Ezekielchapter 4
17 verses · KJVEzekiel book hub →
Key verse
Thou also, son of man, take thee a tile, and lay it before thee, and pourtray upon it the city, even Jerusalem:
It stands in scene A of the chapter, verses 1 to 3.
The chapter
Chapter summary
Prophecy becomes theater. Ezekiel takes a tile, portrays Jerusalem on it, and lays siege to it in miniature (mound, camp, battering rams) with an iron pan set as a wall of iron between himself and the city. Then he lies on his left side three hundred and ninety days for the iniquity of Israel and forty on his right for Judah, 'a day for a year.' His rations are a siege loaf of wheat, barley, beans, lentils, millet and spelt, twenty shekels a day, water by measure, baked over human dung. And when he protests defilement, cow's dung is granted instead. Bread and water consumed in dismay.
Context
Prophecy · Ezekiel · Ezekiel overview
Where the chapter sits
Ezekiel 4 falls in Symbolic acts and judgment on Jerusalem (chapters 4–24). Lying on his side for 430 days; shaving the head with a sword; eating food in anxiety; the glory departs in stages (8–11); the prophet survives his wife's death without mourning (24).
Before it: Call and wheels-vision, chapters 1–3. After it: Oracles against the nations, chapters 25–32.
The whole shape of Ezekiel→The world behind this chapter
Ezekiel 4The history
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.
The rest of the history, and what it meant to them
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.
What it meant to them
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.
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.
Sources cited
- John H. Walton, Victor H. Matthews and Mark W. Chavalas, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament
- The Lachish reliefs from Sennacherib's palace at Nineveh, British Museum
- Roland de Vaux, Ancient Israel: Its Life and Institutions
A. A brick, a siege, and an iron pan
1. (vv. 1-3)
a.take thee a tile: The prophet is told to take a tile and scratch a city on it, Jerusalem drawn as a child draws a fort, with a mound and a camp and battering rams set against it in miniature. The scene is called a sign to the house of Israel before a word of interpretation is given, the pattern of Ezekiel's whole ministry, act first and speech after. Henry reads the model siege as a rehearsal meant to convince exiles who still hoped Jerusalem would stand that the city they trusted was already, in effect, under the rod. The iron pan set as a wall of iron pictures a barrier no prayer will move, the Lord himself besieging the city he once dwelt in.
Ezekiel 4:1, 3 voicesWhat preachers and commentators have said about these verses, in their own words.
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.”
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
Ezekiel 4:2, 2 voices
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
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
Ezekiel 4:3, 3 voices
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.”
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
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
B. Lying on his side, a day for a year
1. (vv. 4-6)
a.Lie thou also upon thy left side: Ezekiel is told to lie first on his left side for three hundred and ninety days, bearing the iniquity of the house of Israel, then on his right side for forty days bearing the iniquity of Judah, with a day appointed for each year. Commentators read the two numbers as the reckoned span of the northern kingdom's guilt and the shorter span of Judah's, the prophet's own body made a calendar the exiles could watch day by day. Gill notes that the sign costs the prophet something real, over a year bound to one posture, so the message is carried in his own suffering and not only in his words. Keil cautions that the exact historical referent of the years was debated even among older writers, and the text itself gives the numbers without explaining which events they measure.
Ezekiel 4:4, 3 voices
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
“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
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
Ezekiel 4:5, 2 voices
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.”
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
Ezekiel 4:6, 2 voices
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
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
2. (vv. 7-8)
a.Therefore thou shalt set thy face toward the siege of Jerusalem: With his face fixed toward the drawn siege and his arm bared, the posture of a soldier ready to strike, Ezekiel is to prophesy against the city he is acting out. The Lord then binds him so that he cannot turn from side to side until the days of his siege are ended, removing even the choice of comfort from the sign. Clarke reads the bared arm as the standard gesture of a champion going to battle, fitting the picture of the Lord himself as the one laying siege. Fairbairn notes that the binding turns what might have been read as playacting into forced endurance, the prophet unable to relieve his own discomfort any more than Jerusalem could lift the siege closing around it.
Ezekiel 4:7, 1 voice
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
Ezekiel 4:8, 1 voice
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.”
C. Famine bread measured out by weight
1. (vv. 9-11)
a.Take thou also unto thee wheat: The bread is baked from six grains mixed in one vessel, wheat and barley eked out with beans, lentils, millet and spelt, the recipe of a granary running out rather than a proper loaf. Food comes by weight, twenty shekels a day, and water by measure, a sixth of a hin, eaten and drunk from time to time rather than at settled meals. Henry reads the mixed grain and the careful rationing together as the picture of siege scarcity, a city reduced to stretching every grain it has left. The measured portions dramatize Leviticus 26's warning that bread eaten by weight and in fear is a covenant curse, not an ordinary famine.
Ezekiel 4:9, 2 voices
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.”
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
Ezekiel 4:10, 2 voices
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
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
Ezekiel 4:11, 2 voices
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.”
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
2. (vv. 12-13)
a.And thou shalt eat it as barley cakes: The bread is to be baked over human dung in the sight of the people, and the Lord names the meaning himself: so shall the children of Israel eat their defiled bread among the nations where I will drive them. The fuel is not incidental to the sign, it forces ceremonial defilement onto food in a land where clean and unclean had governed every meal, picturing exile as a place where the old distinctions cannot be kept. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown read the verse as answering in advance the exiles' hope of maintaining temple purity abroad, since captivity itself would compel what the law forbade. Keil notes the sign lands hardest on a priestly audience, for whom defiled bread was not a metaphor but a daily, felt loss.
Ezekiel 4:12, 2 voices
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
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
Ezekiel 4:13, 1 voice
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.”
3. (vv. 14-15)
a.Then said I, Ah Lord God!: Ezekiel protests as a priest, not a rebel: his soul has never been polluted, he has never eaten carrion or torn flesh or forbidden meat, from his youth until now. The Lord grants the substitution rather than overriding the objection, cow's dung in place of man's dung, the sign kept but its worst indignity removed. Gill reads the exchange as evidence the vision engaged a real conscience and not merely an actor's role, the prophet's scruple honestly voiced and honestly answered. Wesley notes the concession as a small mercy inside a hard commission, the Lord willing to spare his servant one degree of shame while still requiring the sign in full.
Ezekiel 4:14, 1 voice
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
Ezekiel 4:15, 2 voices
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.”
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
4. (vv. 16-17)
a.I will break the staff of bread in Jerusalem: The sign is now interpreted directly: the Lord himself will break the staff of bread in Jerusalem, so that bread is eaten by weight and with care and water drunk by measure and with astonishment. The purpose is stated as plainly as the judgment: that they may want bread and water, and be astonied one with another, and consume away for their iniquity. Henry reads staff of bread as the ordinary figure for bread as the support of life, snapped rather than merely reduced, so the picture is collapse rather than mere shortage. Clarke notes that the chapter's whole apparatus of tile, iron pan, weighed food, and bound body converges on this one plain sentence, the acted sign finally translated into a statement any hearer could not miss.
Ezekiel 4:16, 1 voice
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
Ezekiel 4:17, 1 voice
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
The text of this chapter
This page carries no textual note on Ezekiel 4. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →
This page draws on 9 works. Open for the list.
This page draws on Adam Clarke; 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 (1871); John Gill; John Wesley; Matthew Henry and Patrick Fairbairn, An Exposition of Ezekiel.
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