses; he looks upon symbolism, upon the ministry of suggestion and dream and vision; he sees best in the darkness; the night is his day; in the great cloud he sees the ever-working God, and in the infinite stillness of religious solitude he hears, rather in echoes than in words, what he is called upon to tell the age in which he lives. Here again his difficulty increases, for although he can see with perfect plainness men, and can understand quite intelligibly all the mysteries which pass before his imagination and before his spiritual eyes, yet he has to find words that will fit the new and exciting occasion; and there are no fit words, so sometimes he is driven to make a language of his own, and hence we come upon strangeness of expression, eccentricity of thought, weirdness in quest and sympathy,--a most marvellous and tumultuous life; a great struggle after rhythm and rest, and fullest disclosure of inner realities, often ending in bitter disappointment, so that the prophets eloquence dissolves in tears, and the man who thought he had a glorious message to deliver is broken down in humiliation when he hears the poor thunder of his own inadequate articulation. He has his tile and his iron pan; he lays upon his left side, and upon his right side; he takes unto him wheat and barley, beans, and lentils; he weighs out his bread, and measures out his water, and bakes barley cakes by a curious manufacture; and yet when it is all over he cannot tell to others in delicate enough language, or with sufficiency of illustration, what he knows to be a Divine and eternal word. (J. Parker, D. D.)
Symbolisms not necessarily acted
Even if one hundred and ninety days be the true reading, it is most improbable that the prophet should have been on his side immovable for half a year, and it appears impossible when other actions had to be done simultaneously. The hypothesis of Klostermann hardly deserves mention. This writer supposes that the prophet lay on his side because he was a cataleptic and temporarily paralysed, that he prophesied against Jerusalem with outstretched arm, because his arm could not be withdrawn, being convulsively rigid, and that he was dumb because struck with morbid alalia. It is surprising that some reputable scholars should seem half inclined to accept this explanation. They perhaps have the feeling that such an interpretation is more reverent to Scripture. But we need to remind ourselves, as Job reminded his friends, that superstition is not religion (Job_13:7-12; Job_21:22). The book itself appears to teach us how to interpret the most of the symbolical actions. In Eze_24:3 the symbol of setting the caldron on the fire is called uttering a parable. The act of graving a hand at the parting of the ways (Eze_21:19) must certainly be interpreted in the same way, and, though there may be room for hesitation in regard to some of them, probably the actions as a whole. They were imagined merely. They passed through the prophets mind. He lived in this ideal sphere; he went through the actions in his phantasy, and they appeared to him to carry the same effects as if they had been performed. (A. B. Davidson, D. D.)
Pertray upon it the city, even Jerusalem.--
The end foretold
With the fourth chapter we enter on the exposition of the first great division of Ezekiels prophecies. The prophecies may be classified roughly under three heads. In the first class are those which exhibit the judgment itself in ways fitted to impress the prophet and his hearers with a conviction of its certainty; a second class is intended to demolish the illusions and false ideals which possessed the minds of the Israelites and made the announcement of disaster incredible; and a third and very important class expounds the moral principles which were illustrated by the judgment, and which show it to be a Divine necessity. In the passage before us the bare fact and certainty of the judgment are set forth in word and symbol and with a minimum of commentary, although even here the conception which Ezekiel had formed of the moral situation is clearly discernible. That the destruction of Jerusalem should occupy the first place in the prophets picture of national calamity requires no explanation. Jerusalem was the heart and brain of the nation, the centre of its life and its religion, and in the eyes of the prophets the fountainhead of its sin. The strength of her natural situation, the patriotic and religious associations which had gathered round her, and the smallness of her subject province gave to Jerusalem a unique position among the mother cities of antiquity. And Ezekiels hearers knew what he meant when he employed the picture of a beleaguered city to set forth the judgment that was to overtake them. That crowning horror of ancient warfare, the siege of a fortified town, meant in this case something more appalling to the imagination than the ravages of pestilence and famine and sword. The fate of Jerusalem represented the disappearance of everything that had constituted the glory and excellence of Israels national existence. The manner in which the prophet seeks to impress this fact on his countrymen illustrates a peculiar vein of realism which runs through all his thinking (verses 1-3). He is commanded to take a brick and portray upon it a walled city, surrounded by the towers, mounds, and battering rams which marked the usual operations of a besieging army. Then he is to erect a plate of iron between him and the city, and from behind this, with menacing gestures, he is as it were to press on the siege. The meaning of the symbols is obvious. As the engines of destruction appear on Ezekiels diagram, at the bidding of Jehovah, so in due time the Chaldaean army will be seen from the walls of Jerusalem, led by the same unseen Power which now controls the acts of the prophet. In the last act Ezekiel exhibits the attitude of Jehovah Himself, cut off from His people by the iron wall of an inexorable purpose which no prayer could penetrate. Thus far the prophets actions, however strange they may appear to us, have been simple and intelligible. But at this point a second sign is as it were superimposed on the first, in order to symbolise an entirely different set of facts--the hardship and duration of the Exile (verses 4-8). While still engaged in prosecuting the siege of the city, the prophet is supposed to become at the same time the representative of the guilty people and the victim of the Divine judgment. He is to bear their iniquity--that is, the punishment due to their sin. This is represented by his lying bound on his left side for a number of days equal to the years of Ephraims banishment, and then on his right side for a time proportionate to the captivity of Judah. (John Skinner, M. A.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible 1887 · Public Domain On v1 Ezekiel 4 - Ezekiel 7
THE END FORETOLD
Ezekiel 4 - Ezekiel 7
Read full note →
WITH the fourth chapter we enter on the exposition of the first great division of Ezekiels prophecies. The chaps, 4-24, cover a period of about four and a half years, extending from the time of the prophets call to the commencement of the siege of Jerusalem. During this time Ezekiels thoughts revolved round one great theme-the approaching judgment on the city and the nation. Through contemplation of this fact there was disclosed to him the outline of a comprehensive theory of divine providence, in which the destruction of Israel was seen to be the necessary consequence of her past history and a necessary preliminary to her future restoration. The prophecies may be classified roughly under three heads. In the first class are those which exhibit the judgment itself in ways fitted to impress the prophet and his hearers with a conviction of its certainty; a second class is intended to demolish the illusions and false ideals which possessed the minds of the Israelites and made the announcement of disaster incredible; and a third and very important class expounds the moral principles which were illustrated by the judgment, and which show it to be a divine necessity. In the passage which forms the subject of the present lecture the bare fact and certainty of the judgment are set forth in word and symbol and with a minimum of commentary, although even here the conception which Ezekiel had formed of the moral situation is clearly discernible.
I.
The certainty of the national judgment seems to have been first impressed on Ezekiels mind in the form of a singular series of symbolic acts which he conceived himself to be commanded to perform. The peculiarity of these signs is that they represent simultaneously two distinct aspects of the nations fate-on the one hand the horrors of the siege of Jerusalem, and on the other hand the state of exile which was to follow.
That the destruction of Jerusalem should occupy the first place in the prophets picture of national calamity requires no explanation. Jerusalem was the heart and brain of the nation, the centre of its life and its religion, and in the eyes of the prophets the fountain-head of its sin. The strength of her natural situation, the patriotic and religious associations which had gathered round her, and the smallness of her subject province gave to Jerusalem a unique position among the mother-cities of antiquity. And Ezekiels hearers knew what he meant when he employed the picture of a beleaguered city to set forth the judgment that was to overtake them. That crowning horror of ancient warfare, the siege of a fortified town, meant in this case something more appalling to the imagination than the ravages of pestilence and famine and sword. The fate of Jerusalem represented the disappearance of everything that had constituted the glory and excellence of Israels national existence. That the light of Israel should be extinguished amidst the anguish and bloodshed which must accompany an unsuccessful defence of the capital was the most terrible element in Ezekiels message, and here he sets it in the forefront of his prophecy.
The manner in which the prophet seeks to impress this fact on his countrymen illustrates a peculiar vein of realism which runs through all his thinking. {Eze_4:1-3} Being at a distance from Jerusalem, he seems to feel the need of some visible emblem of the doomed city before he can adequately represent the import of his prediction. He is commanded to take a brick and portray upon it a walled city, surrounded by the towers, mounds, and battering-rams which marked the usual operations of a besieging army. Then he is to erect a plate of iron between him and the city. and from behind this, with menacing gestures, he is as it were to press on the siege. The meaning of the symbols is obvious. As the engines of destruction appear on Ezekiels diagram, at the bidding of Jehovah, so in due time the Chaldaean army will be seen from the walls of Jerusalem, led by the same unseen rower which now controls the acts of the prophet. In the last act Ezekiel exhibits the attitude of Jehovah Himself, cut off from His people by the iron wall of an inexorable purpose which no prayer could penetrate.
Thus far the prophets actions, however strange they may appear to us, have been simple and intelligible. But at this point a second sign is as it were superimposed on the first, in order to symbolise an entirely different set of facts-the hardship and duration of the Exile (Eze_4:4-8). While still engaged in prosecuting the siege of the city, the prophet is supposed to become at the same time the representative of the guilty people and the victim of the divine judgment. He is to "bear their iniquity"-that is, the punishment due to their sin. This is represented by his lying bound on his left side for a number of days equal to the years of Ephraims banishment, and then on his right side for a time proportionate to the captivity of Judah. Now the time of Judahs exile is fixed at forty years, dating of course from the fall of the city. The captivity of North Israel exceeds that of Judah by the interval between the destruction of Samaria (722) and the fall of Jerusalem, a period which actually measured about a hundred and thirty-five years. In the Hebrew text, however, the length of Israels captivity is given as three hundred and ninety years-that is, it must have lasted for three hundred and fifty years before that of Judah begins. This is obviously quite irreconcilable with the facts of history, and also with the prophets intention. He cannot mean that the banishment of the northern tribes was to be protracted for two centuries after that of Judah had come to an end, for he uniformly speaks of the restoration of the two branches of the nation as simultaneous. The text of the Greek translation helps us past this difficulty. The Hebrew manuscript from which that version was made had the reading a "hundred and ninety" instead of "three hundred and ninety" in Eze_4:5. This alone yields a satisfactory sense, and the reading of the Septuagint is now generally accepted as representing what Ezekiel actually wrote. There is still a slight discrepancy between the hundred and thirty-five years of the actual history and the hundred and fifty years expressed by the symbol; but we must remember that Ezekiel is using round numbers throughout, and moreover he has not as yet fixed the precise date of the capture of Jerusalem when the last forty years are to commence.
In the third symbol (Eze_4:9-17) the two aspects of the judgment are again presented in the closest possible combination. The prophets food and drink during the days when he is imagined to be lying on his side represents on the one hand, by its being small in quantity and carefully weighed and measured, the rigours of famine in Jerusalem during the siege-"Behold, I will break the staff of bread in Jerusalem: and they shall eat bread by weight, and with anxiety; and drink water by measure, and with horror" (Eze_4:16); on the other hand, by its mixed ingredients and by the fuel used in its preparation, it typifies the unclean religious condition of the people when in exile-"Even so shall the children of Israel eat their food unclean among the heathen" (Eze_4:13). The meaning of this threat is best explained by a passage in the book of Hosea. Speaking of the Exile, Hosea says: "They shall not remain in the land of Jehovah; but the children of Ephraim shall return to Egypt, and shall eat unclean food in Assyria. They shall pour out no wine to Jehovah, nor shall they lay out their sacrifices for Him: like the food of mourners shall their food be; all that eat thereof shall be defiled: for their bread shall only satisfy their hunger; it shall not come into the house of Jehovah". {Hos_9:3-4} The idea is that all food which has not been consecrated by being presented to Jehovah in the sanctuary is necessarily unclean, and those who eat of it contract ceremonial defilement. In the very act of satisfying his natural appetite a man forfeits his religious standing. This was the peculiar hardship of the state of exile, that a man must become unclean, he must eat unconsecrated food unless he renounced his religion and served the gods of the land in which he dwelt. Between the time of Hosea and Ezekiel these ideas may have been somewhat modified by the introduction of the Deuteronomic law, which expressly permits secular slaughter at a distance from the sanctuary. But this did not lessen the importance of a legal sanctuary for the common life of an Israelite. The whole of a mans flocks and herds, the whole produce of his fields, had to be sanctified by the presentation of firstlings and firstfruits at the Temple before he could enjoy the reward of his industry with the sense of standing in Jehovahs favour. Hence the destruction of the sanctuary or the permanent exclusion of the worshippers from it reduced the whole life of the people to a condition of uncleanness which was felt to be as great a calamity as was a papal interdict in the Middle Ages. This is the fact which is expressed in the part of Ezekiels symbolism now before us. What it meant for his fellow exiles was that the religious disability under which they laboured was to be continued for a generation. The whole life of Israel was to become unclean until its inward state was made worthy of the religious privileges now to be withdrawn. At the same time no one could have felt the penalty more severely than Ezekiel himself, in whom habits of ceremonial purity had become a second nature. The repugnance which he feels at the loathsome manner in which he was at first directed to prepare his food, and the profession of his own practice in exile, as well as the concession made to his scrupulous sense of propriety (Eze_4:14-16), are all characteristic of one whose priestly training had made a defect of ceremonial cleanness almost equivalent to a moral delinquency.
The last of the symbols {Eze_5:1-4} represents the fate of the population of Jerusalem when the city is taken. The shaving of the prophets head and beard is a figure for the depopulation of the city and country. By a further series of acts, whose meaning is obvious, he shows how a third of the inhabitants shall die of famine and pestilence during the siege, a third shall be slain by the enemy when the city is captured, while the remaining third shall be dispersed among the nations. Even these shall be pursued by the sword of vengeance until but a few numbered individuals survive, and of them again a part passes through the fire. The passage reminds us of the last verse of the sixth chapter of Isaiah, which was perhaps in Ezekiels mind when he wrote: "And if a tenth still remain in it [the land], it shall again pass through the fire: as a terebinth or an oak whose stump is left at their felling: a holy seed shall be the stock thereof." {Isa_6:13} At least the conception of a succession of sifting judgments, leaving only a remnant to inherit the promise of the future, is common to both prophets, and the symbol in Ezekiel is noteworthy as the first expression of his steadfast conviction that further punishments were in store for the exiles after the destruction of Jerusalem.
It is clear that these signs could never have been enacted, either in view of the people or in solitude, as they are here described. It may be doubted whether the whole description is not purely ideal, representing a process which passed through the prophets mind, or was suggested to him in the visionary state but never actually performed. That will always remain a tenable view. An imaginary symbolic act is as legitimate a literary device as an imaginary conversation. It is absurd to mix up the question of the prophets truthfulness with the question whether he did or did not actually do what he conceives himself as doing. The attempt to explain his action by catalepsy would take us but a little way, even if the arguments adduced in favour of it were stronger than they are. Since even a cataleptic patient could not have tied himself down on his side or prepared and eaten his food in that posture, it is necessary in any case to admit that there must be a considerable, though indeterminate, element of literary imagination in the account given of the symbols. It is not impossible that some symbolic representation of the siege of Jerusalem may have actually been the first act in Ezekiels ministry. In the interpretation of the vision which immediately follows we shall find that no notice is taken of the features which refer to exile, but only of those which announce the siege of Jerusalem. It may therefore be the case that Ezekiel did some such action as is here described, pointing to the fall of Jerusalem, but that the whole was taken up afterwards in his imagination and made into an ideal representation of the two great facts which formed the burden of his earlier prophecy.
II.
It is a relief to turn from this somewhat fantastic, though for its own purpose effective, exhibition of prophetic ideas to the impassioned oracles in which the doom of the city and the nation is pronounced. The first of these (Eze_5:5-17) is introduced here as the explanation of the signs that have been described, in so far as they bear on the fate of Jerusalem; but it has a unity of its own, and is a characteristic specimen of Ezekiels oratorical style. It consists of two parts: the first (Eze_5:5-10) deals chiefly with the reasons for the judgment on Jerusalem, and the second (Eze_5:11-17) with the nature of the judgment itself. The chief thought of the passage is the unexampled severity of the punishment which is in store for Israel, as represented by the fate of the capital. A calamity so unprecedented demands an explanation as unique as itself. Ezekiel finds the ground of it in the signal honour conferred on Jerusalem in her being set in the midst of the nations, in the possession of a religion which expressed the will of the one God, and in the fact that she had proved herself unworthy of her distinction and privileges and tried to live as the nations around. "This is Jerusalem which I have set in the midst of the nations, with the lands round about her. But she rebelled against My judgments wickedly more than the nations, and My statutes more than [other] lands round about her: for they rejected My judgments, and in My statutes they did not walk. Therefore thus saith the Lord Jehovah: Behold, even I am against you; and I will execute in thy midst judgments before the nations, and will do in thy case what I have not done [heretofore], and what I shall not do the like of any more, according to all thy abominations" (Eze_5:5-9). The central position of Jerusalem is evidently no figure of speech in the mouth of Ezekiel. It means that she is so situated as to fulfil her destiny in the view of all the nations of the world, who can read in her wonderful history the character of the God who is above all gods. Nor can the prophet be fairly accused of provincialism in thus speaking of Jerusalems unrivalled physical and moral advantages. The mountain ridge on which she stood lay almost across the great highways of communication between the East and the West, between the hoary seats of civilisation and the lands whither the course of empire took its way. Ezekiel knew that Tyre was the centre of the old worlds commerce, (See chapter 27) but he also knew that Jerusalem occupied a central situation in the civilised world, and in that fact he rightly saw a providential mark of the grandeur and universality of her religious mission. Her calamities, too, were probably such as no other city experienced. The terrible prediction of Eze_5:10, "Fathers shall eat sons in the midst of thee, and sons shall eat fathers," seems to have been literally fulfilled. "The hands of the pitiful women have sodden their own children: they were their meat in the destruction of the daughter of My people." {Lam_4:10} It is likely enough that the annals of Assyrian conquest cover many a tale of woe which in point of mere physical suffering paralleled the atrocities of the siege of Jerusalem. But no other nation had a conscience so sensitive as Israel, or lost so much by its political annihilation. The humanising influences of a pure religion had made Israel susceptible of a kind of anguish which ruder communities were spared. The sin of Jerusalem is represented after Ezekiels manner as on the one hand transgression of the divine commandments, and on the other defilement of the Temple through false worship. These are ideas which we shall frequently meet in the course of the book, and they need not detain us here. The prophet proceeds (Eze_5:11-17) to describe in detail the relentless punishment which the divine vengeance is to inflict on the inhabitants and the city. The jealousy, the wrath, the indignation of Jehovah, which are represented as "satisfied" by the complete destruction of the people, belong to the limitations of the conception of God which Ezekiel had. It was impossible at that time to interpret such an event as the fall of Jerusalem in a religious sense otherwise than as a vehement outburst of Jehovahs anger, expressing the reaction of His holy nature against the sin of idolatry. There is indeed a great distance between the attitude of Ezekiel towards the hapless city and the yearning pity of Christs lament over the sinful Jerusalem of His time. Yet the first was a step towards the second. Ezekiel realised intensely that part of Gods character which it was needful to enforce in order to beget in his countrymen the deep horror at the sin of idolatry which characterised the later Judaism. The best commentary on the latter part of this chapter is found in those parts of the book of Lamentations which speak of the state of the city and the survivors after its overthrow. There we see how quickly the stern judgment produced a more chastened and beautiful type of piety than had ever been prevalent before. Those pathetic utterances, in which patriotism and religion are so finely blended, are like the timid and tentative advances of a childs heart towards a parent who has ceased to punish but has not begun to caress. This, and much else that is true and ennobling in the later religion of Israel, is rooted in the terrifying sense of the divine anger against sin so powerfully represented in the preaching of Ezekiel.
III.
The next two chapters may be regarded as pendants to the theme which is dealt with in this opening section of the book of Ezekiel. In the fourth and fifth chapters the prophet had mainly the city in his eye as the focus of the nations life; in the sixth he turns his eye to the land which had shared the sin, and must suffer the punishment, of the capital. It is, in its first part (Eze_6:2-10), an apostrophe to the mountain land of Israel, which seems to stand out before the exiles mind with its mountains and hills, its ravines and valleys, in contrast to the monotonous plain of Babylonia which stretched around him. But these mountains were familiar to the prophet as the seats of the rural idolatry in Israel. The word bamah, which means properly "the height," had come to be used as the name of an idolatrous sanctuary. These sanctuaries were probably Canaanitish in origin; and although by Israel they had been consecrated to the worship of Jehovah, yet He was worshipped there in ways which the prophets pronounced hateful to Him. They had been destroyed by Josiah, but must have been restored to their former use during the revival of heathenism which followed his death. It is a lurid picture which rises before the prophets imagination as he contemplates the judgment of this provincial idolatry: the altars laid waste, the "sun-pillars" broken, and the idols surrounded by the corpses of men who had fled to their shrines for protection and perished at their feet. This demonstration of the helplessness of the rustic divinities to save their sanctuaries and their worshippers will be the means of breaking the rebellious heart and the whorish eyes that had led Israel so far astray from her true Lord, and will produce in exile the self-loathing which Ezekiel always regards as the beginning of penitence.
But the prophets passion rises to a higher pitch. and he hears the command "Clap thy hands, and stamp with thy foot, and say, Aha for the abominations of the house of Israeli." These are gestures and exclamations, not of indignation, but of contempt and triumphant scorn. The same feeling and even the same gestures are ascribed to Jehovah Himself in another passage of highly charged emotion. {Eze_21:17} And it is only fair to remember that it is the anticipation of the victory of Jehovahs cause that fills the mind of the prophet at such moments and seems to deaden the sense of human sympathy within him. At the same time the victory of Jehovah was the victory of prophecy, and in so far Smend may be right in regarding the words as throwing light on the intensity of the antagonism in which prophecy and the popular religion then stood. The devastation of the land is to be effected by the same instruments as were at work in the destruction of the city: first the sword of the Chaldaeans, then famine and pestilence among those who escape, until the whole of Israels ancient territory lies desolate from the southern steppes to Riblah in the north.
Chapter 7 is one of those singled out by Ewald as preserving most faithfully the spirit and language of Ezekiels earlier utterances. Both in thought and expression it exhibits a freedom and animation seldom attained in Ezekiels writings, and it is evident that it must have been composed under keen emotion. It is comparatively free from those stereotyped phrases which are elsewhere so common, and the style falls at times into the rhythm which is characteristic of Hebrew poetry. Ezekiel hardly perhaps attains to perfect mastery of poetic form, and even here we may be sensible of a lack of power to blend a series of impressions and images into an artistic unity. The vehemence of his feeling hurries him from one conception to another, without giving full expression to any, or indicating clearly the connection that leads from one to the other. This circumstance, and the corrupt condition of the text together, make the chapter in some parts unintelligible, and as a whole one of the most difficult in the book. In its present position it forms a fitting conclusion to the opening section of the book. All the elements of the judgment which have just been foretold are gathered up in one outburst of emotion, producing a song of triumph in which the prophet seems to stand in the uproar of the final catastrophe and exult amid the crash and wreck of the old order which is passing away.
The passage is divided into five stanzas, which may originally have been approximately equal in length, although the first is now nearly twice as long as any of the others.
1. Eze_7:2-9 -The first verse strikes the keynote of the whole poem; it is the inevitableness and the finality of the approaching dissolution. A striking phrase of Amo_8:2 is first taken up and expanded in accordance with the anticipations with which the previous chapters have now familiarised us: "An end is come, the end is come on the four skirts of the land." The poet already hears the tumult and confusion of the battle; the vintage songs of the Judaean peasant are silenced, and with the din and fury of war the day of the Lord draws near.
2. Eze_7:10-13 -The prophets thoughts here revert to the present, and he notes the eager interest with which men both in Judah and Babylon are pursuing the ordinary business of life and the vain dreams of political greatness. "The diadem flourishes, the sceptre blossoms, arrogance shoots up." These expressions must refer to the efforts of the new rulers of Jerusalem to restore the fortunes of the nation and the glories of the old kingdom which had been so greatly tarnished by the recent captivity. Things are going bravely, they think; they are surprised at their own success; they hope that the day of small things will grow into the day of things greater than those which are past. The following verse is untranslatable; probably the original words, if we could recover them, would contain some pointed and scornful antithesis to these futile and vainglorious anticipations. The allusion to "buyers and sellers" (Eze_7:12) may possibly be quite general, referring only to the absorbing interest which men continue to take in their possessions, heedless of the impending judgment. {cf. Luk_17:20-30} But the facts that the advantage is assumed to be on the side of the buyer and that the seller expects to return to his heritage make it probable that the prophet is thinking of the forced sales by the expatriated nobles of their estates in Palestine, and to their deeply cherished resolve to right themselves when the time of their exile is over. All such ambitions, says the prophet, are vain-"the seller shall not return to what he sold, and a man shall not by wrong preserve his living." In any case Ezekiel evinces here, as elsewhere, a certain sympathy with the exiled aristocracy, in opposition to the pretensions of the new men who had succeeded to their honours.
3. Eze_7:14-18 -The next scene that rises before the prophets vision is the collapse of Judahs military preparations in the hour of danger. Their army exists but on paper. There is much blowing of trumpets and much organising, but no men to go forth to battle. A blight rests on all their efforts; their hands are paralysed and their hearts unnerved by the sense that "wrath rests on all their pomp." Sword, famine, and pestilence, the ministers of Jehovahs vengeance, shall devour the inhabitants of the city and the country, until but a few survivors on the tops of the mountains remain to mourn over the universal desolation.
4. Eze_7:19-22 -At present the inhabitants of Jerusalem are proud of the ill-gotten and ill-used wealth stored up within her, and doubtless the exiles cast covetous eyes on the luxury which may still have prevailed amongst the upper classes in the capital. But of what avail will all this treasure be in the evil day now so near at hand? It will but add mockery to their sufferings to be surrounded by gold and silver which can do nothing to allay the pangs of hunger. It will be cast in the streets as refuse, for it cannot save them in the day of Jehovahs anger. Nay, more, it will become the prize of the most ruthless of the heathen (the Chaldaeans); and when in the eagerness of their lust for gold they ransack the Temple treasury and so desecrate the Holy Place, Jehovah will avert His face and suffer them to work their will. The curse of Jehovah rests on the silver and gold of Jerusalem, which has been used for the making of idolatrous images, and now is made to them an unclean thing.
5. Eze_7:23-27 -The closing strophe contains a powerful description of the dismay and despair that will seize all classes in the state as the day of wrath draws near. Calamity after calamity comes, rumour follows hard on rumour, and the heads of the nation are distracted and cease to exercise the functions of leadership. The recognised guides of the people-the prophets, the priests, and the wise men-have no word of counsel or direction to offer; the prophets vision, the priests traditional lore, and the wise mans sagacity are alike at fault. So the king and the grandees are filled with stupefaction; and the common people, deprived of their natural leaders, sit down in helpless dejection. Thus shall Jerusalem be recompensed according to her doings. "The land is full of bloodshed, and the city of violence"; and in the correspondence between desert and retribution men shall be made to acknowledge the operation of the divine righteousness. "They shall know that I am Jehovah."
IV.
It may be useful at this point to note certain theological principles which already begin to appear in this earliest of Ezekiels prophecies. Reflection on the nature and purpose of the divine dealings we have seen to be a characteristic of his work; and even those passages which we have considered, although chiefly devoted to an enforcement of the fact of judgment, present some features of the conception of Israels history which had been formed in his mind.
1. We observe in the first place that the prophet lays great stress on the world-wide significance of the events which are to befall Israel. This thought is not as yet developed, but it is clearly present. The relation between Jehovah and Israel is so peculiar that He is known to the nations in the first instance only. as Israels God, and thus His being and character have to be learned from His dealings with His own people. And since Jehovah is the only true God and must be worshipped as such everywhere, the history of Israel has an interest for the world such as that of no other nation has. She was placed in the centre of the nations in order that the knowledge of God might radiate from her through all the world; and now that she has proved unfaithful to her mission, Jehovah must manifest His power and His character by an unexampled work of judgment. Even the destruction of Israel is a demonstration to the universal conscience of mankind of what true divinity is.
2. But the judgment has of course a purpose and a meaning for Israel herself, and both purposes are summed up in the recurring formula "Ye [they] shall know that I am Jehovah," or "that I, Jehovah, have spoken." These two phrases express precisely the same idea, although from slightly different starting-points. It is assumed that Jehovahs personality is to be identified by His word spoken through the prophets. He is known to men through the revelation of Himself in the prophets utterances. "Ye shall know that I, Jehovah, have spoken" means therefore, Ye shall know that it is I, the God of Israel and the Ruler of the universe, who speak these things. In other words, the harmony between prophecy and providence guarantees the source of the prophets message. The shorter phrase "Ye shall know that I am Jehovah" may mean Ye shall know that I who now speak am truly Jehovah, the God of Israel. The prejudices of the people would have led them to deny that the power which dictated Ezekiels prophecy could be their God; but this denial, together with the false idea of Jehovah on which it rests, shall be destroyed forever when the prophets words come true.
There is of course no doubt that Ezekiel conceived Jehovah as endowed with the plenitude of deity, or that in his view the name expressed all that we mean by the word God. Nevertheless, historically the name Jehovah is a proper name, denoting the God who is the God of Israel. Renan has ventured on the assertion that a deity with a proper name is necessarily a false god. The statement perhaps measures the difference between the God of revealed religion and the god who is an abstraction, an expression of the order of the universe, who exists only in the mind of the man who names him. The God of revelation is a living person, with a character and will of His own, capable of being known by man. It is the distinction of revelation that it dares to regard God as an individual with an inner life and nature of His own, independent of the conception men may form of Him. Applied to such a Being, a personal name may be as true and significant as the name which expresses the character and individuality of a man. Only thus can we understand the historical process by which the God who was first manifested as the deity of a particular nation preserves His personal identity with the God who in Christ is at last revealed as the God of the spirits of all flesh. The knowledge of Jehovah of which Ezekiel speaks is therefore at once a knowledge of the character of the God whom Israel professed to serve, and a knowledge of that which constitutes true and essential divinity.
3. The prophet; in Eze_6:8-10, proceeds one step further in delineating the effect of the judgment on the minds of the survivors. The fascination of idolatry for the Israelites is conceived as produced by that radical perversion of the religious sense which the prophets call "whoredom"-a sensuous delight in the blessings of nature, and an indifference to the moral element which can alone preserve either religion or "human love from corruption. The spell shall at last be broken in the new knowledge of Jehovah which is produced by calamity; and the heart of the people, purified from its delusions, shall turn to Him who has smitten them, as the only true God. When your fugitives from the sword are among the nations, when they are scattered through the lands, then shall your fugitives remember Me amongst the nations whither they have been carried captive, when I break their heart that goes awhoring from Me, and their whorish eyes which went after their idols." When the idolatrous propensity is thus eradicated, the conscience of Israel will turn inwards on itself, and in the light of its new knowledge of God will for the first time read its own history aright. The beginnings of a new spiritual life will be made in the bitter self-condemnation which is one side of the national repentance. "They shall loathe themselves for all the evil that they have committed in all their abominations."
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On vv1, 9 (Chaps. Eze_4:1 to Eze_5:17).
3. FIRST INSTRUCTIONS BY SIGNS AND THEIR INTERPRETATION
(Chaps. Eze_4:1 to Eze_5:17).
Read full note →
EXEGETICAL NOTES.—Ezekiel is ordered to carry out certain specified processes. Their purport is expressed by the words (Eze_4:3), “This shall be a sign to the house of Israel.” The use of such signs is partly to be accounted for by the circumstances of a prophet whose dwelling was in a country in which symbolical figures were striking and not unusual; partly by the psychological fact that his actings were to educate the people while as yet his tongue cleaved to the roof of his mouth. It is a mootpoint with students of prophecy whether to regard all actings of this sort as internal sensations vividly realised, or as taking form externally. “No general principle can be laid down by which to determine how far such actions pertain to the province of the external or internal.”—Oehler. To say, that all that was commanded to Ezekiel is to be accounted for by the vividness of his mental view, seems to contravene such statements as that he sat astonied seven days; that he removed his goods from one place to another in sight of his people; that he made no mourning for his deceased wife. To say, on the other hand, that all are to be taken literally seems to land us amid insurmountable difficulties, such as that he lay three hundred and ninety days without turning, while he is during that period to make and bake cakes of unprecedented ingredients; and also that he was to burn a third portion of his shaved hair in the midst of Jerusalem, though he was in Tel-abib. We need not be troubled at failing to find a satisfactory decision on this matter. What is of paramount interest is to find the meaning involved in each symbolical act. That that meaning will not be agreed in by every one cannot surprise us. A large element of indefiniteness exists in all symbolism, and men of different dispositions will create images of unlike contour through the haze of the indefiniteness. Nevertheless, thoughts may be expanded, and desires for light and guidance excited and heightened, as well as deadened, by the very uncertainty. Act-symbolism exists under similar conditions as word-symbolism. “To you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to others in parables.” “By hearing ye shall hear and shall not understand, and seeing ye shall see and shall not perceive.” With inwrought modesty, and prayers for the opening of our understanding by the Holy Spirit, should all Scripture-symbols be considered.
The four symbolical processes, which Ezekiel is here required to employ, form parts of one whole presented in varying phases. That whole is, Israel given up to punishment for sins. The coincidence of this section with Leviticus 26. is noteworthy. The most probable explanation thereof is that Ezekiel had thoroughly studied the picture drawn in the law and reproduced its salient features freely.
The siege of Jerusalem symbolised (Eze_4:1-3).
Eze_4:1. “Take thee a tile,” or a brick, shaped in clay and afterwards dried by the sun or burnt in a fire. Multitudinous specimens, of the kind which Ezekiel was to use, may be seen, in the British Museum, with letters and also warlike scenes depicted on them. “And pourtray upon it the city,” or rather a city, which is immediately specified as the one least likely, “Jerusalem.”
Eze_4:2. “Build a fort against it.” An instrument of ancient warfare, so constructed as to overtop the walls of the besieged place, and so to give opportunity for the besiegers to reach the defenders with their weapons. “And cast a mount against it.” Raise an embankment from which to attack advantageously. “And set battering-rams against it round about.” Beams suspended so as to be readily driven against the walls. “At Kouynijik there is the monument of the siege of an important city in which no less than seven battering-rams are employed.”—Layard. The prophet is to regard himself as doing that which he pourtrays on the tile. He acts under commission from God, and so it is the Lord Himself who is to be viewed as operating against Jerusalem by means of the Chaldean army.
Eze_4:3. “Take unto thee an iron pan.” A common utensil for cooking in the East. It was to be fixed perpendicularly, as “a wall of iron between thee and the city.” A separation was thus made between the prophet and the city, and the iron pan symbolised the barrier which had been produced between the Lord and His unfaithful people. “The decree and the sentence of God against them would be rigidly carried out, and God would not hear their prayers and complaints and bend to them in mercy. How far they must have degenerated for Him to deal thus!” “And thou shalt lay siege against it.” The siege would be in Ezekiel’s lifetime, and by him as acting for the Lord. So it is declared that “this shall be a sign to the house of Israel,” i.e., to the twelve tribes scattered abroad, both those in captivity and the remnant still in their native land. In the time of Ezekiel the distinction between the ten tribes and the two tribes was fast disappearing. A trace of its existence is still seen in Eze_4:5-6, but rather as a relic from the past than a reality of the present. When the ten tribes were led into captivity Judah represented all Israel, and in the course of time the remainders of the several tribes were amalgamated with Judah. This event is not dimly predicted in Jeremiah’s words, “The house of Judah shall walk with the house of Israel, and they shall come together out of the land of the north to the land that I have given for an inheritance unto your fathers” (Eze_3:18). All attempts to show that the lost ten tribes have been found, or hopes that they may be, must be dismissed as based on untenable surmises.
The period of punishment symbolised (Eze_4:4-8).
Eze_4:4. “Lie thou also upon thy left side.” The posture which Ezekiel has to assume of lying continuously for a lengthened time on the same side is a picture of the low condition of the people, not only throughout the siege of Jerusalem, but in the whole period of chastisement. The prophet becomes their representative here, not, as in Eze_4:1-3, that of the Lord. In taking that unshifting posture, he must be open to no slight suffering, “and,” so it is added, “lay the iniquity of the house of Israel upon it.” He is one of them, and shares the punishment of their guilty conduct for the allotted time—a symbol of penalty, not of expiation. Thus, too, “thou shalt bear their iniquity,” is not to be explained as meaning that his action was to signify the forbearance of God while the people were sinning, but the infliction of chastisement because of sins they had committed.
Eze_4:5. “For I have laid upon,” or I have given, “thee the years of their iniquity according to the number of the days.” The Lord had defined the limit of time beyond which the punishment of Israel would not go, and He required the prophet to be subject to the constraint of lying on his left side for the number of days corresponding to the years during which Israel would bear their iniquity. A similar posture was to be taken for Judah.
Eze_4:6. “Lie again on thy right side, and thou shalt bear the iniquity of the house of Judah forty days.” Any explanations, referring the three hundred and ninety and the forty days to events which took place before the degradation of the Israelitish people from their national position, are forbidden by the fact that Ezekiel is to exhibit what is to happen. The children are to bear stripes for the unfaithfulness of their fathers. The duration of the punishment threatened—four hundred and thirty years—is obviously related to the bondage of the chosen people in Egypt and their wanderings in the wilderness. The condition into which they would fall would involve a suffering for their sins comparable to that “hardship and discipline which had of old been laid upon their fathers,” and illustrative of the Deuteronomic prediction, “The Lord shall bring thee into Egypt again,” &c. (Deu_28:68). Moreover, as the ten tribes had forsaken the worship appointed by their God, in a way that Judah had not, the period of suffering to the former is prolonged far beyond that designated to the latter. But no satisfactory elucidation of the two dates, as exact points of chronology, is forthcoming. It is best, perhaps, to regard both as symbolical of a lengthened time of punishment such as might be paralleled by the servitude in Egypt, and also of a brief term of punishment such as might be compared with the trials of the sojourn in the desert. And while the sojourn in the desert was the passage from slavishness to freedom, from ignorance to knowledge of God’s laws, so the privations and calamities befalling Judah for forty years would be an education out of which hope and peace would come. The captive Israelites would thus be taught that only in association with the captive Jews could they look for shortened suffering and following blessing. “I have appointed thee each day for a year.” A reference to the judgment passed upon the tribes of Israel for their murmurings on account of the report of the spies. “After the number of the days in which ye searched the land, even forty days, each day for a year, shall ye bear your iniquities, even forty years” (Num_14:34). Thus past history is used to represent the future—what God has done in respect to sins God will do.
Eze_4:7. “Thine arm shall be uncovered.” The meaning of this figure, drawn from ancient habits in war, may be taken to be that action was to be proceeded with—that the allotted penalties were to be now begun. By this gesture and the preceding actions “thou shalt prophesy against it,” i.e., Jerusalem, as representative of the whole house of Israel.
Eze_4:8. “Behold I will lay bands upon thee” (cf. Eze_3:25). It was the Lord who put Ezekiel under constraint, and he could not act as a reprover till his mouth was opened by divine sanction. Was his constraint embodied in some form of disease, first in his left side and then in his right? Was it, like Paul’s thorn in the flesh, an “infirmity” which the Lord would not cause to depart? “And,” so it is said, “thou shalt not turn thee from one side to another.” There will be no averting of the punishment and no relaxation of it, “till thou hast ended the days of thy siege,” accomplished the full time of being a sign to Israel.
This paragraph exhibits one of the characteristics of Ezekiel as a prophet, viz., his tendency to describe surrounding and future circumstances by terms and events found in the byegone course of the Lord’s people. The fact of his exile, and apparently cast out of the covenant which carried the destinies of Israel, moved him to dwell upon the past dealings of God to such a degree that he thought and felt about all the matters which came before him in the light and forms of preceding times. But this tendency does not warrant us to believe that the present and future should go on in the very grooves in which the past had left its traces: rather it helps us to see that He who had begun His wise and good work for Israel would carry it on without change of direction. Ezekiel is to show that the austere and stern aspects of God had not been obliterated by the years in which He had borne the sins of His people patiently, and that the light of His countenance had not been forever withdrawn because of their failures in obedience to His will. The commentator who would treat Ezekiel’s prophecies as if they must be expounded literally and not with great freedom, is least of all likely to unfold their true interpretation. “The eye that can look through the shell into the kernel may see the future things of God’s administration mirrored in the past—not, indeed, the exact copy and image of what is to be, yet its essential character and necessary result.”—Fairbairn.
HOMILETICS.
GOD’S ACTION AGAINST INIQUITIES IN A PEOPLE
I. It is carried on by various agencies. The cloud, the fire, the implements, the composite beings of Ezekiel’s inaugurating vision, are all ruled from the sapphire throne, and Ezekiel is made as a central figure round which their operations proceed. By him and in him the Lord shows that pains and disabilities, soldiers and military materials, carry out His will and visit for iniquities. People professing His name must know that there is no such thing as chance, accident, human ambition, or forces apart from His directing word. The operator at the telegraph clock transmits the message which another person hands to him; so Ezekiel or the army of Nebuchadnezzar carries out what the righteous God has decided on. Whether the earth rejoices or trembles, everything that produces the one state or the other is “created” by the Lord who reigneth. For every sin there is not only an adapted penalty but a suitable agency for inflicting the penalty. How many a trouble, in State or Church or individuals, would lose its aspect of incomprehensibleness, if faith would but say, “The Lord is there and He is too wise to mistake.”
II. It is resolute. No secondary agent which He employs will fail in executing that whereto He has sent it. Ezekiel is laid under unrelaxing bands till he has fulfilled the time appointed, and the Chaldean forces will be kept persistently besieging Jerusalem till the sacred city is subjugated. The Lord will not be turned aside. He will not stop halfway to what He has purposed to effect. “Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, men’s hearts are fully set in them to do evil;” and should God refrain to strike when His righteousness and mercy have been set at nought, what would happen but that His people would become incredulous as to His sincerity in denouncing sin, and be uninstructed as to its real heinousness in His view? He does not spare the rod because of the mere crying of His children, since His hatred to sin and regard to holiness never change—change what else may. Whatsoever His hand and His counsel determined before to be done against His holy child, Jesus, He will accomplish, even though it be by wicked hands. God is faithful.
III. It is impartial. All who are involved in the common sin are the objects of suffering—rich and poor, free and bond, priest and prophet. Israel was His chosen people, Jerusalem the place where His honour dwelt; but great religious privileges did not shelter them from God’s “vengeance” when they neglected and rejected His ways. From the Churches of Christ, from the families of the godly, from private rooms and bended knees men have gone into paths of sin, and shall they escape? No; they shall be overtaken by suffering and woe in some form or other, as certainly, if not more so, than men who never heard of the Christ of God. Boast of being perfect in love, of divine right on your side, if you will; but be sure that no persuasion of sanctity or superiority will avert from you the messengers appointed by God to chastise you for evil yielded to.
IV. It is according to established order. Every generation of His children must learn that the evil He has hated He will always hate. What God has done God will do again when the same moral procedure is maintained by men. Our days of levity and hardness of heart and backslidings take us on to days of deadness and dishonour as indubitably as days of heat lead on to days of cold. We may see the consequences which shall follow our pride, our wrong companionships, our neglect of the ways of Christ, in the bitter griefs and pangs which befell Israel; the scenery in which we suffer, and the agencies which act there may be utterly unlike those of ancient Judea or Chaldea, but the Holy One of Israel is our Holy One. In the old centuries the judgment of God was according to truth: it is so in modern centuries. “Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever; a sceptre of righteousness is the sceptre of Thy kingdom.”
V. It is proportionate. It is the action of the Just One, and takes steps in proportion to the nature and persistence of the offences against Him. Light neglected or misused prepares for the greater condemnation. Sodom is under an easier punishment than Chorazin, Judah than Israel. Ezekiel could not apportion the just time of tribulation—that is ever the prerogative of the Almighty King—but Ezekiel could be made to state and display His holy sentences. No doubt He allows excuses where they can be legitimately made; but that is only another form of saying that He weighs the doings of His people in scales in which no undue element is present. Then He gives forth His decision for hundreds of years or for tens—for half a lifetime or for a few weeks. Not a day beyond what is right and fair will any transgressor be afflicted. What trust and submission should not be given to the God of all spirits!
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
F. W. Grant 1903 · Public Domain On v1 Section 4 (Eze 4:1-17; Eze 5:1-17).
Section 4 (Eze 4:1-17; Eze 5:1-17).
Delivered to the nations as worse than they: the four signs.
Read full note →
1. The language of parable is now taken up again, the significance of which is so fully declared to us by the Lord in relation to His own use of it (Mat 13:13). It is only the remnant from whom anything can now be expected. The call of the parable is to "him who hath ears to hear." And thus we have now four signs, in which the prophet is to address himself to those about him.
The first sign is a simple, but what a significant one! He is instructed to take a brick,* and lay it before him, and portray upon it a city -Jerusalem, in fact, and lay siege against it, and place battering rams against it round about. All simple enough, surely, in view of what was actually threatening the people at that time. But there is a deeper significance: "Take thou unto thee an iron plate, and set it for a wall of iron between thee and the city, and set thy face against it, and it shall be in siege; even thou shalt lay siege against it." A sign indeed this, for the prophet is the representative of God Himself, and it is God who is at work through these strange hostile hands of His people’s enemies. There is, as it were, indeed a wall of iron between the prophet and the city. The separation which their sins had caused is not too vividly pictured here. But more: for separation from God cannot be with any indifference on the part of Him who is the living God, ever moving in the activity of His own nature; and if He separates Himself from the people it is not simply to cast them off, but to "lay siege" Himself against them. In Jerusalem centre the hopes of the people and the promises of God. For Jerusalem to be in siege, and God, as seen in the attitude of the prophet, Himself to lay siege against it, is indeed a sign to the house of Israel which should stir them to the very depth.
{*The brick may suggest Babylon, as the tower of Babel (Gen 11:3) was made of bricks. It would thus suggest that Jerusalem had morally become assimilated to Babylon, and therefore would be subjugated by it. -S. Ridout.}
2. But another sign quickly follows. He is to lie upon his side, the left one, and lay the iniquity of the house of Israel upon it. He is to bear this 390 days, each day of penalty corresponding to a year of their iniquity. But this is not all. When he has accomplished this, he is to lie again upon his side, the right one, and now bear the iniquity of the house of Judah 40 days, each day once more given for a year. The siege of Jerusalem is through all, we may say, the object-lesson, and as he lies under the burden of their sin, his arm is to be uncovered, and his prophecy to be against it. He is not to turn from one side to the other until the days of the siege are accomplished.
What we have here has been a cause of great perplexity to all commentators. The separation between the house of Israel and the house of Judah has been supposed to refer, and quite naturally, to the two kingdoms, of Judah and of the ten tribes; and thus the 390 years have been attempted to be applied to the separate kingdom of Israel, already in the prophet’s time long and completely overthrown. The separate kingdom of the ten tribes lasted about 254 years, and that of Judah about 134 years, at least, afterwards. The lying upon the left side, which, according to the common use of the right hand for the south, might refer to the position of the northern kingdom (and which probably does refer to this), yet if it be taken as applying exclusively to Israel, as separate from Judah, breaks down entirely. There were no 390 years of the separate kingdom, and these cannot be read into it in any intelligible way. If you carry them back from the taking of Samaria by the Assyrians and the deportation of the people, they would reach into the times of the Judges; and thus it has been contended that the number of years can be only allegorically significant. This, however, surely seems impossible as an interpretation of what is here. The 390 days, a day for a year, is the time of the remembering of the sins of the people, which the prophet, as representative of the remnant according to God (and in this way inferring the attitude of God Himself), has been so long suffering under. The allegorical reckoning of the number 390 itself is hard to make out, and in order to justify it at all, the 40 years of Judah have sometimes been added to these, in order to reproduce, as it were, the 430 years which was the limit of Egyptian bondage; but such a reference confounds two periods which are certainly meant here to be distinguished, as well as the connection of the house of Israel with the one, and that of Judah with the other. But the years also must surely be years of sin, of actual sin which is provoking the punishment, and no 430 years have ever been marked out in this way at all.
What then are we to say with regard to it? It is plain that only the separate notice of the house of Judah here seems to require the application of the 390 years to the separate Ephraimitic kingdom. If this can be otherwise explained, then there is no reason why the 390 years should not be those of divine forbearance as to the nation as a whole; and if we date them from the separation of the kingdoms under Jeroboam to the fall of Jerusalem under Nebuchadnezzar, we have, as closely as possible, exactly this time. This separation was the break-up, under God, of a time of unexampled prosperity, and it was the break-out of man’s will at the same time; judgment thus already beginning while yet the long-suffering of God tempered it during all this period. The separation of the northern kingdom may thus have fully its place here, and be that which, as it were, weighed heavily on that side the nation as a whole, which never recovered itself from that great disaster. It is striking also that the actual siege of Jerusalem lasted for about the 390 days of the prophet’s burden. It lasted from the 10th day of the 10th month of the 9th year of Zedekiah to the 9th day of the 4th month of his 11th year; and this, says Schroeder, "can very simply be made to correspond by making a deduction for the temporary raising of the siege on account of the Egyptians" (Jer 37:5). The reference to the actual siege of Jerusalem is thus strictly in conformity with the actual fact.
With regard to the forty years of the house of Judah, the difficulties have been considered great. The symbolism of numbers has been very naturally invoked in this case, and there is no need at all to deny that there is a significance of this sort in them. Nevertheless it is impossible to make this the whole matter. But where are these 40 years then? The 390 having already run on from the beginning of Rehoboam’s reign to the fall of the city (thus including all Israel, not the ten tribes only), makes it impossible to put the period for Judah anywhere among these. It has been thought, therefore, that we must go back for them to the time of Solomon. Solomon’s reign was just forty years; it was a time, it is said, in which Judah had necessarily a special prominence. It was also a time in which the remarkable prosperity which God gave them tested them as to their real condition. The departure of the people into idolatry, Solomon himself drawn into it through his wives, was the sad answer to a test like this. Thus, it is considered, that this is what is pointed to, as significant of their whole history, and through which their captivity was already assured.
But, as already said, this application is entirely against the order here, in which the prophet is distinctly told that when he had accomplished the 390 days, each standing for a year, he was to lie again upon his side, the right one, to bear the iniquity of the house of Judah. This is emphasized, then, as coming after the injunction concerning the house of Israel. If, therefore, this period is to be reckoned chronologically at all (as everybody would say it should, but for the difficulty of finding it) we must go forward and not backward for its discovery.
Now it is undeniable that from the time of the destruction of the temple to its rebuilding, according to Ezr 3:8, there elapse just 40 years; and they have reference distinctly to Judah, whose captivity was then at an end.* The ten tribes never did return. Judah, it is true, only partially; nevertheless the temple was built once more, and the city; and here they were permitted to abide that according to the divine promise the Messiah might come to them. Accordingly the post-captivity prophets, especially Haggai and Zechariah, are full of the coming of Christ. Their very names point to this. Haggai means "festive;" Zechariah, "Jehovah has remembered." Those also who come forward to rebuild the temple, as Zerubbabel, the prince of Judah, and Joshua the son of Josedech, the high priest, are. according to the latter prophet, the double type of Christ as Priest and King. Thus the air is full of the rays of the coming dawn, and the very names breathe the music of it. All seems prepared; and in their prophecies the present is the prelude of a glorious future into which it seemed ready to develop. All seems prepared -except, alas, once more the people; and here the significance of the number puts its impress upon the result. Those 40 years of their captivity should indeed have convinced them where their only hope lay; and under the solemn teaching of men like Ezekiel, they should surely have received the sentence of death in themselves that they should not trust in themselves, but in God who raiseth the dead. To such grace as is in God, had they had hearts to receive it, no power upon earth could be an impediment. But the issue proved how little, in fact, they had learnt by the long story of their past; and Malachi, with whom the voice of prophecy closes, points once more to the needed separation of a remnant, to whom alone the Sun of Righteousness should arise with healing upon His wings. After this, therefore, their history is a mere blank. The prophetic voices cease; then a long silence, and the 40 years have proved, as far as the people are concerned, the determination of the whole matter.
{*The text of the notes present a difficulty which cannot be solved. The reference to Ezr 3:8 does not seem to help matters. Our beloved brother is no longer here to explain his meaning. It has therefore been thought best to let the text stand as he wrote it, and to add this note.
The following is suggested as a possible explanation in line with the author’s thought: The first deportation to Babylon was in B.C. 606 (2Ki 24:14). The second and main deportation was in B.C. 598 (2Ki 25:11). This was probably when Ezekiel was carried away -Eze 1:1-2. The Temple was destroyed (Jer 52:28-29) in the third deportation, B.C. 588. There seem to be two ways of counting the 70 years’ captivity: from the first deportation, 606 B.C., to the Edict of Cyrus (Ezr 1:1), B.C. 536; and from the destruction of the Temple, B.C. 588, to its rebuilding, B.C. 518. Thus there is a general as well as a specific meaning to these 70 years. If we consider them as general, not from one date to the other, we have, then, from 598 to 588, ten years in which Judah is not completely in captivity; and twenty years from 538 to 518, during which they are in their land. If these 30 years are deducted from the 70 we have the 40 of complete captivity which the prophet expressed. -S. Ridout.}
Christ comes indeed, as we know; comes to His own according to the promise, but only to be decisively rejected by them, so that they are finally scattered for the whole time in which, already for so long, the Jebusite, "the treader down," has held Jerusalem. Thus the significance of these 40 years is unmistakable; they are seen to be at once symbolical and chronological, and filling their proper place with regard to the 390 years at the close of which they come. There is no contradiction between a symbolical and a chronological import. God is constantly showing His control over human history in giving the facts of history such deeper significance.
3. The third sign follows -some features of which corroborate the view which has just been taken. The prophet is to take wheat and barley and beans and lentils and millet and spelt, and put this miscellaneous material into one vessel, and make bread of it according to the number of the days that he has been lying upon his side. But, notice, the limit is plainly given here as that of 390 days only, not 430 as we should have imagined. Thus there is a distinction of some sort plainly between this period and the 40 days following it. It says, "390 days shalt thou eat thereof." This was, as has already been said, probably at least, the exact time of the siege of the city, which according to the first sign given has fundamental relation to all that is here. The siege of the city is, on the part of the people, their bearing the iniquity of the previous time. Yet, as we know, this is not the whole of the matter. Scattered then among the nations by which they were led captive, they are, in fact, still bearing their iniquity before God; and this extension of the character of the siege to the time following is intimated in what we have here; for the unclean bread which they eat under the pressure of the siege is to be eaten also among the nations whither Jehovah drives them. Thus, while the days of the siege are distinguished in one sense from the period following. yet, in another, they are connected with it. Thus, the 40 years are distinguished from the time of siege, while yet some of the character of that time still attached to them. All seems thus plain enough and that which at first sight is a difficulty, brings in its solution the solution of other difficulties.
This third sign, indeed, shows the state of the people more than the distresses of the siege themselves do, for here is signified the destruction of their sanctification as a separate people. This polluted bread that is eaten among the Gentiles is no longer the consequence of being shut up within the walls of the besieged city. As we have already seen, they can have, after all, their Telabib by the desolating "river." and rally, alas, all too soon, from the hopelessness of such a condition as the siege of the city implies. But their new hopes only reveal more deeply their condition, despising as they do the chastening of the Lord, and building themselves up on hopes which, instead of encouraging them to a true separation of heart to God, practically reduce them in God’s sight to the level of the nations around them. In fact, the contamination of contact with the heathen, in more ways than their captivity would necessarily involve (for an Ezekiel and a Daniel were among t he captives too), is shown, as we have already seen, most signally on their return from captivity. If after their return they learned to build themselves up in a proud isolation, such as we find in the Rabbinism which soon began, and which found its perfect expression in the pretentious hypocrisy of Pharisaism, this was at the farthest extreme from any return to God. Their bread, in fact, become most thoroughly defiled, when, instead of the precious Word which God had given them, they taught "for commandments, the doctrines of men," and once more substituted for that Word by which men live, "statutes that were not good, and judgments whereby man could not live." For a remnant among those that had returned from Babylon it was a period in which there was a famine of the word of God itself; and their association with those that had returned from the captivity must have become a thing less endurable than the captivity itself.
4. A fourth sign closes the series here. As in the last we have already got beyond the siege of the city, so in the present we are manifestly beyond it, but with no revocation of the sentence upon them. Ezekiel was now to take a sharp sword, using it as a barber’s razor to put upon himself the brand of shame upon his head and beard -thus manifestly in the sight of all. This was forbidden to the priest (which Ezekiel was), and thus the loss of the priestly character is made apparent. But this enforced shaving of the hair is used with a further significance, to show the fate of Israel’s scattered multitudes, thus smitten. A third part was to be burnt in the midst of the city when the days of the siege were fulfilled, most evidently referring to the slaughter of the multitude when the city was taken. A third part was to be smitten about with the sword, the sword drawn out after them in the land of their captivity itself. The final third part was to be scattered to the wind, and of these, only a few in number were to be bound in the prophet’s skirts for preservation; while again even of these also some are taken and cast into the midst of the fire to be burned. It is the awful fire of the wrath of God which is thus going forth to all the house of Israel. The significance here is so plain that it hardly needs comment. There is, as we see, the sparing of a feeble remnant -alas, how feeble now! But this is all that even the voice of mercy has any longer to say to them.
5. We have now the summing up of the judgment in general, along with the solemn declaration of that for which the judgment comes. Jerusalem is still taken as the sign of the state of the people as a whole, the city in which the house of God was: to lose which was to lose the only place in which the atoning blood could be presented to God; so that for Jerusalem to be set aside was for the nation to be left to the full burden of its sins. But for what a Purpose had God set them in this place of privilege -this people alone in all the earth the recipient of divine revelations? In the midst of the nations, as we have seen abundantly, it should have been theirs to maintain a testimony for God amongst those that had turned their backs upon Him -a testimony which might appeal to every heart that sought God in the lands around. But what was the result? Israel had gone beyond the very nations themselves in wickedness, refusing His judgments and rebelling against His statutes; copying the manners of those from whom, because of their condition, God had separated them, they became all the more (as would necessarily be the case, for the abuse of their privileges) aliens from God and devoted to their abominations. God therefore had to make their judgment as unique as their iniquity had been. Even here the tenderness of His love is shown in the very announcement of His judgment; and we see indeed again the "appearance as of a Man upon the throne." "I will withdraw mine eye," He says, "that it may not spare thee." The eye affects the heart, and it is as if He said that, if He allowed Himself but to let His eye rest upon them, He could not bear to execute the judgment. This is the Heart behind the Hand; but the Hand does not on that account really falter in the carrying out of that which righteousness now so imperatively demands. If, on the one hand, He has a pitiful eye that would spare, yet on the other there is that in His character which makes Him speak of the wrath which He causes to rest upon them as that in which He will "comfort Himself."
Yet even here there is a lesson, as we know, for every susceptible heart amongst them, as there is a terrible lesson of holiness for the nations around. "They shall know that I, Jehovah, have spoken in my jealousy when I have accomplished my wrath upon them. And I will make thee a desolation and reproach among the nations that are round about thee, before the eyes of every passer by; and it shall be a reproach and a taunt and a warning and an astonishment to the nations that are round about thee." This is sealed again and again by the solemn asseveration: "I, Jehovah, have spoken."
F. W. Grant, The Numerical Bible (4th ed., 1903) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. R. Dummelow 1909 · Public Domain On v1 § 2. The Overthrow of the Jewish Kingdom Foretold…
§ 2. The Overthrow of the Jewish Kingdom Foretold (Ezekiel 4-7)
The great theme of the first part of Ezekiel's prophetic ministry was the certainty of the complete downfall of the Jewish state. Though Zedekiah had been set on the throne by Nebuchadrezzar after the first captivity, there was no hope for the kingdom. Zedekiah's reign was viewed by Ezekiel, as well as by Jeremiah, only as a temporary respite, to be followed by a second captivity which would bring the state to an end. Ezekiel 4-7 contain the first group of Ezekiel's prophecies to this effect. They are to be placed between the date of his prophetic call (June-July, 592 b.c.) and that of the next group of prophecies (August-September, 591 b.c.). The present group includes a series of symbolic prophecies of the siege and captivity of Jerusalem (Ezekiel 4, 5), a prophecy against the mountains of Israel (Ezekiel 6), and a description, partly in the form of a poetic lament or dirge, of the final desolation of the land (Ezekiel 7).
Read full note →
Symbolic Actions Representing Jerusalem's Siege and Captivity
Ezekiel is commanded to perform four remarkable actions setting forth the coming siege withits hardships, and the approaching captivity with its evils. It is uncertain whether these actions were literally performed or not. Symbolic methods of this-kind were certainly used by various prophets, but some of those in Ezekiel 4 are so extraordinary that many suppose that they were not actually carried out, but only imagined and described. The explanation of the second and third symbols is given along with the account of the symbols themselves. The first and fourth are explained more fully in Eze_5:5-17.
(a) A Symbol of the Siege (Eze_4:1-3)
Ezekiel was told to draw a representation of a city on a slab of clay, and to conduct a mimic siege of it. In this action the prophet played the part of the enemies of Jerusalem, and especially of God, who was now the great Adversary of the city.
1. A tile] or 'brick,' a slab of clay, such as the Babylonians used for inscriptions and sculptures in relief.
2. A mount] an embankment raised in ancient warfare by besiegers to enable them to approach the top of a city wall.
3. Pan] RM 'flat plate,' such as was used for baking (Lev_6:21; Lev_7:9). This may be taken as a symbol either of the stubbornness of the defence or of the rigour of the siege. Or it may represent the hopeless barrier which now separated God from His people. A sign to the house of Israel] The symbol was intended to teach those who witnessed or heard of it that the stern reality which it represented was close at hand.
(b) Symbols of the duration of Siege and Captivity (Eze_4:4-8)
Ezekiel was directed to lie on his left side for a fixed number of days (390), and then on his right side for another fixed number (40). The whole time was supposed to represent the length of the siege of Jerusalem, and the two numbers of days were supposed to correspond to the years of the respective captivities of Israel and Judah. The constrained posture of the prophet was a symbol of the loss of freedom awaiting the people.
4. The house of Israel] used here and in Eze_4:5 in the limited sense of the northern kingdom of the Ten Tribes.
5. Three hundred and ninety days] This is a difficult number. Ezekiel expected the captivities of Israel and Judah to end together (Eze_37:15.). As Israel's captivity was to be 350 years longer than Judah's, it must have begun 350 years sooner. The captivity of Judah may be dated (a) from the first captivity (597 b.c.), or (b) from the second captivity (586 b.c.): The latter was still in the future at the time of this prophecy, and would not be a fixed date for Ezekiel, who would therefore probably reckon from 597 b.c., which he elsewhere calls 'our captivity' (Eze_40:1). The captivity of Israel is most naturally reckoned (a1) from the fall of Samaria (721 b.c., 2Ki_17:6); but it may possibly be calculated (b1) from the first ravages of Tiglath-pileser (734 b.c., 2Ki_15:29). From (a1) to (a) gives 124 years, and from (b1) to (a) 137 years. Taking (b) instead of (a) for the captivity of Judah, these numbers become respectively 135 and 148. The LXX has 190 instead of 390, which would give 150 instead of 350 for the difference between the two captivities, and this would agree approximately with the actual elates, especially with (b1) to (b). The only way to reach anything like 350 years is to count Israel's captivity from the revolt of the Ten Tribes (939 b.c.). This was 342 years before (a) and 353 years before (b), but it is unlikely that Ezekiel should have given the time of Israel's sin and only the time of Judah's punishment. Another explanation is that since 390 + 40 = 430, Ezekiel represented the united captivities of the two kingdoms as equal in length to the bondage in Egypt (Exo_12:40), and that of Judah as equal to the period of wandering in the wilderness (Num_14:34). The latter v. is certainly closely parallel to this passage, and possibly we have here an ideal and artificial scheme of numbers with no relation to actual historic dates. If a historic explanation be preferred, 350 (or 150) must be taken not as an exact, but as a round number.
6. Forty days] the years of Judah's captivity and of Babylon's supremacy (Eze_29:11-13). The return of the exiles took place about 538 b.c., fifty-nine years after the first and forty-eight years after the second captivity. If the number 40 is not taken from Num_14:34 (see the note above), it is a round number, meaning 'more than a generation.'
7. The siege of Jerusalem] the mimic siege described in Eze_4:1-3. The first and second symbolic actions were to be carried on together. Thine arm.. uncovered] a threatening gesture.
8. Bands] By some divine restraint Ezekiel would be prevented from turning. The days of thy siege] The number 430 represented the days of the siege of Jerusalem as well as the sum of the years of the two captivities. The actual siege lasted almost exactly a year and a half (2Ki_25:1-3; Jer_39:1-2).
(c) Symbols of Scarcity during the Siege and of Defilement in Captivity (Eze_4:9-17)
Ezekiel was commanded to prepare bread from a mixture of various kinds of grain, and to live on scanty rations of meat and drink while he lay upon his side. This was in token of the scarcity which the inhabitants of Jerusalem would suffer during the siege. The bread was to be baked with loathsome fuel, as a sign of the banishment of Israel to an unclean foreign land.
9. Wheat, etc.] a mixture of all sorts of grain, fine and coarse, symbolising the poor fare which would be used in Jerusalem during the siege.
10. Twenty shekels] eight or nine ounces.
11. The sixth part of an hin] less than a quart.
12. Bread thus baked would be unclean (Lev_5:3; Lev_7:21).
13. Eat their defiled bread] RV 'eat their bread unclean.' Foreign lands were regarded as unclean in themselves (Amo_7:17), and, besides, all food eaten in them would be unclean, because it could not be consecrated by offering a portion to God in the Temple: see Hos_9:3, Hos_9:4.
14. Ezekiel, as a priest, was peculiarly sensitive about ceremonial defilement.
15. A partial mitigation of the symbol for the prophet's sake. The dung of domestic animals was often used as fuel, and does not seem to have defiled the food cooked upon it. Though the symbol was modified, it was not implied that the defilement of captivity, signified by the fuel first prescribed, would be any the less.
(d) Symbols of Three Calamities awaiting Jerusalem (Eze_5:1-4)
In the previous symbols Ezekiel himself personated both the besiegers and the besieged. Now the hair of his head and beard is made to represent the people of Jerusalem. He is bidden to shave it off and divide it into three parts. One of these he is to burn, as an emblem of those who will die of pestilence and famine; another he is to smite around with a sword, as a symbol of those who will be slain; while the third part he is to scatter to the wind, as representing those who will go into captivity. A few hairs are to be reserved as an emblem of the pious remnant; but even these are partly to be burned, in token of the trials the remnant will endure.
1. A sharp knife.. a barber's razor] RV 'a sharp sword, as a barber's razor.' For thereof] RY 'therefrom.' The clause thus introduced is obscure. The meaning seems to be that the punishment of Jerusalem will extend to the whole nation.
(e) Explanation of the First and Fourth Symbols (Eze_5:5-17)
The pictured city is Jerusalem, and God is her great Adversary (Eze_5:5-8). Her unparalleled sins deserve an unparalleled punishment. Famine and pestilence, the sword, and captivity await her people. Only thus can God's righteous wrath be appeased (Eze_5:9-17).
5. This] the city depicted on the tile (Eze_4:1-3). In the midst of the nations] God gave Jerusalem a great opportunity of displaying His righteousness and truth to the world. Her position, near the highway between Asia and Africa, was peculiarly central and conspicuous.
7. Multiplied] RV 'are turbulent.' Neither.. my judgments.. the judgments (RV 'ordinances') of the nations] Israel had been worse than the heathen, who had at least been faithful to their own gods: see Jer_2:10, Jer_2:11.
8. In the sight of the nations] Punishment must be as conspicuous as the lost opportunity.
11. Defiled my sanctuary] This charge is substantiated at length in Ezekiel 8.
13. Cause my fury to rest] RV 'satisfy my fury.'
J. R. Dummelow, A Commentary on the Holy Bible (Macmillan, 1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On v1 The symbolic actions during the prophet’s dumbness were testimonies…
take
The symbolic actions during the prophet’s dumbness were testimonies to the past wickedness and chastisement of the house of Israel (the whole nation), and prophetic of a coming siege. They therefore intermediate between the siege of 2Ki 24:10-16 at which time Ezekiel was carried to Babylon, and the siege of 2Ki 25:1-11 eleven years later.
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Arno C. Gaebelein 1922 · Public Domain On v1 Eze 4:1-3. The word tile means “brick.” They were…
Eze 4:1-3. The word tile means “brick.” They were used by the Babylonians to preserve their records, and many have been found marked with building plans, etc. The sign of the tile foretells the siege of Jerusalem and Jehovah’s opposition against the city.
Eze 4:4-8. While in the preceding sign Jehovah’s action against Jerusalem was pictured, in this new sign a portrayal is given of the punishment which should come upon the inhabitants of the city. In his own person Ezekiel had to experience the great degradation and judgment which was to fall upon all the people. The critical school has invented all kinds of theories to explain, or rather to explain away, the divine command given to the prophet. They say that probably Ezekiel suffered from some form of epilepsy or catalepsy; they also point out the physical impossibility for a man to lie continuously for 390 days on his left side. But it says nowhere that the Prophet should be in that position day and night during these allotted days. The 390 and 40 days are symbolical. They mean years, giving us a total of 430 years. This reminds us of Exo 12:40-41, where the sojourning of the children of Israel in Egypt is given as 430 years.
Read full note →
But the 390 years apply more specifically to Israel, the period of unfaithfulness of the ten tribes, beginning with Jeroboam. 1Ki 11:31). The 40 years describe the unfaithfulness of the house of Judah. The captives were reminded by the prophet’s position of the shameful history of their long apostasy. But more than that. The Lord said to Ezekiel: “I have laid upon thee the years of their iniquity... so shalt thou bear the iniquity of the house of Israel.” The sign, therefore, pictured the actual punishment which was now to fall upon the nation.
Eze 4:9-17. Both the sign of the famine and the bread baked in an unclean manner predict the horrors of famine in connection with the siege of Jerusalem, and how the people in the subsequent captivity among the Gentiles should live in defilement.
Arno C. Gaebelein, The Annotated Bible (1913–1922) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On vv1, 9 The Symbol of the Siege
The Symbol of the Siege
v. 1. Thou also, son of man, take thee a tile, very likely a Babylonian brick, a foot square and about five inches thick, and lay it before thee, while the clay was still soft, and portray upon it the city, even Jerusalem, drawing the map of the Jewish capital with the usual pencil, or style,
Read full note →
v. 2. and lay siege against it, and build a fort against it, very likely a watch-tower or bulwark, which permitted the invading army to observe every movement of the besieged, and cast a mount against it, the usual earthworks with their trenches; set the camp also against it, to surround the city on all sides, and set battering-rams against it round about, the latter being logs of hard wood, with heads of wrought iron. All this was to be shown in the sketch prepared by the prophet, the map thus emphasizing the fact that Jerusalem would be besieged.
v. 3. Moreover, take thou unto thee an iron pan, such as were used in Jewish households, as well as in the Temple, and set it for a wall of iron between thee and the city, as representing the divine decree regarding the Chaldean invasion; and set thy face against it, in stern opposition, and it shall be besieged, and thou shalt lay siege against it. This shall be a sign to the house of Israel, to the people of God, formerly identical with the covenant nation.
v. 4. Lie thou also upon thy left side, in another symbolical act, and lay the iniquity of the house of Israel upon it, like a sickness which causes the diseased person to lie in one position without shifting; according to the number of the days that thou shalt lie upon it thou shalt bear their iniquity, not in a vicarious, but in a symbolical act.
v. 5. For I have laid upon thee the years of their iniquity, that Ezekiel was, figuratively, bearing their guilt, according to the number of the days, three hundred and ninety days, a number of years which may refer to the time of the Egyptian bondage, or as simply strokes of divine chastisement; so shalt thou bear the iniquity of the house of Israel.
v. 6. And when thou hast accomplished them, having fulfilled the three hundred and ninety days typical of the bearing of Israel’s burden, lie again on thy right side, and thou shalt bear the iniquity of the house of Judah forty days, a number which may refer to various periods in the history of the people or, as some think, to the last forty years of the Egyptian bondage, which were at the same time the years which gave Moses his test for leadership; I have appointed thee each day for a year, that is, one day of the symbolical act stood for a whole year in the actual history to which it referred.
v. 7. Therefore thou shalt set thy face toward the siege of Jerusalem, which was always before the prophet in the sketch which he had drawn, and thine arm, namely, the free arm in either case, shall be uncovered, bare to the shoulder, to have free use of it at all times, and thou shalt prophesy against it, both by his symbolical acting and by proclaiming the Lord’s message.
v. 8. And, behold, I will lay bands upon thee, holding him down, causing him to hold out with patience in the difficult feat proposed, and thou shalt not turn thee from one side to another, to relieve the tediousness of lying on one side alone, till thou hast ended the days of thy siege, the fulfilling of the time indicating the conquest of the city. No matter in what way God makes known His will, the outstanding fact is that it will certainly be fulfilled, for not one of his words may fail.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv1, 4, 6, 9, 12, 14, 16 General Information:
General Information:
Yahweh continues speaking to Ezekiel. He tells Ezekiel to take a brick and dirt and pieces of wood and act as if he were Yahweh destroying the city of Jerusalem.
Read full note →
son of man
"son of a human being" or "son of humanity." God calls Ezekiel this to emphasize that Ezekiel is only a human being. God is eternal and powerful, but humans are not. See how you translated this in Ezekiel 2:1. AT: "mortal person" or "human"
carve the city of Jerusalem
You may need to make explicit that Ezekiel is to carve a picture. AT: "carve a picture of the city of Jerusalem" (See: Assumed Knowledge and Implicit Information)
lay siege against it
"surround the city in order to capture it"
build forts against it
"build strong walls against it." The walls would keep people from leaving the city.
Raise up an assault ramp against it
"Build a ramp outside of it for the enemies to get inside." Jerusalem had a wall around it to protect the people inside. The enemies could only get inside if they had a ramp to climb up over the wall.
Place battering rams all around it
"Set around it huge poles people would use to break down the gates and get inside." "Battering rams" are large trees or poles that many men in an army would pick up and hit against a wall or door so they could break it down and get inside.
set your face against it
This is a command to stare at the model of the city as a symbol of punishing the city. AT: "stare at the city" or "stare at the city so that it will be harmed" (See: Symbolic Action)
set your face
Here "face" is a metonym for attention or gaze, and "set your face" refers to literally staring at something. (See: Metonymy)
the house of Israel
The word "house" is a metonym for the family that lives in the house, in this case the Israelites, the descendants of Jacob over many years. See how you translated this in Ezekiel 3:1. AT: "the Israelites" or "the Israelite people group" (See: Metonymy)
translationWords
Son of Man
Jerusalem
siege
face
sign
house
Israel
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 9, 12, 14 4:1–24:27 In words and in mimed actions, the prophet…
4:1–24:27 In words and in mimed actions, the prophet Ezekiel declared the certainty of impending judgment on Jerusalem. God’s people, having broken the terms of the Lord’s covenant with them at Mount Sinai, now faced the curses of death and destruction that were attached to that covenant. Only after these curses had taken effect could there be any hope for the future.
4:1–7:27 These chapters focus on words and actions that proclaimed doom to the city of Jerusalem (chs 4–5) and to the surrounding land of Judah (chs 6–7).
Read full note →
4:1-2 The first of Ezekiel’s sign acts (see “Prophetic Sign Acts” Theme Note) was to create a detailed tableau depicting Jerusalem . . . under siege.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.