Ezekiel 4

1-16 The Siege of Jerusalem Portrayed

• God tells Ezekiel, “Oh mortal,” to build a replica [or draw a map] of a Jerusalem with a siege wall, a ramp, camps all around, and battering rams as a sign of Israel.
• He is to place an iron plate as a wall between him and the city, as if he is the one besieging the city.
• He is to lie first on his left side for 390 days, the number of years Israel will be punished. Commentators disagree as to whether this was literal or symbolic. I tend to think he physically did it; otherwise how could he “bear their punishment,” experience their siege? Such an act would also have caused him to get a lot of attention, which was the point of the exercise. Per Matthew Henry, 390 was the number of years from the beginning of Israel’s apostasy under Jeroboam to the destruction of Jerusalem.
• Then he is to lie on his right side 40 days, the number of years Judah will be punished. Again, per Matthew Henry, this represents the last 40 years before Judah is carried into captivity.
• He will be held there by cords so that he cannot turn from one side to the other.
• For food, he is to prepare a mixture of grains and legumes (a coarse mixture we would probably feed to cattle) and eat 20 shekels a day (about 10 ounces) as a barley cake at fixed times, and drink one-sixth of a hin of water (about 3 cups) at fixed times, baking the barley cake on human dung. I'm not sure how he was supposed to prepare this food while lying on his side. Did someone bake it for him? Did he do it beforehand? Would barley cakes keep for over a year? If it were baked, it might.
  
• Ezekiel protests: “Lord, I have never eaten anything unclean.” God relents and allows him to have cow’s dung for fuel. According to Deuteronomy 23:12-14, human excrement was indecent and was to be buried outside the camp.
• God tells Ezekiel that likewise Jerusalem will eat bread by weight and water by measure and will waste away.