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
