Ezekiel 4-5
The Siege of Jerusalem Symbolized
4 “And you, son of man, take a brick and lay it before you, and engrave on it a city, even Jerusalem. 2 And put siegeworks against it, and build a siege wall against it, and cast up a mound against it. Set camps also against it, and plant battering rams against it all around. 3 And you, take an iron griddle, and place it as an iron wall between you and the city; and set your face toward it, and let it be in a state of siege, and press the siege against it. This is a sign for the house of Israel.
4 “Then lie on your left side, and place the punishment of the house of Israel upon it. For the number of the days that you lie on it, you shall bear their punishment. 5 For I assign to you a number of days, 390 days, equal to the number of the years of their punishment. So long shall you bear the punishment of the house of Israel. 6 And when you have completed these, you shall lie down a second time, but on your right side, and bear the punishment of the house of Judah. Forty days I assign you, a day for each year. 7 And you shall set your face toward the siege of Jerusalem, with your arm bared, and you shall prophesy against the city. 8 And behold, I will place cords upon you, so that you cannot turn from one side to the other, till you have completed the days of your siege.
9 “And you, take wheat and barley, beans and lentils, millet and emmer, and put them into a single vessel and make your bread from them. During the number of days that you lie on your side, 390 days, you shall eat it. 10 And your food that you eat shall be by weight, twenty shekels a day; from day to day you shall eat it. 11 And water you shall drink by measure, the sixth part of a hin; from day to day you shall drink. 12 And you shall eat it as a barley cake, baking it in their sight on human dung.” 13 And the Lord said, “Thus shall the people of Israel eat their bread unclean, among the nations where I will drive them.” 14 Then I said, “Ah, Lord God! Behold, I have never defiled myself. From my youth up till now I have never eaten what died of itself or was torn by beasts, nor has tainted meat come into my mouth.” 15 Then he said to me, “See, I assign to you cow’s dung instead of human dung, on which you may prepare your bread.” 16 Moreover, he said to me, “Son of man, behold, I will break the supply of bread in Jerusalem. They shall eat bread by weight and with anxiety, and they shall drink water by measure and in dismay. 17 I will do this that they may lack bread and water, and look at one another in dismay, and rot away because of their punishment.
Jerusalem Will Be Destroyed
5 “And you, O son of man, take a sharp sword. Use it as a barber’s razor and pass it over your head and your beard. Then take balances for weighing and divide the hair. 2 A third part you shall burn in the fire in the midst of the city, when the days of the siege are completed. And a third part you shall take and strike with the sword all around the city. And a third part you shall scatter to the wind, and I will unsheathe the sword after them. 3 And you shall take from these a small number and bind them in the skirts of your robe. 4 And of these again you shall take some and cast them into the midst of the fire and burn them in the fire. From there a fire will come out into all the house of Israel.
5 “Thus says the Lord God: This is Jerusalem. I have set her in the center of the nations, with countries all around her. 6 And she has rebelled against my rules by doing wickedness more than the nations, and against my statutes more than the countries all around her; for they have rejected my rules and have not walked in my statutes. 7 Therefore thus says the Lord God: Because you are more turbulent than the nations that are all around you, and have not walked in my statutes or obeyed my rules, and have not even acted according to the rules of the nations that are all around you, 8 therefore thus says the Lord God: Behold, I, even I, am against you. And I will execute judgments in your midst in the sight of the nations. 9 And because of all your abominations I will do with you what I have never yet done, and the like of which I will never do again. 10 Therefore fathers shall eat their sons in your midst, and sons shall eat their fathers. And I will execute judgments on you, and any of you who survive I will scatter to all the winds. 11 Therefore, as I live, declares the Lord God, surely, because you have defiled my sanctuary with all your detestable things and with all your abominations, therefore I will withdraw. My eye will not spare, and I will have no pity. 12 A third part of you shall die of pestilence and be consumed with famine in your midst; a third part shall fall by the sword all around you; and a third part I will scatter to all the winds and will unsheathe the sword after them.
13 “Thus shall my anger spend itself, and I will vent my fury upon them and satisfy myself. And they shall know that I am the Lord—that I have spoken in my jealousy—when I spend my fury upon them. 14 Moreover, I will make you a desolation and an object of reproach among the nations all around you and in the sight of all who pass by. 15 You shall be a reproach and a taunt, a warning and a horror, to the nations all around you, when I execute judgments on you in anger and fury, and with furious rebukes—I am the Lord; I have spoken— 16 when I send against you the deadly arrows of famine, arrows for destruction, which I will send to destroy you, and when I bring more and more famine upon you and break your supply of bread. 17 I will send famine and wild beasts against you, and they will rob you of your children. Pestilence and blood shall pass through you, and I will bring the sword upon you. I am the Lord; I have spoken.”
“Wow.” I think I wrote that four times in the margins of my bible as I read these two chapters. In these chapters there are back-to-back living parables, and they are terrifying. Can you imagine being there and seeing this guy Ezekiel doing this stuff? Can you imagine him lying there on his left side for over a year, then on his right for another 40 days? And the stuff he was eating! Then he took to shaving his head and doing that weird stuff with his hair.
If you saw a guy doing that today, you would assume that he was struggling with mental illness or that he had completely lost his senses. Even back then, you might have thought that he was out of his mind. You would have been shocked at his behavior and the way he violated every cultural norm and went against every religious practice.
This all took place early in the exile, before the destruction of the southern kingdom of Judah and Jerusalem (but it's coming). What Ezekiel did would have shocked and awed everyone. It would have offended them and literally made them nauseous.
Not to mention the incredible stuff that God said about His own people. The people of God were totally and absolutely lost in their sinfulness. They had completely abandoned and broken their relationship with the Lord to the point that the Lord said that they were worse than any other nation around them or before them (verse 5:5-7). Even the other nations, who didn’t worship the Lord, thought that the people of God were bad. We shouldn’t be surprised then, when the Lord Himself was against them, His own people.
Don’t miss how terrible things would become. The siege against the people of God was so terrible that fathers would eat their sons, and sons would eat their fathers. The people of God became a desolation, a warning, and a horror, and the worst part was still to come. The people had so abandoned the Lord that the Lord left them! Their status was changed from being the people of God to not being the people of God.
So, why was this happening?
First, the blame falls on God’s people alone. They have been sinning for hundreds of years, and their sin is epic. I know the word epic is pretty overused these days, but look at what it says in verse 5:7 concerning what the people have done. It's beyond comprehension. They didn't even conform to the standards of the other nations - they went way beyond. So, God held them to account for their epic sin.
Second, what the Lord commands Ezekiel to do is all about shock and awe. That's what living parables were meant to do: to shock you, to wake you up from your slumber and make you pay attention. It's that slap in the face which is intended to snap you back into reality. We know from past readings, and even from here, that God doesn't want us to go down that path of failure. God would rather redeem and show mercy and forgiveness to a people that are seeking His face. These living parables are meant to wake people up so that they turn to the Lord.
We see that there will be an end to all of this; there are deadlines for how long this siege would last. Eventually, God's wrath would subside, and His grace would again be poured on the people. We know that as we continue to read Ezekiel, he will see something awesome which is all about Jesus (so stay tuned!)
Let’s take a clue from all of this and seek the Lord. Talk to Jesus about anything and everything in your life that isn’t right. If you humble yourself before Him, He will hear you. He will speak to you and you will be restored. There is nothing so great that God can't deal with it. That's why Jesus died on the cross. Don't hesitate one moment more. Don’t allow that failure and the subsequent guilt to chain you down. Regardless if it’s something minor or something so epic that you are beyond ashamed, Jesus is waiting to talk with you, to pour out His love and grace upon you - if you will just humbly come to Him.
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
1 John 1:9 ESV
God bless you and have a great day.
Go in God’s peace knowing that in and through Jesus, you are forgiven!
Scott