1 You also, son of man, take a tile, and lay it before you, and portray on it a city, even Jerusalem:
2 and lay siege against it, and build forts against it, and cast up a mound against it; set camps also against it, and plant battering rams against it round about.
3 Take for yourself an iron pan, and set it for a wall of iron between you and the city: and set your face toward it, and it shall be besieged, and you shall lay siege against it. This shall be a sign to the house of Israel.
4 Moreover lie you on your left side, and lay the iniquity of the house of Israel on it; [according to] the number of the days that you shall lie on it, you shall bear their iniquity.
5 For I have appointed the years of their iniquity to be to you a number of days, even three hundred ninety days: so shall you bear the iniquity of the house of Israel.
6 Again, when you have accomplished these, you shall lie on your right side, and shall bear the iniquity of the house of Judah: forty days, each day for a year, have I appointed it to you.
7 You shall set your face toward the siege of Jerusalem, with your arm uncovered; and you shall prophesy against it.
8 Behold, I lay bands on you, and you shall not turn you from one side to the other, until you have accomplished the days of your siege.
9 Take for yourself also wheat, and barley, and beans, and lentils, and millet, and spelt, and put them in one vessel, and make you bread of it; [according to] the number of the days that you shall lie on your side, even three hundred ninety days, shall you eat of it.
10 Your food which you shall eat shall be by weight, twenty shekels a day: from time to time shall you eat it.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Matthew Henry Commentary » Commentary on Ezekiel 4
Commentary on Ezekiel 4 Matthew Henry Commentary
Chapter 4
Ezekiel was now among the captives in Babylon, but they there had Jerusalem still upon their hearts; the pious captives looked towards it with an eye of faith (as Daniel 6:10), the presumptuous ones looked towards it with an eye of pride, and flattered themselves with a conceit that they should shortly return thither again; those that remained corresponded with the captives, and, it is likely, bouyed them up with hopes that all would be well yet, as long as Jerusalem was standing in its strength, and perhaps upbraided those with their folly who had surrendered at first; therefore, to take down this presumption, God gives the prophet, in this chapter, a very clear and affecting foresight of the besieging of Jerusalem by the Chaldean army and the calamities which would attend that siege. Two things are here represented to him in vision:-
Eze 4:1-8
The prophet is here ordered to represent to himself and others by signs which would be proper and powerful to strike the fancy and to affect the mind, the siege of Jerusalem; and this amounted to a prediction.
Eze 4:9-17
The best exposition of this part of Ezekiel's prediction of Jerusalem's desolation is Jeremiah's lamentation of it, Lam. 4:3, 4, etc., and v. 10, where he pathetically describes the terrible famine that was in Jerusalem during the siege and the sad effects of it.