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Summary

Ezekiel 4:1–3 – The brick and the siege

What happens: Ezekiel draws Jerusalem on a brick, sets up siege works, and places an iron plate as a barrier. He acts out the siege that is coming against the city.

What it means: A visible sign makes the message plain: judgment is near. God’s warnings are specific, not vague. He is just to bring consequences for covenant breach.


Ezekiel 4:4–8 – Bearing iniquity on his sides

What happens: Ezekiel lies on his left side 390 days for Israel’s iniquity and on his right side 40 days for Judah’s. He is bound, facing the siege of Jerusalem.

What it means: Sin has a long history and real weight. The prophet shares the burden as a sign, pointing to God’s patience and the seriousness of guilt. God remembers sin when it is unrepented, yet He warns before He strikes.


Ezekiel 4:9–17 – Measured rations and defiled bread

What happens: Ezekiel eats a limited mix of grains by weight and drinks water by measure. He bakes bread over dung to show defiled food among the nations; God permits animal dung instead of human. The scene pictures famine and uncleanness.

What it means: Judgment affects daily life, not only armies and kings. God’s holiness exposes the uncleanness of idolatry, and exile brings shame. Yet even here God shows mercy in small allowances.


Application

  • Take sin’s cost seriously; patterns built over years need real repentance.
  • Let God’s warnings move you to prayer for your city and church.
  • Practice simple living and self-control as reminders to rely on God.

Bible

1Thou also, son of man, take thee a tile, and lay it before thee, and pourtray upon it the city, even Jerusalem:

2And 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.

3Moreover 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.

4Lie thou also upon thy left side, and lay the iniquity of the house of Israel upon it: according to the number of the days that thou shalt lie upon it thou shalt bear their iniquity.

5For I have laid upon thee the years of their iniquity, according to the number of the days, three hundred and ninety days: so shalt thou bear the iniquity of the house of Israel.

6And when thou hast accomplished them, lie again on thy right side, and thou shalt bear the iniquity of the house of Judah forty days: I have appointed thee each day for a year.

7Therefore thou shalt set thy face toward the siege of Jerusalem, and thine arm shall be uncovered, and thou shalt prophesy against it.

8And, behold, I will lay bands upon thee, and thou shalt not turn thee from one side to another, till thou hast ended the days of thy siege.

9Take thou also unto thee wheat, and barley, and beans, and lentiles, and millet, and fitches, and put them in one vessel, and make thee bread thereof, according to the number of the days that thou shalt lie upon thy side, three hundred and ninety days shalt thou eat thereof.

10And thy meat which thou shalt eat shall be by weight, twenty shekels a day: from time to time shalt thou eat it.

11Thou shalt drink also water by measure, the sixth part of an hin: from time to time shalt thou drink.

12And thou shalt eat it as barley cakes, and thou shalt bake it with dung that cometh out of man, in their sight.

13And the LORD said, Even thus shall the children of Israel eat their defiled bread among the Gentiles, whither I will drive them.

14Then said I, Ah Lord GOD! behold, my soul hath not been polluted: for from my youth up even till now have I not eaten of that which dieth of itself, or is torn in pieces; neither came there abominable flesh into my mouth.

15Then he said unto me, Lo, I have given thee cow's dung for man's dung, and thou shalt prepare thy bread therewith.

16Moreover he said unto me, Son of man, behold, I will break the staff of bread in Jerusalem: and they shall eat bread by weight, and with care; and they shall drink water by measure, and with astonishment:

17That they may want bread and water, and be astonied one with another, and consume away for their iniquity.

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