Ezekielchapter 4
17 verses · Ezekiel · 593 to 571 BC · The Prophets
Then take an iron plate and set it up as an iron wall between yourself and the city. Turn your face toward it so that it is under siege, and besiege it. This will be a sign to the house of Israel.
Introduction
Ezekiel, The Prophets, Ezekiel Overview.
Ezekiel was an exiled priest who, for a season, preached with his body more than with his voice. His neighbours in the settlement were expecting to go home within two years, because other prophets kept promising it. This chapter is a set of instructions for a public act that the whole village could watch day after day. Listen for the ordinary things he is told to use, each taken from the life of a Babylonian town. Count the days, weigh the food, and ask what the act says without any words at all.
Context
- Who
- Exiles who expected to be home within two years, because their prophets kept telling them so
- What
- The prophet acts out the siege of Jerusalem with a brick, lies on his sides for the years of the people's guilt, and eats the rationed bread of a starving city.
- Where
- The open ground before the prophet's house at Tel Abib, where the siege was acted in view of his neighbours.
- When
- About 593 BC, some five years before the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem began in 588 BC.
- Why
- To show the exiles, in a form they could not argue with, that Jerusalem would be besieged and its food would run out.
Historical context
The brick is the most ordinary object in Babylonia. Walls, houses, temples and city gates were all built of mud brick, and a fresh brick was a soft clay slab about a foot square before it dried. Scribes drew maps and building plans on exactly such tablets, an actual clay tablet from Nippur preserves a scaled street map of that city. Ezekiel scratches Jerusalem onto one and lays siege to it in miniature.
Show the rest of the historical context, 3 more paragraphs
The siege props are accurate to the last item. Attackers threw up an earth ramp against the weakest stretch of wall, built a siege wall around the city to stop anyone slipping out with food, dug in at camps, and brought up the ram, a heavy beam under a hide-covered shed. Assyrian palace reliefs of the capture of Lachish in Judah show all of it in one picture: ramp, ram, camp, and the people going out into exile.
The iron griddle is a kitchen object. Flat iron or pottery plates were used for baking cakes over coals. Set on its edge between the prophet and the little city, it makes a wall that nothing gets through, including prayer.
The food ration is famine arithmetic. About eight ounces of bread a day and roughly a pint and a half of water, weighed and measured out, is what a besieged city eats near the end. The loaf is made of wheat, barley, beans, lentils, millet and spelt all mixed, nobody bakes bread that way by choice; you do it when you are scraping every bin in the house into one bowl. Dried dung was and is the ordinary cooking fuel where firewood is scarce, but the substitution God first names would have made the bread ritually filthy, and Ezekiel the priest protests until it is changed to cow dung.
Significance
The exiles were being told by other prophets that Babylon would break within two years and the temple vessels would come home. Ezekiel goes outside, builds a toy Jerusalem, and lies down beside it for well over a year.
Show the rest of the significance, 1 more paragraph
It is a message that cannot be argued with because it is not spoken. Every neighbour walking to the canal saw it. Jerusalem is going to be surrounded, the food is going to run out, and the man acting it out is a priest who is not enjoying himself.
This chapter in Jewish lifeWhat this chapter is in Jewish life and reading.
What is done
The site's table of synagogue readings ties no weekly portion and no Haftarah to this chapter. Probed for this lane, src/lib/hebraic/readings.ts printed parashot 0 and haftarah uses 0 for Ezekiel 4, and no festival reading for the book. The table holds the Haftarah of each weekly portion and the six books read whole on a feast or a fast. Across chapters 1 to 24 of Ezekiel the same probe found a Haftarah only in chapters 20 and 22.
How it is read
Rashi is the main commentator on this chapter in the corpus. He is quoted here from The Judaica Press complete Tanach with Rashi, translated by A. J. Rosenberg, which Sefaria reports as CC-BY. The translation is modern, so every quotation from it is fifty words or fewer.
The brick is Jerusalem. Malbim, in the Jerusalem Anthology translated by Rabbi Mike Feuer and reported CC-BY, reads it as a teaching that the city stands only by the will of the Lord. In and of herself, he writes, "she is just a raw, amorphous brick without any form" (Malbim on Ezekiel 4:1:1). Rashi describes the siege mound and the stone-throwing engine of the second verse as the tools of a real siege (Rashi on Ezekiel 4:2:1, 4:2:2).
The days on each side are years of sin. Rashi reports Seder Olam, that "Israel sinned for three hundred and ninety years from the time they entered the Land until the ten tribes were exiled therefrom" (Rashi on Ezekiel 4:5:2). The forty days are the forty years in which "the house of Judah sinned, from the time that the ten tribes were exiled until Jerusalem was destroyed" (Rashi on Ezekiel 4:6:1). The left side is Samaria and the right side is Judah, because Judah lies in the south of the land (Rashi on Ezekiel 4:6:2).
Rashi reads the lying on the side as a share in God's grief. The prophet bears the pain, "and you will atone for their iniquity since the retribution that I say I will bring upon them is painful to you" (Rashi on Ezekiel 4:4:1). The mixed bread is "A sign of the famine that will be upon them in the days of the siege" (Rashi on Ezekiel 4:9:1). The weighed food and measured water show a people who "eat with a measure and drink with a measure" (Rashi on Ezekiel 4:10:1).
The corpus carries 1 note on this chapter without an English text, marked linked. Radak's note stands at 4:4:1. It stands cited and unquoted, because Sefaria holds no English version of the ref.
What the rabbis say
The corpus carries 40 rabbinic locators on the verses of this chapter, 9 filed under the Talmud and 31 under the Midrash. It carries the text of none, so each is cited by ref here and never quoted or paraphrased. The verse numbers are the Hebrew ones the corpus prints.
On verse 3 it holds Berakhot 32b:7, Ein Yaakov (Glick Edition), Berakhot 5:6, Ein Yaakov (Glick Edition), Berakhot 5:7 and Ein Yaakov, Berakhot 5:12. It also holds Midrash Lekach Tov on Song of Songs 5:5:2 and Yalkut Shimoni on Nach 343:2. On verse 4 it holds Ein Yaakov (Glick Edition), Sanhedrin 4:22, Ein Yaakov, Sanhedrin 4:29, Midrash Tannaim on Deuteronomy 33:3:15, Sanhedrin 39a:12 and Sifrei Devarim 344:5. It also holds Yalkut Shimoni on Torah 354:2 and Yalkut Shimoni on Torah 951:26. On verse 5 it holds Seder Olam Rabbah 26:1.
On verse 6 it holds Yalkut Shimoni on Torah 709:11. On verse 9 it holds Ein Yaakov, Eiruvin 7:2, Eruvin 81a:14, Pesikta DeRav Kahana 8:4, Pesikta Rabbati 18:1 and Yalkut Shimoni on Torah 643:17. On verse 11 it holds Midrash Tehillim 10:10, Tractate Kallah Rabbati 8:4 and Vayikra Rabbah 21:7. On verse 12 it holds Eruvin 81a:15, Eruvin 81a:16, Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael, Tractate Pischa 14:12, Midrash Sekhel Tov, Shemot 12:39:2 and Vayikra Rabbah 28:6. It also holds Yalkut Shimoni on Torah 209:2.
On verse 13 it holds Bereshit Rabbati, Parashat Vayera 27, Ein Yaakov (Glick Edition), Sotah 1:6, Ein Yaakov, Sotah 1:9 and Midrash Tanchuma Buber, Vayera 43:1. It also holds Midrash Tanchuma, Vayera 21:2 and Otzar Midrashim, Midrashim of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, Chapter of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai 4. On verse 14 it holds Chullin 37b:5, Chullin 44b:4, Ein Yaakov (Glick Edition), Chullin 2:1 and Ein Yaakov, Khullin 2:3. On verse 15 it holds Tractate Soferim 7:4.
What each of them teaches is a saying of the rabbis, and is reported as theirs wherever this site quotes one. The quotations wait on a fetch that carries the text.
Sources: Malbim, Malbim on Ezekiel 4:1:1, Rabbi Mike Feuer, Jerusalem Anthology, reported CC-BY; Rashi, Rashi on Ezekiel 4:2:1 to 4:10:1, The Judaica Press complete Tanach with Rashi, translated by A. J. Rosenberg, reported CC-BY; Radak, Radak on Ezekiel 4:4:1, cited by ref only: Sefaria holds no English version of the ref; The Sefaria corpus, scripts/data/sources/sefaria/ezekiel/4.json, the 40 Talmud and Midrash locators on the verses of this chapter; The site's own files, src/lib/hebraic/readings.ts, probed for Ezekiel 4: parashot 0, haftarah uses 0, no festival reading for the book.
The heads below are this chapter's scenes. The numbered points under each are its verses.
A brick, a siege, and an iron pan
Ezekiel 4:1-3
take a brick: Ezekiel is to “take a brick,” “draw on it the city of Jerusalem,” and set against it “a siege wall.” He turns his face toward the city to “besiege it.” The act is named before any word explains it: “This will be a sign to the house of Israel.”
Ezekiel 4:1
“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.”
2 more voices on this verseWhat preachers and commentators have said about this verse, in their own words.
Ezekiel 4:1
“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.”
Ezekiel 4:1
“It was Jerusalem's honour that while she kept her integrity God had graven her upon the palms of his hands ( Isa. xlix. 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.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
place battering rams around it on all sides: The drawn city is put under siege: a siege wall, a ramp, camps and battering rams on all sides. Adam Clarke calls this the earliest account of the battering ram, a long beam with a head of brass, hung by chains. Ezekiel acts out what he foretells.
Ezekiel 4:2
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. 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)reformed
1 more voice on this verse
Ezekiel 4:2
“Battering rams - כרים carim. This is the earliest account we have of this military engine. It was a long beam with a head of brass, like the head and horns of a ram, whence its name. It was hung by chains or ropes, between two beams, or three legs, so that it could admit of being drawn backward and forward some yards.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
an iron wall between yourself and the city: An iron plate stands as a wall between Ezekiel and the drawn city, with his face set toward it. Albert Barnes compares Assyrian carvings of sieges that show a shield set on the ground with archers behind it. The whole scene is a sign to the house of Israel.
Ezekiel 4:3
“An iron pan - Another figure in the coming siege. On Assyrian sculptures from Nimroud and Kouyunjik there are sieges of cities with “forts, mounts, and rams;” and together with these we see a kind of shield set up on the ground, behind which archers are shooting. Such a shield would be represented by the “flat plate” (margin). Ezekiel was directed to take such a plate (part of his household furniture) and place it between him and the representation of the city.”
2 more voices on this verse
Ezekiel 4:3
“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, Matt. xiii. They would not understand what was plain, and therefore shall be taught by that which is difficult; and herein the Lord was righteous.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Ezekiel 4:3
“His instrument of separating them from him, as one impossible to burst through. set . . . face against it--inexorably (Ps 34:16). The exiles envied their brethren remaining in Jerusalem, but exile is better than the straitness of a siege.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Lying on his side, a day for a year
Ezekiel 4:4-6
lie down on your left side: Ezekiel is to lie “on your left side” for “390 days,” then “on your right side” for “40 days” with “a day for each year.” The text gives the numbers without naming the events they measure, and Keil notes that the older writers already disagreed over which years are meant.
Ezekiel 4:4
“Lie thou also upon thy left side - It appears that all that is mentioned here and in the following verses was done, not in idea, but in fact. The prophet lay down on his left side upon a couch to which he was chained, Eze 4:6, for three hundred and ninety days; and afterwards he lay in the same manner, upon his right side, for forty days. And thus was signified the state of the Jews, and the punishment that was coming upon them. 1. The prophet himself represents the Jews. 2. His lying, their state of depression.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
2 more voices on this verse
Ezekiel 4:4
“Lie thou also upon thy left side,.... Some think this was not in reality, but in vision, as Kimchi observes; and so Maimonides (c); and in like manner they understand his eating and drinking by measures and preparing food, as he is directed in a following part of this chapter: but others are of opinion that all this was really done. The reasons given on both sides are not despicable.”
Ezekiel 4:4
“Also the right was more honorable than the left: so Judah as being the seat of the temple, was more so than Israel. bear the iniquity--iniquity being regarded as a burden; so it means, "bear the punishment of their iniquity" (Nu 14:34). A type of Him who was the great sin-bearer, not in mimic show as Ezekiel, but in reality (Isa 53:4, 6, 12).”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
according to the number of years of their iniquity: God assigns 390 days, one for each year of the iniquity of Israel, and Ezekiel is to bear it. Readers count the years in different ways. Wesley starts them at Solomon's turn to idolatry and ends them in the time of Zedekiah, while others count from the revolt of Jeroboam.
Ezekiel 4:5
“According to the number of the days - Or, “to be to thee as a number of days (even as)” etc. Compare the margin reference. Some conceive that these “days” were the years during which Israel and Judah sinned, and date in the case of Israel from Jeroboam’s rebellion to the time at which Ezekiel wrote (circa 390 years); and in the case of Judah from Josiah’s reformation. But it seems more in accordance with the other “signs,” to suppose that they represent not that which had been, but that which shall be.”
1 more voice on this verse
Ezekiel 4:5
“I have laid - I have pointed out the number of years wherein apostate Israel sinned against me, and I did bear with them. Years - These years probably began at Solomon's falling to idolatry, in the twenty-seventh year of his reign, and ended in the fifth of Zedekiah's captivity.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
a day for each year: After the left side, Ezekiel lies 40 days on his right side for the house of Judah, a day for each year. Adam Clarke reports a count of about forty years across the reigns from Manasseh to Zedekiah. Other readers start from the renewal of the covenant under Josiah.
Ezekiel 4:6
“Forty days - Reckon, says Archbishop Newcome, near fifteen years and six months in the reign of Manasseh, two years in that of Amon, three months in that of Jehoahaz, eleven years in that of Jehoiakim, three months and ten days in that of Jehoiachin, and eleven years in that of Zedekiah; and there arises a period of forty years, during which gross idolatry was practiced in the kingdom of Judah. Forty days may have been employed in spoiling and desolating the city and the temple.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
Ezekiel 4:6
“Forty days - Probably from Josiah's renewing the covenant, until the destruction of the temple, during which time God deferred to punish, expecting whether they would keep their covenant, or retain their idolatries, which latter they did for thirteen years of Josiah's reign, for eleven of Jehoiakim's, and eleven of Zedekiah's reign, and five of his captivity, which amount to just forty years.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
Ezekiel 4:7-8
turn your face toward the siege: Ezekiel is to “turn your face toward the siege of Jerusalem with your arm bared, and prophesy against it.” Clarke explains the bared arm as the sign of a champion going to battle. The Lord then ties him “with ropes so you cannot turn from side to side.”
Ezekiel 4:7
“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. lii.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
I will tie you up with ropes: God will tie Ezekiel with ropes so he cannot turn from side to side. The days of lying still are the days of the siege. Albert Barnes reads the ropes as a figure of God's constraint, keeping the prophet at his task of declaring the city's fall.
Ezekiel 4:8
“I will lay bands upon thee - Contrast margin reference. The Lord will put constraint upon him, to cause him to exercise his office. In the retirement of his house, figuratively bound and under constraint, he shall not cease to proclaim the doom of the city. The days of thy siege - Those during which he should thus foretell the approaching calamity.”
Famine bread measured out by weight
Ezekiel 4:9-11
take wheat, barley, beans, lentils: The bread mixes six kinds of grain and pulse in “a single container.” The prophet eats “twenty shekels of food” a day and drinks “a sixth of a hin of water.” The ration echoes the curse of Leviticus 26:26, where bread is doled out by weight and eaten without satisfying.
Ezekiel 4:9
“Two things are prefigured in the remainder of this chapter, (1) the hardships of exile, (2) the straitness of a siege. To the people of Israel, separated from the rest of the nations as holy, it was a leading feature in the calamities of their exile that they must be mixed up with other nations, and eat of their food, which to the Jews was a defilement (compare Eze 4:13; Amo 7:17; Dan 1:8.) Fitches - A species of wheat with shorn ears.”
1 more voice on this verse
Ezekiel 4:9
“But Judah also is secondarily referred to in the three hundred ninety days, as having fallen, like Israel, into Gentile defilements; if, then, the Jews are to escape from the exile among Gentiles, which is their just punishment, they must submit again to the wilderness probation (Eze 4:16).”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
twenty shekels of food: Ezekiel's food is weighed out, twenty shekels each day, eaten at set times. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown put this at little more than ten ounces, a scant measure to keep a man alive, as in Jeremiah 52:6. Food weighed out marks famine.
Ezekiel 4:10
“Twenty shekels a day - The whole of the above grain, being ground, was to be formed into one mass, out of which he was to make three hundred and ninety loaves; one loaf for each day; and this loaf was to be of twenty shekels in weight. Now a shekel, being in weight about half an ounce, this would be ten ounces of bread for each day; and with this water to the amount of one sixth part of a hin, which is about a pint and a half of our measure.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
Ezekiel 4:10
“By weight - Not as much as you will, but a small pittance delivered by weight to all. Twenty shekels - Ten ounces: scarce enough to maintain life. From time to time - At set hours this was weighed out.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
a sixth of a hin of water: Water too is measured out: a sixth of a hin to drink at set times. Albert Barnes notes that Jewish writers measure the hin in different ways, and by either count this was under a pint. He links it to the water of affliction in 1 Kings 22:27.
Ezekiel 4:11
“Water by measure - This probably corresponds to the water of affliction 1Ki 22:27; Isa 30:20. The measure of the hin is variously estimated by Jewish writers. The sixth part of a hin will be according to one estimate about 610ths, according to another 910ths of a pint. The lesser estimate is more suitable here.”
1 more voice on this verse
Ezekiel 4:11
“Note, God's servants must learn to endure hardness, and to deny themselves the use of lawful delights, when they may thereby serve the glory of God, evidence the sincerity of their faith, and express their sympathy with their brethren in affliction. The body must be kept under and brought into subjection. Nature is content with a little, grace with less, but lust with nothing.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Ezekiel 4:12-13
as you would a barley cake: Ezekiel is to eat the bread “as you would a barley cake,” baked “over dried human excrement in the sight of the people.” The fuel makes the food unclean. So the sign shows exile as a place where Israel could no longer keep the law’s line between clean and unclean.
Ezekiel 4:12
“Thou shalt bake it with dung - Dried ox and cow dung is a common fuel in the east; and with this, for want of wood and coals, they are obliged to prepare their food. Indeed, dried excrement of every kind is gathered. Here, the prophet is to prepare his bread with dry human excrement. And when we know that this did not come in contact with the bread, and was only used to warm the plate, (see Eze 4:3), on which the bread was laid over the fire, it removes all the horror and much of the disgust.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
Ezekiel 4:12
“This nauseous piece of cookery he must exercise publicly in their sight, that they might be the more affected with the calamity approaching, which was signified by it, that in the extremity of the famine they should not only have nothing that was dainty, but nothing that was cleanly, about them; they must take up with what they could get.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
their defiled bread among the nations: The LORD names the meaning of the sign. Israel will eat defiled bread among the nations where He will banish them. Albert Barnes explains that the food laws kept the nation apart from idol feasts, and exile would press them into what they counted unclean.
Ezekiel 4:13
“The ceremonial ordinances in relation to food were intended to keep the nation free from idolatrous usages; everywhere among the pagan idol feasts formed a leading part in their religious services, and idol meats were partaken of in common life. Dispersion among the Gentiles must have exposed the Jews to much which they regarded as common and unclean. In Ezekiel’s case there was a mitigation Eze 4:15 of the defilement, but still legal defilement remained, and the chosen people in exile were subjected to it as to a degradation.”
Ezekiel 4:14-15
Ezekiel protests as a priest who has kept the food laws. From his youth he has eaten nothing “found dead or mauled by wild beasts,” food that Leviticus 22:8 forbids to priests. The Lord grants a change of fuel, “cow dung instead of human excrement,” and the sign itself stands.
Ezekiel 4:14
“My soul hath not been polluted - There is a remarkable similarity between this expostulation of the prophet and that of St. Peter, Act 10:14.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
God answers the priest's protest in verse 14 and allows cow dung in place of human excrement for the fire. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown call this an easing of the first order, yet the bread is still defiled. The exile's uncleanness stands.
Ezekiel 4:15
“Then he said to me,.... The Lord hearkened to the prophet's prayer and argument, and makes some abatement and alteration in the charge he gave him: lo, I have given thee cow's dung for man's dung: that is, allowed him to make use of the one instead of the other, in baking his mingled bread: thou shalt prepare thy bread therewith; having gathered cow's dung, and dried it, he was to burn it, and bake his bread with it, which is meant by preparing it.”
1 more voice on this verse
Ezekiel 4:15
“This is a tacit reflection upon man, as intimating that he being polluted with sin his filthiness is more nauseous and odious than that of any other creature. How much more abominable and filthy is man!”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Ezekiel 4:16-17
cut off the supply of food: The Lord says what the sign meant: “I am going to cut off the supply of food.” The Hebrew pictures bread as a staff that holds up life, as Henry explains. Their end is named: “they will be appalled at the sight of one another wasting away in their iniquity.”
Ezekiel 4:16
“I will break the staff of bread - They shall be besieged till all the bread is consumed, till the famine becomes absolute; see 2Ki 25:3: “And on the ninth of the fourth month, the famine prevailed in the city; and There Was No Bread for the people of the land.” All this was accurately foretold, and as accurately fulfilled. Abp. Newcome on 2Ki 25:6 observes: “This number of years will take us back, with sufficient exactness, from the year in which Jerusalem was sacked by Nebuchadnezzar to the first year of Jeroboam’s reign, when national idolatry began in Israel.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
wasting away in their iniquity: The sign ends in its purpose: bread and water will run short in the city. The people will be appalled at one another as they waste away in their iniquity. Matthew Henry names sin as the cause of the misery.
Ezekiel 4:17
“And it is sin that brings all this misery upon them: They shall consume away in their iniquity (so it may be read); they shall continue hardened and impenitent, and shall die in their sins, which is more miserable than to die on a dunghill. Now, (1.) Let us see here what woeful work sin makes with a people, and acknowledge the righteousness of God herein.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Keep studying
Sources for this chapter
The summary
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Calvin, Commentaries; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.
The exposition
Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible; Albert Barnes, Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments (1832-1869); Carl Friedrich Keil, Biblical Commentary on the Prophecies of Ezekiel; Jamieson Fausset and Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible; Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible; John Gill, Exposition of the Old Testament; John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament; Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible and Patrick Fairbairn, An Exposition of Ezekiel.