The Lord had shut Ezekiel's mouth (3:26), so the first prophecies he delivered were not spoken messages but acted-out parables (cf. 1 Kings 11:30; 22:11; 2 Kings 13:17; Isa. 20:2-4; Jer. 13:1-14; 19:1-10; Acts 21:10-11). Ezekiel evidently appeared somewhat like a mime who dramatized a message without speaking a word.
4:1-2 The Lord instructed Ezekiel to construct a model of Jerusalem under siege. He was to build a model of the city using a clay brick (Heb. lebenah) to represent Jerusalem. The Hebrew word for "brick"describes both clay tablets on which people wrote private correspondence, official documents, and other data as well as common building bricks (cf. Gen. 11:3). It is not clear exactly which type Ezekiel used. In either case, he built a model of the siege of Jerusalem with enemy siege works, an earth ramp, camps of soldiers, and battering rams, much like a small boy uses toy soldiers and models of tanks and buildings to play war today. It is not clear either whether the whole model fit on the brick or whether the brick just represented the city of Jerusalem. I tend to think the brick represented Jerusalem and Ezekiel built other models that he placed around it. The outline of Jerusalem would have been distinctive and easily recognizable by Ezekiel's audience, and he may even have labeled the city as Jerusalem.
4:3 Then Ezekiel was to place an iron plate between himself and the model of the city and to lay siege to Jerusalem. This was to be a sign to the people of Israel of what God would do to the real Jerusalem (cf. Deut. 28:52-57). The meaning of the iron plate or pan is also debatable, though it appears to have been a common cooking griddle (Heb. mahabhath). It may have signified the Babylonian army that made escape from the city impossible,104God's determined hostility against Jerusalem,105the barrier of sin that the Jews had raised between themselves and God,106or Ezekiel's protection as he acted out his drama.107I favor the view that it represented a barrier that existed between the people and God, whom Ezekiel represented, that their sin had erected and that their prayers could not penetrate (cf. Isa. 58:2; Lam. 3:44).
Evidently Ezekiel built this model scene without speaking to his audience or explaining what he was doing, and he probably did it just outside his house (cf. 3:24-25).
"The purpose of God in this prophetic act was hardly limited to letting Ezekiel and his countrymen in on the future. More important was their need to see that God was not about to let the sins of the city He had chosen go unpunished."108
4:4-5 Then Ezekiel was to recline in public on his left side for 390 days. This was to represent the number of years that Israel would have to bear punishment for her sins. Evidently when Ezekiel lay on his left side he faced north, the Northern Kingdom. This meant that his body would have been pointing west, toward Jerusalem.
4:6-7 After the 390 days had expired, he was to lie on his right side for an additional 40 days. This was to represent the number of additional years the Southern Kingdom of Judah would have to suffer punishment for her sins. He was to face Jerusalem with his arm bared signifying Yahweh's hostility toward His people. The prophesying that he was to do against Jerusalem (v. 7) was by means of this skit.
That these days represented years of divine punishment seems clear (v. 6), but what years are in view is a problem. Were they literal or figurative years, and were these years in the past or in the future? Unless they were literal years we have no way of knowing what they represented. If they were future years and began with the year of Jehoiachin's deportation (597 B.C.), which is the date of reference that Ezekiel used throughout his book, the total 430 years would have ended about 167 B.C. This was the year of the Maccabean rebellion when the Jews began to throw off their foreign oppressors, the Syrians, and took control of their own affairs once again.109But why God divided these years into two such unusual segments remains a mystery. I think the 430 days may have been the total length of the siege of Jerusalem, which God viewed as punishment for 390 years of the Northern Kingdom's sins and 40 more years of the Southern Kingdom's sins.110In this case the years of sin would have been in the past.111It still remains difficult, however, to explain exactly which 390 and 40 years God had in mind. Perhaps they were the worst years of sin. In some way the length of the siege corresponded to the past years of Israel's and Judah's sin.
4:8 The Lord promised to help Ezekiel lie on his sides by restraining his movements, as though ropes bound him in his positions.112Again, it appears that the prophet acted out his drama for only a few hours each day, and it was during this time that God enabled him to lie quietly.
"God's judgment of sin is inevitable. He is longsuffering (4:1-8) and may wait for years, but ultimately he will dispense judgment. This judgment will include his people."113
"God's servants may have to undertake tasks involving a lot of tedium, patiently carrying out responsibilities less than entirely pleasant, regularly doing things they would much rather not have to be involved in. Preparing for a Sunday school class week after week, leading a Bible study year by year, visiting shut-ins steadily as time goes by, patiently shaping the behavior of and caring for children as the years come and go, laboring to bring about social change; these sorts of things are hardly always enjoyable. Faithfulness involves sticking to tasks where the reward cannot necessarily be experienced right away. Loyal Christian servants may not see in this life the rewards of their steady labors, but we carry on because God's work is never done in vain, no matter how hard it may be (1 Cor. 15:58)."114
This second dramatization took place while Ezekiel was acting out the first 390 days of the siege of Jerusalem with the brick and the plate (vv. 1-8). Whereas the main drama pictured the siege as a judgment from God, this aspect of it stressed the severe conditions that would exist in the city during the siege.
4:9-11 The prophet was also to make provisions so that he would have adequate food to eat and water to drink as he lay on his side for the first 390 days. The Lord prescribed just what and how much he should consume each day: one and one-third pints of water and eight ounces of bread. These were famine rations. His bread was to be a combination of six grains rather than just one, similar to how people during a siege would have to make their bread. They would mix small amounts of whatever they could find rather than using larger quantities of a single grain.
Ezekiel may have eaten at other times of the day when he was not acting out his drama, but during his dramatic presentation each day he only ate and drank as people under siege in Jerusalem would do.
4:12-15 Ezekiel was to bake his food over a fire made with human excrement, as the Jews under siege in Jerusalem would have to do. The uncleanness of their food did not represent the type of food they would have to eat but the fact that they would have to eat their food among defiled people (in captivity, v. 13). The prophet complained that he had never eaten unclean food (cf. 44:31; Lev. 22:8; Deut. 12:15-19; 14:21; 23:9-14), so the Lord graciously allowed him to prepare his food over a fire made with cow's dung rather than human feces.
Ezekiel could not have been lying on his side continuously all day; he prepared meals during some of this time. In parts of the Middle East today, some people still use dried animal dung as fuel due to the scarcity of wood.115God acceded to Ezekiel's request to substitute animal dung for human feces because the prophet wished to preserve his own purity and because the use of human waste, though more realistic, was not essential to the lesson Ezekiel was to teach the people (cf. Acts 10:14-15).
". . . God was not so much trying to get Ezekiel to violate his own priestly responsibilities as to be reminded of how many compromises of what is usual and normal would have to be made by those cooped up in Jerusalem under overwhelming enemy pressure."116
4:16-17 All these conditions were to symbolized how people back in Jerusalem were going to have to eat to live during the siege. They would have to eat sparingly because the famine caused by the siege would be severe.
Ezekiel was also to do something else during the time he was dramatizing the siege of Jerusalem with his model (ch. 4).
"After Ezekiel represented the factof the siege (first sign [4:1-3]), the lengthof the siege (second sign [4:4-8]), and its severity(third sign [4:9-17]), he demonstrated the resultsof the siege (fourth sign [5:1-4])."117
5:1-2 The prophet was to shave the hair of his head and beard with a sword symbolizing the defilement and humiliation that would come on Jerusalem because of her sin. Shaving the head and beard was forbidden for Israelites in their law (Deut. 14:1). It was a pagan practice that expressed great grief and humiliation (cf. 9:3; 27:31; 2 Sam. 10:4-5; Isa. 15:2; 22:12; Jer. 16:16; 41:5-6; 48:37; Amos 8:10). If an Israelite priest shaved his head, he was defiled and no longer holy to the Lord (Lev. 21:5). Thus Ezekiel's action pictured the unclean condition of Israel before the Lord as well as its removal in judgment by Babylon's king (cf. Isa. 7:20).
Then Ezekiel was to divide his cut hair using a scale to measure it in three equal piles. Weighing symbolized discriminating evaluation and impending judgment (cf. Prov. 21:2; ; Jer. 15:2; Dan. 5:27). When the days of the siege were over, after 430 days (4:5-6), He was to burn one-third of the hair in the center of the model of Jerusalem that he had built with the brick (4:1). He should chop up another third of the hair with his sword outside the model city. The remaining third he was to throw up into the air so the wind would blow it away. This represented the fate of the Jews in Jerusalem during the siege. One third would die in the burning and destruction of the city (cf. 2 Kings 25:9), another third would die at the hand of the Babylonian soldiers outside the city (cf. 2 Kings 25:18-21; 2 Chron. 36:17), and one third would go into captivity (cf. 2 Kings 25:11, 21) driven by soldiers that Yahweh would send after them.
5:3-4 Ezekiel was also to take a few hairs from the last group and hide them in the edge of his robe symbolizing the remnant that the Lord would preserve in captivity. Still other hairs he was to throw into the fire representing the fact that the Lord would judge the whole house of Israel. The fire of judgment that would burn in Jerusalem would spread to judge the whole population of Jews.
Evidently Ezekiel's verbal explanation of this drama came at the very end of the drama, at the time of the real destruction of Jerusalem. Ezekiel was no longer silent then.
5:5-6 The Lord explained that the center of the drama was Jerusalem that He had set at the center of many nations and lands. Some in Ezekiel's audience undoubtedly hoped that the city under symbolic destruction was Babylon, but it was indeed Jerusalem. It was at the center of civilization geographically and theologically.118
"God intended for Israel to be the great monotheistic missionary to the nations of the ancient world . . ."119
But this blessed city had rebelled against Yahweh by being unfaithful to the Mosaic Covenant.
5:7-8 The Lord promised to judge Jerusalem in the sight of the other nations because she had been so unfaithful and rebellious. She had not even observed the common laws that her neighbors obeyed.
5:9-10 The Lord would punish Jerusalem uniquely for her sins. Father's would eat their own sons, and sons their fathers, in the siege (cf. Lev. 26:29; Deut. 28:53; 2 Kings 6:28-29; Jer. 19:9; Lam. 4:10). Yahweh would scatter most of the surviving remnant from the Promised Land.
5:11-12 The Lord affirmed that He would withdraw His presence from His people because they had defiled His temple with idols (cf. ch. 8; 10:4; 11:22-23).120He would not have pity on them. One third of the residents would die by plague or famine, another third by the sword, and another third would scatter from the land pursued by enemy soldiers.
5:13 These judgments would satisfy the Lord's anger against His people and would convince them of His wrath because of their sins.
5:14-15 The Lord would desolate the people and make them an abhorrence to the observing nations. They would revile the Jews and use them as a warning of the consequences of covenant unfaithfulness, Yahweh promised.
5:16-17 The Lord would send famine-like arrows against His people to destroy them. Also wild beasts, plague, bloodshed, and war would be His instruments to judge them (cf. Lev. 26:21-26). These are standard curses for covenant unfaithfulness referred to frequently in the Mosaic Law (e.g., Lev. 26:22, 26, 29; Deut. 28:21, 53-56; 32:24: 42; cf. Lam. 1:7-14; 2:20-22; 4:4-10). All this Yahweh solemnly promised to do.
