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Ezekiel Chapter
Four
Ezekiel 4
Chapter Contents
The siege of Jerusalem. (1-8) The famine the inhabitants
would suffer. (9-17)
Commentary on Ezekiel 4:1-8
(Read Ezekiel 4:1-8)
The prophet was to represent the siege of Jerusalem by
signs. He was to lie on his left side for a number of days, supposed to be
equal to the years from the establishment of idolatry. All that the prophet
sets before the children of his people, about the destruction of Jerusalem, is
to show that sin is the provoking cause of the ruin of that once flourishing
city.
Commentary on Ezekiel 4:9-17
(Read Ezekiel 4:9-17)
The bread which was Ezekiel's support, was to be made of
coarse grain and pulse mixed together, seldom used except in times of urgent
scarcity, and of this he was only to take a small quantity. Thus was figured
the extremity to which the Jews were to be reduced during the siege and
captivity. Ezekiel does not plead, Lord, from my youth I have been brought up
delicately, and never used to any thing like this; but that he had been brought
up conscientiously, and never had eaten any thing forbidden by the law. It will
be comfortable when we are brought to suffer hardships, if our hearts can
witness that we have always been careful to keep even from the appearance of
evil. See what woful work sin makes, and acknowledge the righteousness of God
herein. Their plenty having been abused to luxury and excess, they were justly
punished by famine. When men serve not God with cheerfulness in the abundance of
all things, God will make them serve their enemies in the want of all things.
── Matthew Henry《Concise Commentary on Ezekiel》
Ezekiel 4
Verse 1
[1] Thou also, son of man, take thee a tile, and lay it
before thee, and pourtray upon it the city, even Jerusalem:
Portray — Draw a map of Jerusalem.
Verse 2
[2] And lay siege against it, and build a fort against it,
and cast a mount against it; set the camp also against it, and set battering
rams against it round about.
Lay siege — Draw the figure of a siege about
the city.
Build — Raise a tower and bulwarks.
Verse 3
[3] Moreover take thou unto thee an iron pan, and set it for
a wall of iron between thee and the city: and set thy face against it, and it
shall be besieged, and thou shalt lay siege against it. This shall be a sign to
the house of Israel.
A wall — That it may resemble a wall of iron, for as
impregnable as such a wall, shall the resolution and patience of the Chaldeans
be.
Verse 4
[4] Lie thou also upon thy left side, and lay the iniquity
of the house of Israel upon it: according to the number of the days that thou
shalt lie upon it thou shalt bear their iniquity.
Lay — Take upon thee the representation of their guilt and
punishment.
House of Israel — The ten tribes.
The number — By this thou shalt intimate how
long I have borne with their sins, and how long they shall bear their
punishment.
Verse 5
[5] For I have laid upon thee the years of their iniquity,
according to the number of the days, three hundred and ninety days: so shalt
thou bear the iniquity of the house of Israel.
I have laid — I have pointed out the number of
years wherein apostate Israel sinned against me, and I did bear with them.
Years — These years probably began at Solomon's falling to
idolatry, in the twenty-seventh year of his reign, and ended in the fifth of
Zedekiah's captivity.
Verse 6
[6] And when thou hast accomplished them, lie again on thy
right side, and thou shalt bear the iniquity of the house of Judah forty days:
I have appointed thee each day for a year.
Accomplished — That is, almost accomplished.
House of Judah — Of the two tribes.
Forty days — Probably from Josiah's renewing
the covenant, until the destruction of the temple, during which time God
deferred to punish, expecting whether they would keep their covenant, or retain
their idolatries, which latter they did for thirteen years of Josiah's reign,
for eleven of Jehoiakim's, and eleven of Zedekiah's reign, and five of his
captivity, which amount to just forty years. But all this was done in a vision.
Verse 7
[7] Therefore thou shalt set thy face toward the siege of
Jerusalem, and thine arm shall be uncovered, and thou shalt prophesy against
it.
Set — While thou liest on thy side thou shalt fix thy
countenance on the portrait of besieged Jerusalem.
Uncovered — Naked and stretched out as being
ready to strike.
Verse 8
[8] And, behold, I will lay bands upon thee, and thou shalt
not turn thee from one side to another, till thou hast ended the days of thy
siege.
Bands — An invisible restraint assuring him, that those could
no more remove from the siege, than he from that side he lay on.
Verse 9
[9] Take thou also unto thee wheat, and barley, and beans,
and lentiles, and millet, and fitches, and put them in one vessel, and make
thee bread thereof, according to the number of the days that thou shalt lie
upon thy side, three hundred and ninety days shalt thou eat thereof.
Take — Provide thee corn enough: for a grievous famine will
accompany the siege.
Wheat — All sorts of grain are to be provided, and all will be
little enough.
One vessel — Mix the worst with the best to
lengthen out the provision.
Verse 10
[10] And thy meat which thou shalt eat shall be by weight,
twenty shekels a day: from time to time shalt thou eat it.
By weight — Not as much as you will, but a
small pittance delivered by weight to all.
Twenty shekels — Ten ounces: scarce enough to maintain
life.
From time to time — At set hours this was
weighed out.
Verse 11
[11] Thou shalt drink also water by measure, the sixth part
of an hin: from time to time shalt thou drink.
The sixth part — About six ounces.
Verse 12
[12] And thou shalt eat it as barley cakes, and thou shalt
bake it with dung that cometh out of man, in their sight.
As barley cakes — Because they never had enough to
make a loaf with, they eat them as barley cakes.
With dung — There was no wood left, nor yet
dung of other creatures. This also was represented in a vision.
Verse 17
[17] That they may want bread and water, and be astonied one
with another, and consume away for their iniquity.
May want — So because they served not God with chearfulness in
the abundance of all things, He made them serve their enemies in the want of
all things.
── John Wesley《Explanatory Notes on Ezekiel》
04 Chapter 4
Verses 1-17
Verses 1-8
Take thee a tile.
The ministry of symbolism
In this chapter there begins a series of symbols utterly
impossible of modern interpretation. This ministry of symbolism has still a
place in all progressive civilisation. Every age, of course, necessitates its
own emblems and types, its own apocalypse of wonders and signs, but the meaning
of the whole is that God has yet something to be revealed which cannot at the
moment be expressed in plain language. If we could see into the inner meaning
of many of the controversies in which we are engaged, we should see there many
a divinely drawn symbol, curious outlines of thought, parables not yet ripe
enough for words. How manifold is human life! How innumerable are the workers
who are toiling at the evolution of the Divine purpose in things! One man can
understand nothing but what he calls bare facts and hard realities; he has only
a hand to handle, he has not the interior touch that can feel things ere yet
they have taken shape. Another is always on the outlook for what pleases the
eye; he delights in form and colour and symmetry, and glows almost with
thankfulness as he beholds the shapeliness of things, and traces in them a
subtle geometry. Another man gets behind all this, and hears voices, and sees
sights excluded from the natural senses; he looks upon symbolism, upon the
ministry of suggestion and dream and vision; he sees best in the darkness; the
night is his day; in the great cloud he sees the ever-working God, and in the
infinite stillness of religious solitude he hears, rather in echoes than in
words, what he is called upon to tell the age in which he lives. Here again his
difficulty increases, for although he can see with perfect plainness men, and
can understand quite intelligibly all the mysteries which pass before his
imagination and before his spiritual eyes, yet he has to find words that will
fit the new and exciting occasion; and there are no fit words, so sometimes he
is driven to make a language of his own, and hence we come upon strangeness of
expression, eccentricity of thought, weirdness in quest and sympathy,--a most
marvellous and tumultuous life; a great struggle after rhythm and rest, and
fullest disclosure of inner realities, often ending in bitter disappointment,
so that the prophet’s eloquence dissolves in tears, and the man who thought he
had a glorious message to deliver is broken down in humiliation when he hears
the poor thunder of his own inadequate articulation. He has his “tile” and his
iron pan; he lays upon his left side, and upon his right side; he takes unto
him wheat and barley, beans, and lentils; he weighs out his bread, and measures
out his water, and bakes “barley cakes” by a curious manufacture; and yet when
it is all over he cannot tell to others in delicate enough language, or with
sufficiency of illustration, what he knows to be a Divine and eternal word. (J.
Parker, D. D.)
Symbolisms not necessarily acted
Even if one hundred and ninety days be the true reading, it is
most improbable that the prophet should have been on his side immovable for
half a year, and it appears impossible when other actions had to be done
simultaneously. The hypothesis of Klostermann hardly deserves mention. This
writer supposes that the prophet lay on his side because he was a cataleptic
and temporarily paralysed, that he prophesied against Jerusalem with
outstretched arm, because his arm could not be withdrawn, being convulsively
rigid, and that he was dumb because struck with morbid “alalia.” It is
surprising that some reputable scholars should seem half inclined to accept
this explanation. They perhaps have the feeling that such an interpretation is
more reverent to Scripture. But we need to remind ourselves, as Job reminded
his friends, that superstition is not religion (Job 13:7-12; Job 21:22). The book itself appears to
teach us how to interpret the most of the symbolical actions. In Ezekiel 24:3 the symbol of setting the
caldron on the fire is called uttering a parable. The act of graving a hand at
the parting of the ways (Ezekiel 21:19) must certainly be
interpreted in the same way, and, though there may be room for hesitation in
regard to some of them, probably the actions as a whole. They were imagined
merely. They passed through the prophet’s mind. He lived in this ideal sphere;
he went through the actions in his phantasy, and they appeared to him to carry
the same effects as if they had been performed. (A. B. Davidson, D. D.)
Pertray upon it the city,
even Jerusalem.--
The end foretold
With the fourth chapter we enter on the exposition of the first
great division of Ezekiel’s prophecies. The prophecies may be classified
roughly under three heads. In the first class are those which exhibit the
judgment itself in ways fitted to impress the prophet and his hearers with a
conviction of its certainty; a second class is intended to demolish the illusions
and false ideals which possessed the minds of the Israelites and made the
announcement of disaster incredible; and a third and very important class
expounds the moral principles which were illustrated by the judgment, and which
show it to be a Divine necessity. In the passage before us the bare fact and
certainty of the judgment are set forth in word and symbol and with a minimum
of commentary, although even here the conception which Ezekiel had formed of
the moral situation is clearly discernible. That the destruction of Jerusalem
should occupy the first place in the prophet’s picture of national calamity
requires no explanation. Jerusalem was the heart and brain of the nation, the
centre of its life and its religion, and in the eyes of the prophets the
fountainhead of its sin. The strength of her natural situation, the patriotic
and religious associations which had gathered round her, and the smallness of
her subject province gave to Jerusalem a unique position among the mother
cities of antiquity. And Ezekiel’s hearers knew what he meant when he employed
the picture of a beleaguered city to set forth the judgment that was to
overtake them. That crowning horror of ancient warfare, the siege of a
fortified town, meant in this case something more appalling to the imagination
than the ravages of pestilence and famine and sword. The fate of Jerusalem
represented the disappearance of everything that had constituted the glory and
excellence of Israel’s national existence. The manner in which the prophet seeks
to impress this fact on his countrymen illustrates a peculiar vein of realism
which runs through all his thinking (verses 1-3). He is commanded to take a
brick and portray upon it a walled city, surrounded by the towers, mounds, and
battering rams which marked the usual operations of a besieging army. Then he
is to erect a plate of iron between him and the city, and from behind this,
with menacing gestures, he is as it were to press on the siege. The meaning of
the symbols is obvious. As the engines of destruction appear on Ezekiel’s
diagram, at the bidding of Jehovah, so in due time the Chaldaean army will be
seen from the walls of Jerusalem, led by the same unseen Power which now
controls the acts of the prophet. In the last act Ezekiel exhibits the attitude
of Jehovah Himself, cut off from His people by the iron wall of an inexorable
purpose which no prayer could penetrate. Thus far the prophet’s actions,
however strange they may appear to us, have been simple and intelligible. But
at this point a second sign is as it were superimposed on the first, in order
to symbolise an entirely different set of facts--the hardship and duration of
the Exile (verses 4-8). While still engaged in prosecuting the siege of the
city, the prophet is supposed to become at the same time the representative of
the guilty people and the victim of the Divine judgment. He is to “bear their
iniquity”--that is, the punishment due to their sin. This is represented by his
lying bound on his left side for a number of days equal to the years of
Ephraim’s banishment, and then on his right side for a time proportionate to
the captivity of Judah. (John Skinner, M. A.)
Even thus shall the children of Israel eat their defiled bread.
Conformity of punishment to sin
They had sinned in excess, and God would take away their plenty. Hosea 13:6, “According to their pasture,
so were they filled”; they had full pastures, fed largely, exalted their
hearts, and thought they should never want; they forgot God in their fulness,
and He made them to remember Him in a famine. Fulness of bread was the sin of
Sodom, and the sin of Jerusalem also. God brake the staff of bread. They sinned
in defiling themselves with idols, and offered meal and oil, honey and flour,
for a sweet savour to their idols (Ezekiel 16:1-63), and now they must eat
polluted bread among the Gentiles. (W. Greenhill, M. A.)
──《The Biblical Illustrator》