A prophetic description of the siege of Jerusalem, and the famine that shall reign there.

¹ “And as for you, son of man, take up for yourself a tablet, and you shall set it before you. And you shall draw upon it the city of Jerusalem.

² And you shall set up a blockade against it, and you shall build fortifications, and you shall put together a rampart, and you shall encamp opposite it, and you shall place battering rams around it.

³ And you shall take up for yourself an iron frying pan, and place it as an iron wall between you and the city. And harden your face against it, and it shall be under a siege, and you shall surround it. This is a sign to the house of Israel.

⁴ And you shall sleep on your left side. And you shall place the iniquities of the house of Israel on it by the number of days that you will sleep on it. And you shall take upon yourself their iniquity.

⁵ For I have given to you the years of their iniquity, by the number of the days: three hundred and ninety days. And you shall bear the iniquity of the house of Israel.

⁶ And when you will have completed this, you shall sleep a second time, on your right side, and you shall assume the iniquity of the house of Judah for forty days: one day for each year; one day, I say, for each year, have I given to you.¹

1. 4:6The Forty Years is a figurative reference to the first part of the tribulation. Centuries later, in the second part of the tribulation, the Antichrist rises to world domination, and he reigns for nearly seven years. And then Jesus Christ returns at the end of his reign. This entire time period is like a siege of the Christian Faith (represented by the figures of Israel and Judah and Jerusalem).(Conte)

⁷ And you shall turn your face toward the siege of Jerusalem, and your arm shall be extended. And you shall prophesy against it.

⁸ Behold, I have surrounded you with chains. And you shall not turn yourself from one side to the other side, until you have completed the days of your siege.

⁹ And you shall take for yourself wheat, and barley, and beans, and lentils, and millet, and vetch. And you shall set them in one vessel, and you shall make for yourself bread by the number of days that you will sleep upon your side: three hundred and ninety days shall you shall eat from it.

¹⁰ But your food, which you will eat, shall be in weight twenty staters a day. You shall eat it from time to time.¹

1. 4:10A stater weighed about a half ounce; Ezekiel was to eat it ‘from time to time,’ i.e. he was to divide each day’s food allotment into two meals.(Conte)

¹¹ And you shall drink water by measure, one sixth part of a hin. You shall drink it from time to time.¹

1. 4:11Hin: That is, a measure of liquids containing about ten pints.(Challoner)

¹² And you shall eat it like barley bread baked under ashes. And you shall cover it, in their sight, with the dung that goes out of a man.”

¹³ And the Lord said: “So shall the sons of Israel eat their bread, polluted among the Gentiles, to whom I will cast them out.”

¹⁴ And I said: “Alas, alas, alas, O Lord God! Behold, my soul has not been polluted, and from my infancy even until now, I have not eaten anything that has died of itself, nor that which has been torn up by beasts, and no unclean flesh at all has entered into my mouth.”

¹⁵ And he said to me: “Behold, I have given to you cow manure in place of human dung, and you shall make your bread with it.”

¹⁶ And he said to me: “Son of man, behold: I will crush the staff of bread in Jerusalem. And they will eat bread by weight and with anxiety. And they will drink water by measure and with anguish.

¹⁷ So then, when bread and water fail, each one may fall against his brother. And they shall waste away in their iniquities.”