Ezekiel 4King James Version
Ezekiel acts out prophetic signs. He draws a picture of Jerusalem on a tile and lays siege works against it. He lies on his left side for three hundred and ninety days, bearing the iniquity of Israel. Then on his right side for forty days, bearing the iniquity of Judah. He eats bread baked on cow dung for fuel and weighs out his water.
God commands Ezekiel to perform a series of sign-acts that enact Jerusalem's siege. He draws the city on a tile, sets iron between himself and it, and then lies on his left side for 390 days bearing the iniquity of Israel, then 40 days on his right for Judah. He is to bake bread over cow dung (God agrees to this rather than human dung) and eat rationed food and water, enacting the coming famine.
Ezekiel's body becomes a living theater: the siege, the years of sin, the rationed food, all acted out in full view of the exiles before Jerusalem falls.
4: "Lie thou also upon thy left side, and lay the iniquity of the house of Israel upon it: according to the number of the days that thou shalt lie upon it thou shalt bear their iniquity." Prophetic embodiment at its most extreme: years of national sin compressed into days of bodily endurance.
593 to roughly 588 BC, Ezekiel lying on his side in a public place where the exiles can see him. He has a tile map of Jerusalem in front of him, tiny siege works all around it. The bread smells wrong and the water ration is about eight cups a day. He is a living visual aid in a camp of people who still think Jerusalem will be fine.
Ezekiel, whose body bears the weight of the sign; the LORD who designs the performance; the exiles who watch; Jerusalem, portrayed on a clay tablet.
This chapter raises the question that haunts Ezekiel scholarship: was Ezekiel literally immobile for over a year, or is this a visionary sequence? Either way, the point is that the coming judgment is not abstract. The prophet absorbs the cost in his own flesh before the city does. It is the most physical of all prophetic commissions.
For when you sense a disaster building that no one around you believes is real. Ezekiel performs the truth with his body because words have stopped working. Sometimes the message must be lived out.
1Thou also, son of man, take thee a tile, and lay it before thee, and pourtray upon it the city, even Jerusalem:
2And lay siege against it, and build a fort against it, and cast a mount against it; set the camp also against it, and set battering rams against it round about.
3Moreover take thou unto thee an iron pan, and set it for a wall of iron between thee and the city: and set thy face against it, and it shall be besieged, and thou shalt lay siege against it. This shall be a sign to the house of Israel.
4Lie thou also upon thy left side, and lay the iniquity of the house of Israel upon it: according to the number of the days that thou shalt lie upon it thou shalt bear their iniquity.
5For I have laid upon thee the years of their iniquity, according to the number of the days, three hundred and ninety days: so shalt thou bear the iniquity of the house of Israel.
6And when thou hast accomplished them, lie again on thy right side, and thou shalt bear the iniquity of the house of Judah forty days: I have appointed thee each day for a year.
7Therefore thou shalt set thy face toward the siege of Jerusalem, and thine arm shall be uncovered, and thou shalt prophesy against it.
8And, behold, I will lay bands upon thee, and thou shalt not turn thee from one side to another, till thou hast ended the days of thy siege.
9Take thou also unto thee wheat, and barley, and beans, and lentiles, and millet, and fitches, and put them in one vessel, and make thee bread thereof, according to the number of the days that thou shalt lie upon thy side, three hundred and ninety days shalt thou eat thereof.
10And thy meat which thou shalt eat shall be by weight, twenty shekels a day: from time to time shalt thou eat it.
11Thou shalt drink also water by measure, the sixth part of an hin: from time to time shalt thou drink.
12And thou shalt eat it as barley cakes, and thou shalt bake it with dung that cometh out of man, in their sight.
13And the LORD said, Even thus shall the children of Israel eat their defiled bread among the Gentiles, whither I will drive them.
14Then said I, Ah Lord GOD! behold, my soul hath not been polluted: for from my youth up even till now have I not eaten of that which dieth of itself, or is torn in pieces; neither came there abominable flesh into my mouth.
15Then he said unto me, Lo, I have given thee cow's dung for man's dung, and thou shalt prepare thy bread therewith.
16Moreover he said unto me, Son of man, behold, I will break the staff of bread in Jerusalem: and they shall eat bread by weight, and with care; and they shall drink water by measure, and with astonishment:
17That they may want bread and water, and be astonied one with another, and consume away for their iniquity.