Ezekiel 4 commentary

EZEKIEL 4 COMMENTARY
EDITED BY GLENN PEASE
Siege of Jerusalem Symbolized
1 “Now, son of man, take a block of clay, put it in
front of you and draw the city of Jerusalem on it.
BARNES, "A tile - Rather, a brick. Sun-dried or kiln-burned bricks were from very
early times used for building walls throughout the plain of Mesopotamia. The bricks of
Nineveh and Babylon are sometimes stamped with what appears to be the device of the
king in whose reign they were made, and often covered with a kind of enamel on which
various scenes are portrayed. Among the subjects depicted on such bricks discovered at
Nimroud are castles and forts.
CLARKE, "Take thee a tile - A tile, such as we use in covering houses, will give us
but a very inadequate notion of those used anciently; and also appear very insufficient
for the figures which the prophet was commanded to pourtray on it. A brick is most
undoubtedly meant; yet, even the larger dimensions here, as to thickness, will not help
us through the difficulty, unless we have recourse to the ancients, who have spoken of
the dimensions of the bricks commonly used in building. Palladius, De Re Rustica, lib. 6
c. 12, is very particular on this subject: - Sint vero lateres longitudine pedum duorum,
latitudine unius, altitudine quatuor unciarum. “Let the bricks be two feet long, one foot
broad, and four inches thick.” Edit. Gesner, vol. 3 p. 144. On such a surface as this the
whole siege might be easily pourtrayed. There are some brick-bats before me which were
brought from the ruins of ancient Babylon, which have been made of clay and straw
kneaded together and baked in the sun; one has been more than four inches thick, and
on one side it is deeply impressed with characters; others are smaller, well made, and
finely impressed on one side with Persepolitan characters. These have been for inside or
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ornamental work; to such bricks the prophet most probably alludes.
But the tempered clay out of which the bricks were made might be meant here; of this
substance he might spread out a sufficient quantity to receive all his figures. The figures
were
1. Jerusalem.
2. A fort.
3. A mount.
4. The camp of the enemy.
5. Battering rams, and such like engines, round about.
6. A wall round about the city, between it and the besieging army.
GILL, "Thou also, son of man, take thee a tile,.... Or "brick" (z). The Targum
renders it, a "stone"; but a tile or brick, especially one that is not dried and burned, but
green, is more fit to cut in it the figure of a city. Some think that this was ordered
because cities are built of brick; or to show the weakness of the city of Jerusalem, how
easily it might be demolished; and Jerom thinks there was some design to lead the Jews
to reflect upon their making bricks in Egypt, and their hard service there; though
perhaps the truer reason may be, because the Babylonians had been used to write upon
tiles. Epigenes (a) says they had celestial observations of a long course of years, written
on tiles; hence the prophet is bid to describe Jerusalem on one, which was to be
destroyed by the king of Babylon;
and lay it before thee: as persons do, who are about to draw a picture, make a
portrait, or engrave the form of anything they intend:
and portray upon it the city; even Jerusalem; or engrave upon it, by making
incisions on it, and so describing the form and figure of the city of Jerusalem.
HENRY, "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.
I. He was ordered to engrave a draught of Jerusalem upon a tile, Eze_4:1. It was
Jerusalem's honour that while she kept her integrity God had graven her upon the
palms of his hands (Isa_49:16), and the names of the tribes were engraven in precious
stones on the breast-plate of the high priest; but, now that the faithful city has become a
harlot, a worthless brittle tile or brick is thought good enough to portray it upon. This
the prophet must lay before him, that the eye may affect the heart.
K&D 1-3, "The Sign of the Siege of Jerusalem. - This sign, which Ezekiel is to
perform in his own house before the eyes of the exiles who visit him, consists in three
interconnected and mutually-supplementary symbolical acts, the first of which is
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described in Eze_4:1-3, the second in Eze_4:4-8, and the third in Eze_4:9-17. In the first
place, he is symbolically to represent the impending siege of Jerusalem (Eze_4:1-3); in
the second place, by lying upon one side, he is to announce the punishment of Israel's
sin (Eze_4:4-8); in the third place, by the nature of his food, he is, while lying upon one
side, to hold forth to view the terrible consequences of the siege to Israel. The close
connection as to their subject-matter of these three actions appears clearly from this,
that the prophet, according to Eze_4:7, while lying upon one side, is to direct his look
and his arm upon the picture of the besieged city before him; and, according to Eze_4:8,
is to lie upon his side as long as the siege lasts, and during that time is to nourish himself
in the manner prescribed in Eze_4:9. In harmony with this is the formal division of the
chapter, inasmuch as the three acts, which the prophet is to perform for the purpose of
portraying the impending siege of Jerusalem, are co-ordinated to each other by the
repetition of the address ‫ה‬ ָ‫תּ‬ ַ‫א‬ ְ‫ו‬ in Eze_4:3, Eze_4:4, and Eze_4:8, and subordinated to
the general injunction-to portray Jerusalem as a besieged city - introduced in Eze_4:1
with the words ‫ה‬ ָ‫תּ‬ ַ‫א‬ ְ‫ו‬ ‫ן‬ ֶ‫ב‬ .
The first symbolical action. - Eze_4:1. And thou, son of man, take to thyself a brick,
and lay it before thee, and draw thereon a city, Jerusalem: Eze_4:2. And direct a siege
against it; build against it siege-towers, raise up a mound against it, erect camps
against it, and place battering-rams against it round about. Eze_4:3. And thou, take to
thyself an iron pan, and place it as an iron wall between thee and the city, and direct
thy face towards it; thus let it be in a state of siege, and besiege it. Let it be a sign to the
house of Israel.
The directions in Eze_4:1 and Eze_4:2 contain the general basis for the symbolical
siege of Jerusalem, which the prophet is to lay before Israel as a sign. Upon a brick he is
to sketch a city (‫ק‬ ַ‫ק‬ ָ‫,ח‬ to engrave with a writing instrument) which is to represent
Jerusalem: around the city he is to erect siege-works - towers, walls, camps, and
battering-rams; i.e., he is to inscribe the representation of them, and place before
himself the picture of the besieged city. The selection of a brick, i.e., of a tile-stone, not
burnt in a kiln, but merely dried in the sun, is not, as Hävernick supposes, a
reminiscence of Babylon and monumental inscriptions; in Palestine, also, such bricks
were a common building material (Isa_9:9), in consequence of which the selection of
such a soft mass of clay, on which a picture might be easily inscribed, was readily
suggested. ‫ן‬ ַ‫ָת‬‫נ‬ ‫ר‬ ‫צ‬ ָ‫מ‬ = ‫שׂוּם‬ , Mic_4:1-13 :14, “to make a siege,” i.e., “to bring forward
siege-works.” ‫ר‬ ‫צ‬ ָ‫מ‬ is therefore the general expression which is specialized in the
following clauses by ‫ֵק‬‫י‬ ָ‫,דּ‬ “siege-towers” (see on 2Ki_24:1); by ‫ה‬ָ‫ל‬ ְ‫ֹל‬‫ס‬, “mound” (see on
2Sa_20:15); ‫ת‬ ‫נ‬ֲ‫ח‬ ַ‫,מ‬ “camps” in the plural, because the hostile army raises several camps
around the city; ‫ים‬ ִ‫ר‬ָ‫,כּ‬ “battering-rams,” “wall-breakers,” arietes; according to Joseph
Kimchi, “iron rams,” to break in the walls (and gates, 21:27). They consisted of strong
beams of hard wood, furnished at the end with a ram's head made of iron, which were
suspended by a chain, and driven forcibly against the wall by the soldiers. Compare the
description of them by Josephus, de bello Judaico iii. 7. 19. The suffix in ָ‫יה‬ֶ‫ל‬ָ‫,ע‬ in Eze_
4:2, refers to ‫יר‬ ִ‫.ע‬ The siege-works which are named were not probably to be placed by
Ezekiel as little figures around the brick, so that the latter would represent the city, but
to be engraved upon the brick around the city thereon portrayed. The expressions, “to
make a siege,” “to build towers,” “to erect a mound,” etc., are selected because the
drawing was to represent what is done when a city is besieged. In Eze_4:3, in reference
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to this, the inscribed picture of the city is at once termed “city,” and in Eze_4:7 the
picture of the besieged Jerusalem, “the siege of Jerusalem.” The meaning of the picture
is clear. Every one who saw it was to recognise that Jerusalem will be besieged. But the
prophet is to do still more; he is to take in hand the siege itself, and to carry it out. To
that end, he is to placed an iron pan as an iron wall between himself and the city
sketched on the brick, and direct his countenance stedfastly towards the city (‫ין‬ ִ‫כ‬ ֵ‫,)ה‬ and
so besiege it. The iron pan, erected as a wall, is to represent neither the wall of the city
(Ewald) nor the enemies' rampart, for this was already depicted on the brick; while to
represent it, i.e., the city wall, as “iron,” i.e., immoveably fast, would be contrary to the
meaning of the prophecy. The iron wall represents, as Rosenmüller, after the hints of
Theodoret, Cornelius a Lapide, and others, has already observed, a firm, impregnable
wall of partition, which the prophet as messenger and representative of God is to raise
between himself and the beleaguered city, ut significaret, quasi ferreum murum
interjectum esse cives inter et se, i.e., Deum Deique decretum et sententiam contra illos
latam esse irrevocabilem, nec Deum civium preces et querimonias auditurum aut iis ad
misericordiam flectendum. Cf. Isa_59:2; Lam_3:44. ‫ת‬ ַ‫ב‬ֲ‫ח‬ ַ‫,מ‬ “pan,” i.e., an iron plate for
baking their loaves and slices of cakes; see on Lev_2:5. The selection of such an iron
plate for the purpose mentioned is not to be explained, as Kliefoth thinks, from the
circumstance that the pan is primarily to serve the prophet for preparing his food while
he is occupied in completing his sketch. The text says nothing of that. If he were to have
employed the pan for such a purpose, he could not, at the same time, have placed it as a
wall between himself and the city. The choice is to be explained simply from this, that
such a plate was to be found in every household, and was quite fitted for the object
intended. If any other symbolical element is contained on it, the hard ignoble metal
might, perhaps, with Grotius, be taken to typify the hard, wicked heart of the inhabitants
of Jerusalem; cf. Eze_22:18; Jer_15:12. The symbolical siege of Jerusalem is to be a sign
for the house of Israel, i.e., a pre-announcement of its impending destiny. The house of
Israel is the whole covenant people, not merely the ten tribes as in Eze_4:5, in
contradistinction to the house of Judah (Eze_4:6).
CALVIN, "Here God begins to speak more openly by means of his servant, and not
to speak only, but to signify by an outward symbol what he wishes to be uttered by
his mouth. Hence he orders the Prophet to paint Jerusalem on a brick Take
therefore, he says, a brick, and place it in thy sight: then paint on it a city, even
Jerusalem This is one command: then erect a tower against it. He describes the form
of ancient warfare; for then when they wished to besiege cities, they erected mounds
from which they filled up trenches: then they moved about wooden towers, so that
they might collect the soldiers into close bands, and they had other machines which
are not now in use. For fire-arms took away that ancient art of warfare. But God
here Simply wishes the picture of a city to be besieged by Ezekiel. Then he orders
him to set up a pan or iron plate, like a wall of iron This had been a childish
spectacle, unless God had commanded the Prophet to act so. And hence we infer,
that sacraments cannot be distinguished from empty shows, unless by the word of
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God. The authority of God therefore is the mark of distinction, by which sacraments
excel, and have their weight and dignity, and whatever men mingle with them is
frivolous. For this reason we say that all the pomps of which the Papal religion is
full are mere trifles. Why so? because men have thought out whatever dazzles the
eyes of the simple, without any command of God.
But if any one now objects, that the water in baptism cannot penetrate as far as the
soul, so as to purge it of inward and hidden filth, we have this ready answer:
baptism ought not to be considered in its external aspect only, but its author must be
considered. Thus the whole worship under the law had nothing very different from
the ceremonies of the Gentiles. Thus the profane Gentiles also slew their victims,
and had whatever outward splendor could be desired: but that was entirely futile,
because God had not commanded it. On the other hand, nothing was useless among
the Jews. When they brought their victims, when the blood was sprinkled, when
they performed ablutions, God’s command was added, and afterwards a promise:
and so these ceremonies were not without their use. We must therefore hold, that
sacraments at first sight appear trifling and of no moment, but their efficacy
consists in the command and promise of God. For if any one reads what Ezekiel
here relates, he would say that it, was child’s play. He took a brick, he painted a city
on it: it was only a figment: then he had imaginary machines by which he besieged
the city: why boys do better than this: next he set up a plate of iron like a wall: this
action is not a whit more serious than the former. Thus profane men would not only
despise, but even carp at this symbol. But when God sends his Prophet, his authority
should be sufficient for us, which is a certain test for our decision, and cannot fail,
as I have said. First, he says, paint a city, namely Jerusalem: then lay siege to it, and
move towards it all warlike instruments: place even ‫,כרים‬ kerim, which some
interpret “leaders,” but they are “lambs,” or “rams,” for the Hebrews
metaphorically name those iron machines by which walls are thrown down “rams,”
as the Latins do. Some indeed prefer the rendering “ leaders,” but I do not approve
of their opinion. At length he says, this shall be a sign and on this clause we must
dwell: for, as I already said, the whole description may be thought useless, unless
this testimony be added: indeed the whole vision would be insipid by itself, unless
the savor arose from this seasoning, since God says, this should be a sign to the
Israelites.
When God pronounces that the Prophet should do nothing in vain, this ought to be
sufficient to lead us to acquiesce in his word. If we then dispute according to our
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sense, he will show that what seems foolish overcomes all the wisdom of the world,
as Paul says. (1 Corinthians 1:25.) For God sometimes works as if by means of folly:
that is, he has methods of action which are extraordinary, and by no means in
accordance with human judgment. But that this folly of God may excel all the
wisdom of the world, let this sentence occur to our minds, when it is here said, Let
this be for a sign to the house of Israel. For although the Israelites could shake their
heads, and put out their tongues, and treat the Prophet with unbridled insolence, yet
this alone prevailed sufficiently for confounding them, that God said, this shall be
for a sign And we know of what event it was a sign, because the Israelites who had
been drawn into captivity thought they had been too easy, and grieved at their
obedience: then also envy crept in when they saw the rest of the people remaining in
the city. Therefore God meets them and shows them that exile is more tolerable than
to endure a siege in the city if they were enclosed in it. Besides, there is little doubt
that this prophecy was directed against the Jews who pleased themselves, because
they were yet at ease in their rest. For this reason, therefore, God orders the Prophet
to erect towers, then to pitch a camp, and to prepare whatever belongs to the siege
of a city, because very soon afterwards the Chaldeans would arrive, who had not yet
oppressed the city, but are just about to besiege it, as we shall afterwards see at
length.
COFFMAN, "Verse 1
PROPHECY OF JERUSALEM'S DESTRUCTION (Ezekiel 4-7)
VISIBLE PORTRAYAL OF FALL OF JERUSALEM
The absurd view that the events of this chapter existed only subjectively in the mind
of Ezekiel, that it was all a vision of his, is here rejected. "The adoption of such an
interpretation is not the act of an honest interpreter."[1]
What Ezekiel did here was only another example of what many of God's prophets
throughout the ages also did. Zedekiah's "horns of iron" (1 Kings 22:11); Isaiah's
walking "naked and barefoot" (Isaiah 22:2-3); Jeremiah's "yokes of wood"
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(Jeremiah 27:2); Hosea's marriage to Gomer (Hosea 1:1-3:10); Zechariah's
breaking of Beauty and Bands (Zechariah 11); Agabus' binding himself with Paul's
belt (Acts 21:10),, etc. are other examples of such enacted prophecies.
This chapter portrays (1) the visible model of Jerusalem's siege and capture (Ezekiel
4:1-3), the certainty of punishment awaiting both the northern and southern Israels
(Ezekiel 4:4-8), the scarcity of food for the inhabitants of Jerusalem (Ezekiel 4:9-11),
and the ceremonial uncleanness that would come to the besieged and to the captives
(Ezekiel 4:12-17).
Regarding the time of the events recorded here, Canon Cook placed it in the fifth
year of the captivity of Jehoiachin (592 B.C.). He also noted that the destruction of
Jerusalem was contrary to all human expectations.
"It could scarcely have been expected that Zedekiah, the creature of the king of
Babylon and ruling by his authority in the place of Jehoiachin would have been so
infatuated as to provoke the anger of the powerful Nebuchadnezzar. It was indeed
to infatuation that the historian ascribed that foolish act of Zedekiah (2 Kings
24:20).[2]
Ezekiel 4:1-3
"Thou also, son of man, take thee a tile, and lay it before thee, and portray upon it a
city, even Jerusalem: and lay siege against it, and build forts against it, and cast up a
mound against it, and plant battering rams against it round about. And take thou
unto thee an iron pan, and set it for a wall of iron between thee and the city: and set
thy face toward it, and it shall be besieged, and thou shalt lay siege against it. This
shall be a sign to the house of Israel."
"Take thee a tile ..." (Ezekiel 4:1). The fact that he could draw a map on this tile
identifies it as coming from Babylon, not Jerusalem, clearly indicating that Ezekiel
was written from the land of Israel's captivity, despite the concentrated focus upon
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Jerusalem. This special concern for Jerusalem should not surprise us. "This
requires no explanation. Jerusalem was the heart and the brain of the nation, the
center of its life and its religion, and in the eyes of the prophets (all of them) the
fountain-head of its sin."[3]
The necessity of the prophetic warning to Israel regarding the ultimate fall and total
destruction of Jerusalem lay in the foolish and blind optimism of the people. "Even
after they were carried into captivity, numbers of them were still engaging in false
optimism,"[4] supposing that the captivity would soon end dramatically, and failing
to understand that their dreadful servitude was nothing more than God's
punishment of their consummate wickedness, a punishment they richly deserved.
This unexpected, totally improbable fall of Jerusalem is throughout this section of
Ezekiel the almost constant subject. "The great theme of the first part of Ezekiel is
the certainty of the complete downfall of the Jewish state."[5]
This model of the city of Jerusalem, with the deployment of all kinds of military
installations and equipment all around it, "was a proper and powerful device for
capturing attention, and it amounted to a prediction of the fall of Jerusalem."[6]
Ezekiel probably had many examples of this type of illustration to aid him in the
fulfillment of God's command, because, "Assyrian bas-reliefs show in vigorous
detail how a siege was carried out."[7]
In the analogy here, Ezekiel himself enacts the part of God as the true besieger of
the city. It came to pass as Jeremiah prophesied, when God said, "I myself shall
fight against you with outstretched hand and strong arm, in anger, and in fury, and
in great wrath" (Jeremiah 21:5).
The iron barrier (represented by the cooking utensil) stood for the wall of
separation which the sins of Israel had erected between themselves and the Lord.
"Your iniquities have been a barrier between you and your God,' (Isaiah 59:2). "It
8

meant the total severance of relation between Jerusalem and God, `You have
screened yourself off with a cloud, that prayer may not pass through.'"[8]
It would appear from the overwhelmingly bad news of such an illustrated prophecy
that Israel should have been filled with sorrow and consternation over it, "But there
seems to have been little response to it. Ezekiel was being taught in the crucible of
human experience the incredible resistance of men to the Word of God."[9]
COKE, "Ezekiel 4:1. Take thee a tile— A slate. See Jeremiah 1:11; Jeremiah 13:4.
Maimonides, not attending to the primitive mode of information made use of by
Ezekiel here, by Jeremiah in the passages referred to, and by several other of the
prophets, is much scandalised at several of these actions, unbecoming, as he
supposed, the dignity of the prophetical office: and is therefore for resolving them in
general into supernatural visions, impressed on the imagination of the prophet; and
this because some few of them, perhaps, may admit of such an interpretation. His
reasoning on this head is to the following effect: As the prophet thought that in a
vision, ch. Ezekiel 8:8-9 he was commanded to dig in the wall, that he might enter
and see what was doing within; and that he did dig, and entered through a hole, and
saw what was to be seen; so likewise when he was commanded in the present
passage to take a tile, and in ch. 5 to take him a sharp razor, we should conclude
that both these actions were merely supernatural visions; it arguing an
impeachment of the divine wisdom to employ his ministers in actions of so low a
kind. But here, says Bishop Warburton, the author's reasoning is defective, because
what Ezekiel saw, in the chambers of imagery, ch. 8 was in a vision; therefore, says
Maimonides, his delineation of the plan of the siege, and his shaving his beard, chap.
4 and 5 were likewise in vision. But to make this inference logical, it is necessary
that the circumstances in the viiith, and those in the ivth and vth chapters, be shewn
to be specifically the same. Examine them, and they are found to be very different.
That in the viiith was to shew the prophet the excessive idolatry of Jerusalem, by a
sight of the very idolatry itself. Those in the ivth and vth were to convey the will of
God by the prophet to the people in a symbolic action. Now in the first place the
information was properly in vision, and fully answered the purpose, namely, the
prophet's information; but in the latter a vision had been improper, for a vision to
the prophet was of itself no information to the people. See the Divine Legation, vol.
3: and, for more on the subject of these prophetic actions, the note on chap. Ezekiel
12:3.
9

ELLICOTT, "(1) Take thee a tile.—The use of tiles for such purposes as that here
indicated was common both in Babylonia and in Nineveh. When intended for
preservation the writing or drawing was made upon the soft and plastic clay, which
was afterwards baked. It is from the remains of great libraries prepared in this way
that most of our modern knowledge of Nineveh and Babylon has been derived. It is,
of course, quite possible that Ezekiel may have drawn in this way upon a soft clay
tile; but from the whole account in this and the following chapters it is more likely
that he simply described, rather than actually performed, these symbolical acts.
TRAPP, " Thou also, son of man, take thee a tile, and lay it before thee, and
pourtray upon it the city, [even] Jerusalem:
Ver. 1. Thou also, son of man.] Hitherto we have had the preface: followeth now the
prophecy itself, which is both concerning the fall of earthly kingdoms, and also the
setting up of Christ’s kingdom among men. The siege, famine, and downfall of
Jerusalem is here set forth to the life, four years at least before it occurred, not in
simple words, but in deeds and pictures, as more apt to affect men’s minds: like as
he is more moved who seeth himself painted as a thief or scoundrel hanged, than he
who is only called so. This way of teaching is ordinary with the prophets, and was
used also by our Saviour Christ; as when he set a child in the midst, washed his
disciples’ feet, instituted the sacraments, &c. (a)
Take thee a tile.] An unburnt tile, saith Lyra, and so fit to portray anything upon.
Some take it for a four square table, like a tile or brick, that will admit
engravement. Jerusalem, the glory of the East, was here pictured upon a tile sheard.
How mean a thing is the most stately city on earth to that city of pearl, the heavenly
Jerusalem!
And portray upon it the city.] Not with the pencil, but with the graving tool. Where
yet, as in Timanthes’ works, more was ever to be understood than was delineated.
POOLE, "The prophet is directed to represent a mock siege of Jerusalem for a sign
10

to the Jews, Ezekiel 4:1-3; and to lie before it in one posture for a set number of
days, in order to denote the time of their sins for which God did visit, Ezekiel 4:4-8.
His allotted provisions, with design to prefigure the people’s defilement among the
Gentiles, Ezekiel 4:9-15, and the scarcity they should be reduced to by the siege,
Ezekiel 4:16,17.
Hitherto the preface, containing the call and commission of the prophet; now he
begins. This is the first prophecy, and it is against Jerusalem.
A tile, or brick, or any square tablet on which he might engrave or carve.
Lay it before thee, as carvers use to do, as engravers and painters do.
Portray upon it the city; draw a map of Jerusalem, delineate or describe the city
Jerusalem, whence they were come, who now are in Babylon, and probably
repented that they had left Judea and Jerusalem, and murmured against them that
advised to it: but let them know by this sign that Jerusalem should suffer much
more than ever they suffered, that those who remained there sinning against God
should bear a long siege, a very grievous famine, and cruel slaughters.
EXPOSITOR'S BIBLE COMMENTARY, "THE END FORETOLD
Ezekiel 4:1-17 - Ezekiel 7:1-27
WITH the fourth chapter we enter on the exposition of the first great division of
Ezekiel’s prophecies. The chaps, 4-24, cover a period of about four and a half years,
extending from the time of the prophet’s call to the commencement of the siege of
Jerusalem. During this time Ezekiel’s thoughts revolved round one great theme-the
approaching judgment on the city and the nation. Through contemplation of this
fact there was disclosed to him the outline of a comprehensive theory of divine
providence, in which the destruction of Israel was seen to be the necessary
11

consequence of her past history and a necessary preliminary to her future
restoration. 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 which forms the subject of the
present lecture 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.
I.
The certainty of the national judgment seems to have been first impressed on
Ezekiel’s mind in the form of a singular series of symbolic acts which he conceived
himself to be commanded to perform. The peculiarity of these signs is that they
represent simultaneously two distinct aspects of the nation’s fate-on the one hand
the horrors of the siege of Jerusalem, and on the other hand the state of exile which
was to follow.
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 fountain-head 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. That the light of Israel should be extinguished amidst the
anguish and bloodshed which must accompany an unsuccessful defence of the
capital was the most terrible element in Ezekiel’s message, and here he sets it in the
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forefront of his prophecy.
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. [Ezekiel
4:1-3] Being at a distance from Jerusalem, he seems to feel the need of some visible
emblem of the doomed city before he can adequately represent the import of his
prediction. 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
rower 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 (Ezekiel 4:4-8). 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. Now the time of Judahs exile is fixed at forty years, dating of course from the
fall of the city. The captivity of North Israel exceeds that of Judah by the interval
between the destruction of Samaria (722) and the fall of Jerusalem, a period which
actually measured about a hundred and thirty-five years. In the Hebrew text,
however, the length of Israel’s captivity is given as three hundred and ninety years-
that is, it must have lasted for three hundred and fifty years before that of Judah
begins. This is obviously quite irreconcilable with the facts of history, and also with
the prophet’s intention. He cannot mean that the banishment of the northern tribes
was to be protracted for two centuries after that of Judah had come to an end, for
he uniformly speaks of the restoration of the two branches of the nation as
simultaneous. The text of the Greek translation helps us past this difficulty. The
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Hebrew manuscript from which that version was made had the reading a "hundred
and ninety" instead of "three hundred and ninety" in Ezekiel 4:5. This alone yields
a satisfactory sense, and the reading of the Septuagint is now generally accepted as
representing what Ezekiel actually wrote. There is still a slight discrepancy between
the hundred and thirty-five years of the actual history and the hundred and fifty
years expressed by the symbol; but we must remember that Ezekiel is using round
numbers throughout, and moreover he has not as yet fixed the precise date of the
capture of Jerusalem when the last forty years are to commence.
In the third symbol (Ezekiel 4:9-17) the two aspects of the judgment are again
presented in the closest possible combination. The prophet’s food and drink during
the days when he is imagined to be lying on his side represents on the one hand, by
its being small in quantity and carefully weighed and measured, the rigours of
famine in Jerusalem during the siege-"Behold, I will break the staff of bread in
Jerusalem: and they shall eat bread by weight, and with anxiety; and drink water
by measure, and with horror" (Ezekiel 4:16); on the other hand, by its mixed
ingredients and by the fuel used in its preparation, it typifies the unclean religious
condition of the people when in exile-"Even so shall the children of Israel eat their
food unclean among the heathen" (Ezekiel 4:13). The meaning of this threat is best
explained by a passage in the book of Hosea. Speaking of the Exile, Hosea says:
"They shall not remain in the land of Jehovah; but the children of Ephraim shall
return to Egypt, and shall eat unclean food in Assyria. They shall pour out no wine
to Jehovah, nor shall they lay out their sacrifices for Him: like the food of mourners
shall their food be; all that eat thereof shall be defiled: for their bread shall only
satisfy their hunger; it shall not come into the house of Jehovah". [Hosea 9:3-4] The
idea is that all food which has not been consecrated by being presented to Jehovah
in the sanctuary is necessarily unclean, and those who eat of it contract ceremonial
defilement. In the very act of satisfying his natural appetite a man forfeits his
religious standing. This was the peculiar hardship of the state of exile, that a man
must become unclean, he must eat unconsecrated food unless he renounced his
religion and served the gods of the land in which he dwelt. Between the time of
Hosea and Ezekiel these ideas may have been somewhat modified by the
introduction of the Deuteronomic law, which expressly permits secular slaughter at
a distance from the sanctuary. But this did not lessen the importance of a legal
sanctuary for the common life of an Israelite. The whole of a man’s flocks and
herds, the whole produce of his fields, had to be sanctified by the presentation of
firstlings and firstfruits at the Temple before he could enjoy the reward of his
industry with the sense of standing in Jehovah’s favour. Hence the destruction of
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the sanctuary or the permanent exclusion of the worshippers from it reduced the
whole life of the people to a condition of uncleanness which was felt to be as great a
calamity as was a papal interdict in the Middle Ages. This is the fact which is
expressed in the part of Ezekiel’s symbolism now before us. What it meant for his
fellow exiles was that the religious disability under which they laboured was to be
continued for a generation. The whole life of Israel was to become unclean until its
inward state was made worthy of the religious privileges now to be withdrawn. At
the same time no one could have felt the penalty more severely than Ezekiel himself,
in whom habits of ceremonial purity had become a second nature. The repugnance
which he feels at the loathsome manner in which he was at first directed to prepare
his food, and the profession of his own practice in exile, as well as the concession
made to his scrupulous sense of propriety (Ezekiel 4:14-16), are all characteristic of
one whose priestly training had made a defect of ceremonial cleanness almost
equivalent to a moral delinquency.
The last of the symbols [Ezekiel 5:1-4] represents the fate of the population of
Jerusalem when the city is taken. The shaving of the prophet’s head and beard is a
figure for the depopulation of the city and country. By a further series of acts, whose
meaning is obvious, he shows how a third of the inhabitants shall die of famine and
pestilence during the siege, a third shall be slain by the enemy when the city is
captured, while the remaining third shall be dispersed among the nations. Even
these shall be pursued by the sword of vengeance until but a few numbered
individuals survive, and of them again a part passes through the fire. The passage
reminds us of the last verse of the sixth chapter of Isaiah, which was perhaps in
Ezekiel’s mind when he wrote: "And if a tenth still remain in it [the land], it shall
again pass through the fire: as a terebinth or an oak whose stump is left at their
felling: a holy seed shall be the stock thereof." [Isaiah 6:13] At least the conception
of a succession of sifting judgments, leaving only a remnant to inherit the promise of
the future, is common to both prophets, and the symbol in Ezekiel is noteworthy as
the first expression of his steadfast conviction that further punishments were in
store for the exiles after the destruction of Jerusalem.
It is clear that these signs could never have been enacted, either in view of the people
or in solitude, as they are here described. It may be doubted whether the whole
description is not purely ideal, representing a process which passed through the
prophet’s mind, or was suggested to him in the visionary state but never actually
performed. That will always remain a tenable view. An imaginary symbolic act is as
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legitimate a literary device as an imaginary conversation. It is absurd to mix up the
question of the prophet’s truthfulness with the question whether he did or did not
actually do what he conceives himself as doing. The attempt to explain his action by
catalepsy would take us but a little way, even if the arguments adduced in favour of
it were stronger than they are. Since even a cataleptic patient could not have tied
himself down on his side or prepared and eaten his food in that posture, it is
necessary in any case to admit that there must be a considerable, though
indeterminate, element of literary imagination in the account given of the symbols.
It is not impossible that some symbolic representation of the siege of Jerusalem may
have actually been the first act in Ezekiel’s ministry. In the interpretation of the
vision which immediately follows we shall find that no notice is taken of the features
which refer to exile, but only of those which announce the siege of Jerusalem. It may
therefore be the case that Ezekiel did some such action as is here described, pointing
to the fall of Jerusalem, but that the whole was taken up afterwards in his
imagination and made into an ideal representation of the two great facts which
formed the burden of his earlier prophecy.
II.
It is a relief to turn from this somewhat fantastic, though for its own purpose
effective, exhibition of prophetic ideas to the impassioned oracles in which the doom
of the city and the nation is pronounced. The first of these (Ezekiel 5:5-17) is
introduced here as the explanation of the signs that have been described, in so far as
they bear on the fate of Jerusalem; but it has a unity of its own, and is a
characteristic specimen of Ezekiel’s oratorical style. It consists of two parts: the first
(Ezekiel 5:5-10) deals chiefly with the reasons for the judgment on Jerusalem, and
the second (Ezekiel 5:11-17) with the nature of the judgment itself. The chief
thought of the passage is the unexampled severity of the punishment which is in
store for Israel, as represented by the fate of the capital. A calamity so
unprecedented demands an explanation as unique as itself. Ezekiel finds the ground
of it in the signal honour conferred on Jerusalem in her being set in the midst of the
nations, in the possession of a religion which expressed the will of the one God, and
in the fact that she had proved herself unworthy of her distinction and privileges
and tried to live as the nations around. "This is Jerusalem which I have set in the
midst of the nations, with the lands round about her. But she rebelled against My
judgments wickedly more than the nations, and My statutes more than [other] lands
round about her: for they rejected My judgments, and in My statutes they did not
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walk. Therefore thus saith the Lord Jehovah: Behold, even I am against you; and I
will execute in thy midst judgments before the nations, and will do in thy case what I
have not done [heretofore], and what I shall not do the like of any more, according
to all thy abominations" (Ezekiel 5:5-9). The central position of Jerusalem is
evidently no figure of speech in the mouth of Ezekiel. It means that she is so situated
as to fulfil her destiny in the view of all the nations of the world, who can read in her
wonderful history the character of the God who is above all gods. Nor can the
prophet be fairly accused of provincialism in thus speaking of Jerusalem’s
unrivalled physical and moral advantages. The mountain ridge on which she stood
lay almost across the great highways of communication between the East and the
West, between the hoary seats of civilisation and the lands whither the course of
empire took its way. Ezekiel knew that Tyre was the centre of the old world’s
commerce, (See chapter 27) but he also knew that Jerusalem occupied a central
situation in the civilised world, and in that fact he rightly saw a providential mark
of the grandeur and universality of her religious mission. Her calamities, too, were
probably such as no other city experienced. The terrible prediction of Ezekiel 5:10,
"Fathers shall eat sons in the midst of thee, and sons shall eat fathers," seems to
have been literally fulfilled. "The hands of the pitiful women have sodden their own
children: they were their meat in the destruction of the daughter of My people."
[Lamentations 4:10] It is likely enough that the annals of Assyrian conquest cover
many a tale of woe which in point of mere physical suffering paralleled the atrocities
of the siege of Jerusalem. But no other nation had a conscience so sensitive as Israel,
or lost so much by its political annihilation. The humanising influences of a pure
religion had made Israel susceptible of a kind of anguish which ruder communities
were spared. The sin of Jerusalem is represented after Ezekiel’s manner as on the
one hand transgression of the divine commandments, and on the other defilement of
the Temple through false worship. These are ideas which we shall frequently meet
in the course of the book, and they need not detain us here. The prophet proceeds
(Ezekiel 5:11-17) to describe in detail the relentless punishment which the divine
vengeance is to inflict on the inhabitants and the city. The jealousy, the wrath, the
indignation of Jehovah, which are represented as "satisfied" by the complete
destruction of the people, belong to the limitations of the conception of God which
Ezekiel had. It was impossible at that time to interpret such an event as the fall of
Jerusalem in a religious sense otherwise than as a vehement outburst of Jehovah’s
anger, expressing the reaction of His holy nature against the sin of idolatry. There is
indeed a great distance between the attitude of Ezekiel towards the hapless city and
the yearning pity of Christ’s lament over the sinful Jerusalem of His time. Yet the
first was a step towards the second. Ezekiel realised intensely that part of God’s
character which it was needful to enforce in order to beget in his countrymen the
deep horror at the sin of idolatry which characterised the later Judaism. The best
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commentary on the latter part of this chapter is found in those parts of the book of
Lamentations which speak of the state of the city and the survivors after its
overthrow. There we see how quickly the stern judgment produced a more
chastened and beautiful type of piety than had ever been prevalent before. Those
pathetic utterances, in which patriotism and religion are so finely blended, are like
the timid and tentative advances of a child’s heart towards a parent who has ceased
to punish but has not begun to caress. This, and much else that is true and
ennobling in the later religion of Israel, is rooted in the terrifying sense of the divine
anger against sin so powerfully represented in the preaching of Ezekiel.
III.
The next two chapters may be regarded as pendants to the theme which is dealt with
in this opening section of the book of Ezekiel. In the fourth and fifth chapters the
prophet had mainly the city in his eye as the focus of the nation’s life; in the sixth he
turns his eye to the land which had shared the sin, and must suffer the punishment,
of the capital. It is, in its first part (Ezekiel 6:2-10), an apostrophe to the mountain
land of Israel, which seems to stand out before the exile’s mind with its mountains
and hills, its ravines and valleys, in contrast to the monotonous plain of Babylonia
which stretched around him. But these mountains were familiar to the prophet as
the seats of the rural idolatry in Israel. The word bamah, which means properly
"the height," had come to be used as the name of an idolatrous sanctuary. These
sanctuaries were probably Canaanitish in origin; and although by Israel they had
been consecrated to the worship of Jehovah, yet He was worshipped there in ways
which the prophets pronounced hateful to Him. They had been destroyed by Josiah,
but must have been restored to their former use during the revival of heathenism
which followed his death. It is a lurid picture which rises before the prophet’s
imagination as he contemplates the judgment of this provincial idolatry: the altars
laid waste, the "sun-pillars" broken, and the idols surrounded by the corpses of
men who had fled to their shrines for protection and perished at their feet. This
demonstration of the helplessness of the rustic divinities to save their sanctuaries
and their worshippers will be the means of breaking the rebellious heart and the
whorish eyes that had led Israel so far astray from her true Lord, and will produce
in exile the self-loathing which Ezekiel always regards as the beginning of penitence.
But the prophet’s passion rises to a higher pitch. and he hears the command "Clap
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thy hands, and stamp with thy foot, and say, Aha for the abominations of the house
of Israeli." These are gestures and exclamations, not of indignation, but of contempt
and triumphant scorn. The same feeling and even the same gestures are ascribed to
Jehovah Himself in another passage of highly charged emotion. [Ezekiel 21:17] And
it is only fair to remember that it is the anticipation of the victory of Jehovah’s cause
that fills the mind of the prophet at such moments and seems to deaden the sense of
human sympathy within him. At the same time the victory of Jehovah was the
victory of prophecy, and in so far Smend may be right in regarding the words as
throwing light on the intensity of the antagonism in which prophecy and the
popular religion then stood. The devastation of the land is to be effected by the same
instruments as were at work in the destruction of the city: first the sword of the
Chaldaeans, then famine and pestilence among those who escape, until the whole of
Israel’s ancient territory lies desolate from the southern steppes to Riblah in the
north.
Chapter 7 is one of those singled out by Ewald as preserving most faithfully the
spirit and language of Ezekiel’s earlier utterances. Both in thought and expression it
exhibits a freedom and animation seldom attained in Ezekiel’s writings, and it is
evident that it must have been composed under keen emotion. It is comparatively
free from those stereotyped phrases which are elsewhere so common, and the style
falls at times into the rhythm which is characteristic of Hebrew poetry. Ezekiel
hardly perhaps attains to perfect mastery of poetic form, and even here we may be
sensible of a lack of power to blend a series of impressions and images into an
artistic unity. The vehemence of his feeling hurries him from one conception to
another, without giving full expression to any, or indicating clearly the connection
that leads from one to the other. This circumstance, and the corrupt condition of the
text together, make the chapter in some parts unintelligible, and as a whole one of
the most difficult in the book. In its present position it forms a fitting conclusion to
the opening section of the book. All the elements of the judgment which have just
been foretold are gathered up in one outburst of emotion, producing a song of
triumph in which the prophet seems to stand in the uproar of the final catastrophe
and exult amid the crash and wreck of the old order which is passing away.
The passage is divided into five stanzas, which may originally have been
approximately equal in length, although the first is now nearly twice as long as any
of the others.
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1. Ezekiel 7:2-9 -The first verse strikes the keynote of the whole poem; it is the
inevitableness and the finality of the approaching dissolution. A striking phrase of
Amos 8:2 is first taken up and expanded in accordance with the anticipations with
which the previous chapters have now familiarised us: "An end is come, the end is
come on the four skirts of the land." The poet already hears the tumult and
confusion of the battle; the vintage songs of the Judaean peasant are silenced, and
with the din and fury of war the day of the Lord draws near.
2. Ezekiel 7:10-13 -The prophet’s thoughts here revert to the present, and he notes
the eager interest with which men both in Judah and Babylon are pursuing the
ordinary business of life and the vain dreams of political greatness. "The diadem
flourishes, the sceptre blossoms, arrogance shoots up." These expressions must refer
to the efforts of the new rulers of Jerusalem to restore the fortunes of the nation and
the glories of the old kingdom which had been so greatly tarnished by the recent
captivity. Things are going bravely, they think; they are surprised at their own
success; they hope that the day of small things will grow into the day of things
greater than those which are past. The following verse is untranslatable; probably
the original words, if we could recover them, would contain some pointed and
scornful antithesis to these futile and vainglorious anticipations. The allusion to
"buyers and sellers" (Ezekiel 7:12) may possibly be quite general, referring only to
the absorbing interest which men continue to take in their possessions, heedless of
the impending judgment. {cf. Luke 17:20-30} But the facts that the advantage is
assumed to be on the side of the buyer and that the seller expects to return to his
heritage make it probable that the prophet is thinking of the forced sales by the
expatriated nobles of their estates in Palestine, and to their deeply cherished resolve
to right themselves when the time of their exile is over. All such ambitions, says the
prophet, are vain-"the seller shall not return to what he sold, and a man shall not by
wrong preserve his living." In any case Ezekiel evinces here, as elsewhere, a certain
sympathy with the exiled aristocracy, in opposition to the pretensions of the new
men who had succeeded to their honours.
3. Ezekiel 7:14-18 -The next scene that rises before the prophet’s vision is the
collapse of Judah’s military preparations in the hour of danger. Their army exists
but on paper. There is much blowing of trumpets and much organising, but no men
to go forth to battle. A blight rests on all their efforts; their hands are paralysed and
20

their hearts unnerved by the sense that "wrath rests on all their pomp." Sword,
famine, and pestilence, the ministers of Jehovah’s vengeance, shall devour the
inhabitants of the city and the country, until but a few survivors on the tops of the
mountains remain to mourn over the universal desolation.
4. Ezekiel 7:19-22 -At present the inhabitants of Jerusalem are proud of the ill-
gotten and ill-used wealth stored up within her, and doubtless the exiles cast
covetous eyes on the luxury which may still have prevailed amongst the upper
classes in the capital. But of what avail will all this treasure be in the evil day now so
near at hand? It will but add mockery to their sufferings to be surrounded by gold
and silver which can do nothing to allay the pangs of hunger. It will be cast in the
streets as refuse, for it cannot save them in the day of Jehovah’s anger. Nay, more, it
will become the prize of the most ruthless of the heathen (the Chaldaeans); and
when in the eagerness of their lust for gold they ransack the Temple treasury and so
desecrate the Holy Place, Jehovah will avert His face and suffer them to work their
will. The curse of Jehovah rests on the silver and gold of Jerusalem, which has been
used for the making of idolatrous images, and now is made to them an unclean
thing.
5. Ezekiel 7:23-27 -The closing strophe contains a powerful description of the
dismay and despair that will seize all classes in the state as the day of wrath draws
near. Calamity after calamity comes, rumour follows hard on rumour, and the
heads of the nation are distracted and cease to exercise the functions of leadership.
The recognised guides of the people-the prophets, the priests, and the wise men-have
no word of counsel or direction to offer; the prophet’s vision, the priest’s traditional
lore, and the wise man’s sagacity are alike at fault. So the king and the grandees are
filled with stupefaction; and the common people, deprived of their natural leaders,
sit down in helpless dejection. Thus shall Jerusalem be recompensed according to
her doings. "The land is full of bloodshed, and the city of violence"; and in the
correspondence between desert and retribution men shall be made to acknowledge
the operation of the divine righteousness. "They shall know that I am Jehovah."
IV.
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It may be useful at this point to note certain theological principles which already
begin to appear in this earliest of Ezekiel’s prophecies. Reflection on the nature and
purpose of the divine dealings we have seen to be a characteristic of his work; and
even those passages which we have considered, although chiefly devoted to an
enforcement of the fact of judgment, present some features of the conception of
Israel’s history which had been formed in his mind.
1. We observe in the first place that the prophet lays great stress on the world-wide
significance of the events which are to befall Israel. This thought is not as yet
developed, but it is clearly present. The relation between Jehovah and Israel is so
peculiar that He is known to the nations in the first instance only. as Israel’s God,
and thus His being and character have to be learned from His dealings with His own
people. And since Jehovah is the only true God and must be worshipped as such
everywhere, the history of Israel has an interest for the world such as that of no
other nation has. She was placed in the centre of the nations in order that the
knowledge of God might radiate from her through all the world; and now that she
has proved unfaithful to her mission, Jehovah must manifest His power and His
character by an unexampled work of judgment. Even the destruction of Israel is a
demonstration to the universal conscience of mankind of what true divinity is.
2. But the judgment has of course a purpose and a meaning for Israel herself, and
both purposes are summed up in the recurring formula "Ye [they] shall know that I
am Jehovah," or "that I, Jehovah, have spoken." These two phrases express
precisely the same idea, although from slightly different starting-points. It is
assumed that Jehovah’s personality is to be identified by His word spoken through
the prophets. He is known to men through the revelation of Himself in the prophet’s
utterances. "Ye shall know that I, Jehovah, have spoken" means therefore, Ye shall
know that it is I, the God of Israel and the Ruler of the universe, who speak these
things. In other words, the harmony between prophecy and providence guarantees
the source of the prophet’s message. The shorter phrase "Ye shall know that I am
Jehovah" may mean Ye shall know that I who now speak am truly Jehovah, the
God of Israel. The prejudices of the people would have led them to deny that the
power which dictated Ezekiel’s prophecy could be their God; but this denial,
together with the false idea of Jehovah on which it rests, shall be destroyed forever
when the prophet’s words come true.
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There is of course no doubt that Ezekiel conceived Jehovah as endowed with the
plenitude of deity, or that in his view the name expressed all that we mean by the
word God. Nevertheless, historically the name Jehovah is a proper name, denoting
the God who is the God of Israel. Renan has ventured on the assertion that a deity
with a proper name is necessarily a false god. The statement perhaps measures the
difference between the God of revealed religion and the god who is an abstraction,
an expression of the order of the universe, who exists only in the mind of the man
who names him. The God of revelation is a living person, with a character and will
of His own, capable of being known by man. It is the distinction of revelation that it
dares to regard God as an individual with an inner life and nature of His own,
independent of the conception men may form of Him. Applied to such a Being, a
personal name may be as true and significant as the name which expresses the
character and individuality of a man. Only thus can we understand the historical
process by which the God who was first manifested as the deity of a particular
nation preserves His personal identity with the God who in Christ is at last revealed
as the God of the spirits of all flesh. The knowledge of Jehovah of which Ezekiel
speaks is therefore at once a knowledge of the character of the God whom Israel
professed to serve, and a knowledge of that which constitutes true and essential
divinity.
3. The prophet; in Ezekiel 6:8-10, proceeds one step further in delineating the effect
of the judgment on the minds of the survivors. The fascination of idolatry for the
Israelites is conceived as produced by that radical perversion of the religious sense
which the prophets call "whoredom"-a sensuous delight in the blessings of nature,
and an indifference to the moral element which can alone preserve either religion or
"human love from corruption. The spell shall at last be broken in the new
knowledge of Jehovah which is produced by calamity; and the heart of the people,
purified from its delusions, shall turn to Him who has smitten them, as the only true
God. When your fugitives from the sword are among the nations, when they are
scattered through the lands, then shall your fugitives remember Me amongst the
nations whither they have been carried captive, when I break their heart that goes
awhoring from Me, and their whorish eyes which went after their idols." When the
idolatrous propensity is thus eradicated, the conscience of Israel will turn inwards
on itself, and in the light of its new knowledge of God will for the first time read its
own history aright. The beginnings of a new spiritual life will be made in the bitter
self-condemnation which is one side of the national repentance. "They shall loathe
themselves for all the evil that they have committed in all their abominations."
23

PETT, "Introduction
Chapter 4. Ezekiel’s First Message - Judgment Is Coming On Jerusalem.
In this chapter we have an acted out prophecy against Jerusalem. The people had
been brought into captivity but Jerusalem still stood. They still had hopes of
returning. But they must be made to recognise that God’s anger against Israel was
such that nothing could avert the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple. Rather
than the holy city and the temple being a guarantee of Israel’s preservation by God
they had become a hindrance, and must go. Their superstitious reliance on the holy
city and the temple as the proof of their favour (Jeremiah 7:4), even in the midst of
their sinfulness, must be destroyed. This would now be Ezekiel’s continual stress,
along with judgment on the nations (25-32), until the actual destruction of
Jerusalem and the temple (Ezekiel 33:21), a destruction which would outwardly be
the end of all their hopes.
In the days of Hezekiah Yahweh had promised through Isaiah the prophet, “I will
defend this city to save it for My own sake and for My servant David” (Isaiah
37:35). Israel had interpreted that to mean that whatever they did God would never
allow the city to be destroyed. But they were wrong. That promise had been made
because Hezekiah was genuinely seeking to please and obey Yahweh. But now
things were very different. Sin and disobedience was rife, God was being
marginalised, and the promise would no longer apply. Jerusalem was not inviolable.
And that message would be repeated by Ezekiel again and again, although derided
and rejected by his hearers, until the event itself took place.
In this chapter we have first the depiction of the siege of Jerusalem in miniature
(Ezekiel 4:1-3), then the duration of the iniquity of Israel and Judah which has
brought this on them (Ezekiel 4:4-8), then the depiction of the coming famine
conditions in Jerusalem and of their exile in ‘uncleanness’ (Ezekiel 4:9-17), and
finally an acted out description of the fate of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, whom the
exiles probably looked back on with envy (Ezekiel 5:1-4).
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The Fate of Jerusalem.
Verses 1-3
“You also, son of man, you take a tile, and lay it before you, and portray on it a city,
even Jerusalem, and lay siege against it, and build forts against it. Set camps also
against it, and plant battering rams against it round about. And you take to yourself
an iron pan, and set it as a wall between you and the city. And set your face towards
it and it shall be besieged, and you shall lay siege against it. This shall be a sign to
the house of Israel.’
The attention of the people having been drawn to Ezekiel by his previous strange
behaviour, he would no doubt by this time have become a talking point. This
strange activity continued. Word would soon get around of the next strange thing
that he was doing, and it would arouse curiosity and perhaps a kind of fear. For, at
Gods’ command, he was to depict a siege of Jerusalem in miniature as a sign to the
house of Israel of what was to be. We must assume either that he did this outside the
door of his house, or that the house was now left open for people to enter and see it.
‘Take -- a tile.’ This would probably be a rectangular sun-baked brick. On this he
was to depict a picture of Jerusalem which he would depict in recognisable outline.
It would be placed where all could come and see it. He would then depict the details
of a siege as outlined, how we are not told. Possibly they were depicted in the sand,
or, if inside the house, with clay models or depicted on small clay tablets. Ezekiel
and the people would be familiar with such siege activities. They had themselves
seen them in action when they themselves had been made captive.
Depictions of such war machines, manned by archers and often moveable, are
known from bas-reliefs in Assyria, while mounds would be built bringing the
assailants more on a level with the enemy in the city. The depiction of such activities
on clay tablets is also witnessed archaeologically.
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Then he was to take a large iron pot or cooking plate, possibly as used for baking
bread, and set it between himself and the scene he had depicted, illustrating that he
himself as God’s representative, was also laying siege against it. This would leave
them in no doubt that the siege was, in the last analysis, due to the activity of God.
The iron plate, in contrast with the clay, would illustrate the solidity and
permanence of what it represented. It represented the certainty of God in action
with the result that the consequences were also certain.
Others have seen the iron plate as signifying that there was a great barrier between
God and His people in Jerusalem so that He would not intervene. He would act
through Ezekiel on behalf of His people in exile, but not on behalf of Jerusalem. We
can compare Isaiah 59:2, ‘your iniquities have separated between you and your
God, and your sins have hid His face from you, that He will not hear’. Compare also
Lamentations 3:44.
It was an acted out prophecy, of a kind with which their past was familiar (Exodus
9:8-12; Joshua 8:18; 1 Kings 11:30-32; 1 Kings 22:11; 2 Kings 13:15-19; Isaiah
8:1-4; Isaiah 20:2-4; Jeremiah 13:1-11; Jeremiah 16:1-9; Jeremiah 19:1-11;
Jeremiah 27:1-12). The physical reproduction would be looked on as making more
certain its fulfilment. It would be seen as having already taken place in miniature.
And as the people flocked to see this latest sensation they would be aware of the
silent, brooding figure, sitting there without saying a word, and they would draw
their own conclusions, fearful and awestricken.
The Long Periods of Iniquity That Have Brought Inevitable Judgment on Jerusalem
and the Temple.
PULPIT, "Prior to any detailed examination of the strange series of acts recorded in
this and the following chapter, we are met with the question whether they were
indeed visible and outward acts, or only imagined by the prophet in a state of
ecstasy and afterwards reported by him to the people. Each view has been
maintained by commentators of repute. I adopt, with scarcely any hesitation, the
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former, and for the following reasons.
Ezekiel 4:1
The first sign in this method of unspoken prophecy was to indicate to the exiles of
Tel-Abib that which they were unwilling to believe The day of uncertain hopes and
fears, of delusive dreams and promises (Jeremiah 27:16; Jeremiah 28:1-3; Jeremiah
29:21), was nearly over. The siege of Jerusalem in spite of Zedekiab's Egyptian
alliance, was a thing decreed. Four years before it came—we are now between the
fourth month of the fifth year (Ezekiel 1:2) and the sixth month of the sixth year
(Ezekiel 8:1) of Zedekiah. and the siege began in the ninth year (2 Kings 25:1)—
Ezekiel, on the segnius irritant principle, brought it, as here narrated, before the
eyes of the exiles. That he did so implies a certain artistic culture, in possessing
which he stands alone, so far as we know, among the prophets of Israel, and to
which his residence in the land of the Chaldees may have contributed. He takes a
tile, or tablet of baked clay, such as were used in Babylon and Assyria for private
contracts, historical inscriptions, astronomical observations (Pliny, 'Hist. Nat.,'
7.57), and the like, which were, in fact, the books of that place and time, and of
which whole libraries have been brought to light in recent excavations (Layard,
'Nineveh and Babylon,' ch. 22) and engraves upon it the outlines of "a city"
(Revised Version), in which the exiles would at once recognize the city of their
fathers, the towers which they had once counted (Isaiah 33:18; Psalms 48:12), the
temple which had been their glory and their joy. Bricks with such scenes on them
were found among the ruins of Nimroud, now in the British Museum. It is not
difficult to picture to ourselves the wondering curiosity with which Ezekiel's
neighbours would watch the strange proceeding. In this case the sign would be more
impressive than any spoken utterance.
BI 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
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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 Eze_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 (Eze_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.)
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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.)
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2 Then lay siege to it: Erect siege works against it,
build a ramp up to it, set up camps against it and
put battering rams around it.
BARNES, "Lay siege against it - The prophet is represented as doing that which
he portrays. The leading features of a siege are depicted. See the Jer_6:6 note.
The camp - Encampments. The word denotes various hosts in various positions
around the city.
Fort - It was customary in sieges to construct towers of vast height, sometimes of 20
stories, which were wheeled up to the walls to enable the besiegers to reach the
battlements with their arrows; in the lower part of such a tower there was commonly a
battering-ram. These towers are frequently represented in the Assyrian monuments.
Battering rams - Better than the translation in the margin. Assyrian monuments
prove that these engines of war are of great antiquity. These engines seem to have been
beams suspended by chains generally in moveable towers, and to have been applied
against the walls in the way familiar to us from Greek and Roman history. The name
“ram” was probably given to describe their mode of operation; no Assyrian monument
yet discovered exhibits the ram’s head of later times.
CLARKE, "Battering rams - ‫כרים‬ carim. This is the earliest account we have of
this military engine. It was a long beam with a head of brass, like the head and horns of a
ram, whence its name. It was hung by chains or ropes, between two beams, or three legs,
so that it could admit of being drawn backward and forward some yards. Several stout
men, by means of ropes, pulled it as far back as it could go, and then, suddenly letting it
loose, it struck with great force against the wall which it was intended to batter and bring
down. This machine was not known in the time of Homer, as in the siege of Troy there is
not the slightest mention of such. And the first notice we have of it is here, where we see
that it was employed by Nebuchadnezzar in the siege of Jerusalem, A.M. 3416. It was
afterwards used by the Carthaginians at the siege of Gades, as Vitruvius notes, lib. 10 c.
19, in which he gives a circumstantial account of the invention, fabrication, use, and
improvement of this machine. It was for the want of a machine of this kind, that the
ancient sieges lasted so long; they had nothing with which to beat down or undermine
the walls.
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GILL, "And lay siege against it,.... In his own person, as in Eze_4:3; or draw the
form of a siege, or figure of an army besieging a city; or rather of the instruments and
means used in a siege, as follows:
and build a fort against it: Kimchi interprets it a wooden tower, built over against
the city, to subdue it; Jarchi takes it to be an instrument by which stones were cast into
the city; and so the Arabic version renders it, "machines to cast stones"; the Targum, a
fortress; so Nebuchadnezzar in reality did what was here only done in type, 2Ki_25:1;
where the same word is used as here:
and cast a mount about it; a heap of earth cast up, in order to look into the city, cast
in darts, and mount the walls; what the French call "bastion", as Jarchi observes:
set the camp also against it; place the army in their tents about it:
and set battering rams against it round about; a warlike instrument, that had an
iron head, and horns like a ram, with which in a siege the walls of a city were battered
and beaten down. Jarchi, Kimchi, and Ben Melech, interpret the word of princes and
generals of the army, who watched at the several corners of the city, that none might go
in and out; so the Targum seems to understand it (b). The Arabic version is, "mounts to
cast darts"; See Gill on Eze_21:22.
HENRY 2-3, "He was ordered to build little forts against this portraiture of the city,
resembling the batteries raised by the besiegers, Eze_4:2. Between the city that was
besieged and himself that was the besieger he was to set up an iron pan, as an iron wall,
Eze_4:3. This represented the inflexible resolution of both sides; the Chaldeans
resolved, whatever it cost them, that they would make themselves masters of the city and
would never quit it till they had conquered it; on the other side, the Jews resolved never
to capitulate, but to hold out to the last extremity.
ELLICOTT, " (2) Lay siege against it.—It must have seemed at this time unlikely
that Jerusalem would soon become the subject of another siege. The only power by
whom such a siege could be undertaken was Babylon, Egypt having been so
thoroughly defeated as to be for a long time out of the question; and
Nebuchadnezzar had now, within a few years, thrice completely conquered Judaea,
had carried two of its kings, one after the other, captive in chains, and had also
taken into captivity 10,000 of the chief of the people, setting up as king over the
remnant a creature of his own, who was yet of the royal house of Judah. A fresh
siege could only be the result of a fresh rebellion, an act, under the circumstances, of
simple infatuation. Yet of this infatuation Zedekiah, through the “anger of the
LORD” (2 Kings 24:20), was guilty, and thus the prophecy was fulfilled. The
prophecy itself is undated, but must have been between the call of Ezekiel in the
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fifth month of the fifth year (Ezekiel 1:2) and the next date given (Ezekiel 8:1), the
sixth month of the sixth year. The siege began, according to Jeremiah 52:4, in the
tenth month of the ninth year, so that the prophecy preceded its fulfilment by only
about four years.
Build a fort against it.—Rather, a tower. The several acts of a siege are graphically
described. First the city is invested; then a tower is built, as was customary, of
sufficient height to overlook the walls and thus obtain information of the doings of
the besieged. Instruments for throwing stones or darts were also sometimes placed
in such towers; next is “cast a mound against it,” a common operation of the ancient
siege (comp. Isaiah 37:33; Jeremiah 32:24), in which a sort of artificial hill was built
to give the besiegers an advantage; then the camps (not merely camp) are set round
the city to prevent ingress and egress; and finally “the battering rams” are brought
against the walls. These last were heavy beams, headed with iron, and slung in
towers, so that they could be swung against the walls with great force. They are
frequently to be noticed in the representations of sieges found in the ruins of
Nineveh. The practice of forming the end of the beam like a ram’s head belongs to
the Greeks and Romans; but the instrument itself was much older.
TRAPP, "Ezekiel 4:2 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.
Ver. 2. And lay siege against it.] This to carnal reason seemeth childish and
ridiculous; not unlike the practice of boys that make forts of snow; or of the Papists’
St Francis, who made him a wife and children of snow; fair, but soon fading
comforts; or of his disciple Massaeus, who is much magnified, because at his
master’s command he did - not Diogenes-like, tumble his tub, but - himself tumble
up and down as a little one, in reference to that of our Saviour, (a) "Except ye be
converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of
heaven." [Matthew 18:3] But it must be considered, that what the prophet did here,
he did by the word and command of the most wise God. This made the sacrifices of
old, and doth make the sacraments still, to be reverend and tremendous; because
holy and reverend is his name who instituted them. It cannot be said so of Popish
ceremonies, men’s inventions; they have not God’s image or inscription, and are
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therefore frivolous and fruitless, worthily cast out of our churches.
POOLE, " Draw the figure of a siege about the city; raise a tower and bulwarks
which may annoy the besieged, and defend the besiegers, from which may be shot
either darts against men, or mighty stones against the walls and towers of the city.
Cast a mount; which made large, high, and strong, and near as they can, might
thence by help of galleries get over the walls and enter the city. Lay out the ground
also for the army of the Chaldeans to pitch their tents in, and to form their camp.
Rams; the Chaldee paraphrast understands the captains and chief leaders among
the soldiers, but it is better understood of those engines wherewith besiegers did
batter the walls and towers of a besieged city; an engine of great use in days of old
among all warlike nations, invented, say some, in the siege of Troy.
PULPIT. "Ezekiel 4:2
Lay siege against it, etc. The wonder would increase as the spectators looked on
what followed. Either tracing the scene on the tablet, or, more probably, as Ezekiel
4:3 seems to indicate, constructing a model of the scene, the prophet brings before
their eyes all the familiar details of a siege, such as we see on numerous Assyrian
bas-reliefs: such also as the narratives of the Old Testament bring before us. There
are
. Other interpretations, which see in it the symbol of the circumvallation of the city,
or of the impenetrable barrier which the sins of the people had set up between
themselves and Jehovah, or of the prophet himself as strong and unyielding
(Jeremiah 1:18), do not commend themselves. The flat plate did not go round the
city, and the spiritual meaning is out of harmony with the context. This shall be a
sign, etc. (comp. like forms in Ezekiel 12:6, Ezekiel 12:11; Ezekiel 24:25, Ezekiel
24:27). The exiles of Tel-Abib, who wore the only spectators of the prophet's acts,
are taken as representatives of "the house of Israel," that phrase being commonly
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used by Ezekiel, unless, as in verses 5, 6, and Ezekiel 37:16, there is a special reason
for noting a distinction for Jonah as representing the whole nation.
3 Then take an iron pan, place it as an iron wall
between you and the city and turn your face
toward it. It will be under siege, and you shall
besiege it. This will be a sign to the people of
Israel.
BARNES, "An iron pan - Another figure in the coming siege. On Assyrian
sculptures from Nimroud and Kouyunjik there are sieges of cities with “forts, mounts,
and rams;” and together with these we see a kind of shield set up on the ground, behind
which archers are shooting. Such a shield would be represented by the “flat plate”
(margin). Ezekiel was directed to take such a plate (part of his household furniture) and
place it between him and the representation of the city.
A sign to the house of Israel - This “sign” was not necessarily acted before the
people, but may simply have been described to them as a vivid representation of the
event which it foretold. “Israel” stands here for the kingdom of Judah (compare Eze_3:7,
Eze_3:17; Eze_5:4; Eze_8:6). After the captivity of the ten tribes the kingdom of Judah
represented the whole nation. Hence, prophets writing after this event constantly
address their countrymen as the house of Israel without distinction of tribes.
CLARKE, "Take thou unto thee an iron pan - ‫מחבת‬ machabath, a flat plate or
slice, as the margin properly renders it: such as are used in some countries to bake bread
on, called a griddle or girdle, being suspended above the fire, and kept in a proper degree
of heat for the purpose. A plate like this, stuck perpendicularly in the earth, would show
the nature of a wall much better than any pan could do. The Chaldeans threw such a wall
round Jerusalem, to prevent the besieged from receiving any succours, and from
escaping from the city.
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This shall be a sign to the house of Israel - This shall be an emblematical
representation of what shall actually take place.
GILL, "Moreover take thou unto thee an iron pan,.... Which Kimchi thinks, for
its metal, represented the hardness of the hearts of the people of Israel; and, for its
colour, the blackness of their sins: though others are of opinion, this being a pan in
which things are fried, it may signify the miseries of the Jews in captivity; the roasting of
Ahab and Zedekiah in the fire, and particularly the burning of the city: others, the wrath
of God against them, and his resolution to destroy them: but rather, since the use of it
was as follows,
and set it for a wall of iron between thee and the city, it seems to represent all
such things as are made use of by besiegers to screen them from the besieged; such as
are now used are trenches, parapets, bastions, &c. for the prophet in this type is the
besieger, representing the Chaldean army secure from the annoyance of those within the
walls of the city:
and set thy face against it; with a firm resolution to besiege and take the city; which
denotes both the settled wrath of God against this people, and the determined purpose
of the king of Babylon not to move from it until he had taken it:
and it shall be besieged, and thou shalt lay siege against it; as an emblem of the
army of the Chaldeans besieging it, which is confirmed by the next clause:
this shall be a sign to the house of Israel; of the city of Jerusalem being besieged
by the Babylonians; this was a sign representing it, and giving them assurance of it.
JAMISON, "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.
An iron pan - symbolically representing the divine decree as to the Chaldean army
investing the city.
Set it for a wall of iron between thee and the city - Ezekiel, in the person of God,
represents the wall of separation decreed to be between him and the people as one of
iron, and the Chaldean investing army, His instrument of separating them from
him, as one impossible to burst through.
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Set thy face against it - inexorably (Psalms 34:16). The exiles envied their brethren
remaining in Jerusalem; but exile is better than the straitness of a siege.
COKE, "Ezekiel 4:3. Take thou unto thee an iron pan— The prophet takes to him
an iron pot or vessel, such as fire was wont to be carried in before the Chaldean and
Persian generals, when they went to battle. And he puts it for a wall of iron between
him and the city, to signify the force and strength of that army whose symbol was
fire. Then he sets, or hardens his face against the city, as men look fiercely, who are
inflexibly bent on the ruin of another; and he lays siege to it, or declares the city
should be besieged by surrounding it. In all this scenery, the text, says Ezekiel, was a
sign to the house of Israel, or, in other words, a type of what the Chaldean king and
his army should act against Jerusalem. See Bishop Chandler's Defence, p. 170.
ELLICOTT, " (3) An iron pan.—The margin gives the sense more accurately, a flat
plate. It was used for baking cakes (see Leviticus 2:5, marg.). This was to be set for a
wall of iron between the prophet (representing the besiegers) and the city, doubtless
as symbolical of the strength of the besiegers’ lines, and of the impossibility there
would be of an escape from the city by a sally. Their foes should be made too strong
for them defensively as well as offensively.
A sign to the house of Israel.—As already said, the tribe of Judah, with the
associated remnants of the other tribes, is considered as representing the whole
nation after the Assyrian captivity, and is spoken of as “the house of Israel” except
when there is occasion to distinguish especially between the two parts of the nation.
(See Ezekiel 3:7; Ezekiel 3:17; Ezekiel 5:4; Ezekiel 8:6; 2 Chronicles 21:2; 2
Chronicles 28:27, &c.) The prophecy would have been equally effective whether
seen as a symbolic act or only related.
TRAPP, "Ezekiel 4:3 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.
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Ver. 3. Moreover take thou unto thee an iron pan.] Sartaginem ferream, in token of
God’s hard and inflexible hatred bent against so hard-hearted a people; whom he
will therefore fry as in a pan, and seethe as in a pot, [Jeremiah 1:13] so that they
shall "pine away in their iniquities."
Set thy face against it, and thou shalt lay siege.] This the prophet was to do in the
name and person of God and his soldiers, the Chaldeans. Hard hearts make hard
times, yea, they make Deum, natura sua mollem, misericordem, et melleum, durum
esse et ferreum, as one saith - God to harden his hand, and hasten men’s
destruction.
POOLE, " An iron pan, to signify the hardness and obstinacy of the besiegers;
probably a frying-pan, on the plain part of which the the bearing the portrait of
Jerusalem lying, the iron edges or brims compassed it round about, as a line drawn
round a besieged city, out of which the distressed could not flee, into which no relief
could be brought. It plainly noted the cruelty of the Chaldeans and future tortures
of the Jews, who were like to be fried or broiled in this iron pan, as Jeremiah 29:22;
/APC 2 Maccabees 7:5.
Set it for a wall of iron; that it may resemble a wall of iron; for as impregnable as
such a wall should the courage, resolution, and patience of the Chaldeans be
attacking it.
Set thy face against it; fix thy displeased countenance against it, in token of my
displeasure.
Thou shalt lay siege: if the prophet do represent him that sent him, then it speaks
God’s appearing against these wicked ones.
This shall be a sign; all these things are signs and emblems usual with all, most
usual with this prophet, who in this hieroglyphic foreshows the state of those that
37

lived at Jerusalem.
4 “Then lie on your left side and put the sin of the
people of Israel upon yourself.[a] You are to bear
their sin for the number of days you lie on your
side.
BARNES, "The siege being thus represented, the condition and suffering of the
inhabitants is exhibited by the condition of one, who, bound as a prisoner or oppressed
by sickness, cannot turn from his right side to his left. The prophet was in such a state.
Bear their iniquity - The prophet was, in a figure, to bear their iniquities for a fixed
period, in order to show that, after the period thus foretold, the burden of their sins
should be taken off, and the people be forgiven. Compare Lev_16:21-22.
CLARKE, "Lie thou also upon thy left side - It appears that all that is
mentioned here and in the following verses was done, not in idea, but in fact. The
prophet lay down on his left side upon a couch to which he was chained, Eze_4:6, for
three hundred and ninety days; and afterwards he lay in the same manner, upon his
right side, for forty days. And thus was signified the state of the Jews, and the
punishment that was coming upon them.
1. The prophet himself represents the Jews.
2. His lying, their state of depression.
3. His being bound, their helplessness and captivity.
4. The days signify years, a day for a year; during which they were to bear their
iniquity, or the temporal punishment due to their sins.
5. The three hundred and ninety days, during which he was to lie on his left side, and
bear the iniquity of the house of Israel, point out two things: the first, The duration
of the siege of Jerusalem. Secondly, The duration of the captivity off the ten tribes,
and that of Judah.
6. The prophet lay three hundred and ninety days upon his left side, and forty days
upon his right side, in all four hundred and thirty days. Now Jerusalem was
besieged the ninth year of the reign of Zedekiah, 2Ki_25:1, 2Ki_25:2, and was not
38

Ezekiel 4 commentary

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Ezekiel 4 commentary