Ezekiel 4
New Catholic Bible
Before the Siege of Jerusalem
Chapter 4
Symbols of Siege and Exile. 1 As for you, son of man, take a clay tablet and lay it in front of you. Draw on it a city, Jerusalem.[a] 2 Portray it under siege, erect towers against it, pitch camps, and set up battering rams all around it. 3 Then take an iron griddle and place it as though it were an iron wall between you and the city. Keep your gaze fixed upon the city; it will be in a state of siege, and you will be the besieger. This will be a sign for the house of Israel.[b]
4 [c]Then lie on your left side while I place the guilt of the house of Israel upon you. You will bear their guilt for the number of days that you lie on your side. 5 Allowing one day for every year of their guilt, I ordain that you bear Israel’s punishment for three hundred and ninety days.
6 When you have completed these days, you shall lie down again, this time on your right side, and bear the punishment of the house of Judah for forty days: one day for each year I have allotted you. 7 Then fix your gaze on the siege of Jerusalem, and with bared arm you shall prophesy against it. 8 I will tie you with ropes so that you cannot turn from one side to the other until you have completed the days of your siege.
9 [d]Then take wheat and barley, beans and lentils, millet, and spelt. Put them all into the same pot and make bread for yourself. You are to eat it for as many days as you lie upon your side—three hundred and ninety days. 10 The food that you shall eat shall weigh twenty shekels a day, and you are to eat it at fixed times. 11 You are also to measure out and drink the same amount of water each day at fixed times—one-sixth of a hin. 12 The food that you eat shall be in the form of a barley cake. Bake it in the sight of the people with human dung as fuel.
13 The Lord then said: Thus will the Israelites be forced to eat defiled food among the nations to which I will banish them. 14 “Lord God,” I protested, “from my youth until this very day I have never defiled myself. I have never eaten an animal that died a natural death or was torn to pieces by wild beasts. No unclean meat has ever entered my mouth.” 15 He replied: Very well. I will permit you to use cow dung instead of human dung to prepare your bread.[e]
16 Then he said to me: Son of man, I intend to reduce greatly the supply of food in Jerusalem. The people will ration anxiously the bread they eat and sip carefully the measure of water they are allotted each day. 17 Because of the scarcity of bread and water, they will be overwhelmed with fear and waste away because of their iniquity.
Footnotes
- Ezekiel 4:1 For writing and drawing, the Babylonians used thin tablets of clay that had not yet dried, on which they wrote with a suitable stylus.
- Ezekiel 4:3 Verse 3 should be followed directly by verse 7.
- Ezekiel 4:4 The length of the atonement, which is given in round figures, is taken from the length of the period of exile for Israel and Judah respectively (721–538 B.C. and 587–538 B.C.).
- Ezekiel 4:9 A day will come when Jerusalem, a city being starved out, will have to ration food: about 250 grams of dry bread and a liter of water.
- Ezekiel 4:15 Dried manure is still used as fuel in some parts of the East.
