Ezekiel Chapter 4

Friday, 12/19/25 at 09:25
Solitary Man
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Eze 4:1 Thou also, son of man, take thee a tile (brick), and lay it before thee, and pourtray (engrave) upon it the city, even Jerusalem:

This chapter will describe the first assignment that God gives this new prophet that he has just anointed so spectacularly. It is a good thing that Ezekiel has had such an irrefutable, unbelievable experience, as this first task would challenge even the most devoted man of God.

In short, he is to engrave, on some sort of clay tile, a picture of the siege that will presently come to pass in Jerusalem. Some commentators think this was purely symbolic, but there is no reason to doubt that he actually inscribed an image on a clay tile, or brick. Mesopotamian civilizations made much use of inscribing information on malleable clay tiles, which were then baked in the sun to preserve them.

While that may not seem so bad, it is what comes next that will test the will of this man to the fullest extent.

Eze 4:2 And lay siege (mound) against it, and build a fort (battering tower) against it, and cast (spill forth) a mount (a rampart of besiegers) against it; set the camp (army encampment) also against it, and set (put) battering rams (as in a butting ram) against it round about.

After 2 rebellions had already been put down, and many people exiled, it seemed highly unlikely that another siege was in store for Jerusalem. After all, they had been completely subdued by Babylon not once, but twice. Remember that this prophecy would have been made between the call of Ezekiel in the fifth month of the fifth year (Ez 1:2) and the next date given (Ez 8:1), the sixth month of the sixth year. The siege began, according to Jer 52:4, in the tenth month of the ninth year, so that the prophecy preceded its fulfilment by only about four years.

Some think these elements of a siege were what was also engraved on the tile, but the language of verses 2 and 3 seem to clearly indicate that Ezekiel was to actually build a miniature of an actual siege, such as movie directors might build miniatures, depicting a scene before actually shooting it.

So now you know the answer to the trivia question as to who was the world’s first movie director? Ezekiel. Peter Jackson did not invent the idea of using miniatures in the making of the Lord of the Rings. It seems as if Ezekiel beat him to the punch by about 2600 years!

I wonder what was going through Ezekiel’s mind as he was given this first assignment. I am sure that he was getting mentally prepared to thunder imprecations and damnation from on high. Instead, he is told to get his Lego toys from his childhood and go and build a city under siege!

Eze 4:3 Moreover take thou unto thee an iron pan (for baking in), and set it for a wall of iron between thee and the city: and set thy face (paw-neem) against it, and it shall be besieged (hemmed in), and thou shalt lay siege (cramp, confine, assault) against it. This shall be a sign (oth – signal, omen, evidence) to the house of Israel.

In order to complete the effect, get your mom’s cookie sheet and use that to represent an iron wall between you and this city that you have created. Now turn your face toward it, and begin your acting career. You will now lay siege against it, as if you were actually there.

All of this was to be a sign to the entire house of Israel. Whether to the just recently arrived Judean exiles, or maybe there were other families who had been living there for over 100 years, when the Assyrians had destroyed and dispersed the northern kingdom. We shall see in the next few verses that God has both kingdoms in mind when he instructed Ezekiel to do this weird stuff.

Now truthfully, what would you make of some adult who is supposed to be entering the priesthood, who begins his ministry by building miniature siege replicas, and pretending that he is laying siege to Jerusalem, the city that they had just been kicked out of? What odds would you give Ezekiel that this sort of behavior would be exactly what the people needed to see in order to bring a change of heart?

I would venture the odds at around zero percent. I don’t think that God intended to use this little drama as any sort of call to repentance. No, it was meant to be memorable, if nothing else. While it may have put the credibility of Ezekiel’s ministry off to a rocky start, God didn’t care about that. He wanted a memorable moment, and I am sure that this fit the bill. When the final siege surprisingly began a few years later, no one would have forgotten this little episode out by the Chebar river.

What happens next is what will test Ezekiel’s faith to the limit.

Eze 4:4 Lie thou also upon thy left side, and lay (soom – put, impute) the iniquity (aw-vone – perversity, moral evil, punishment of iniquity) of the house of Israel upon it: according to the number of the days that thou shalt lie upon it thou shalt bear (suffer) their iniquity (aw-vone).

The rest of the chapter now deals with the very difficult part of Ezekiel’s assignment. While the building of a mock siege may have tested Ezekiel’s commitment for a moment as he contemplated the possible reaction of the people, what God now asks his to do is on another level altogether.

The seventh verse is written in such a way that Ezekiel’s miniature may have been on permanent display for as long as God commanded him to lie on his side. He was supposed to face the siege of Jerusalem, with his arm uncovered, and prophesy. Whether that means that he was supposed to face in the direction of literal Jerusalem, or simply to face his miniature, is not known.

There are several points to ponder. First, Ezekiel would be asked to lie first on his left side, then on his right. He would lie on his left side far longer than the right (390 days vs 40). This symbolizes that in biblical terms, evil is associated with the left side, righteousness with the right. The left side was associated with the breakaway northern kingdom, versus the kingdom of Judah for the right. The northern kingdom, also known as Ephraim or Israel, was birthed in apostasy (ie, Jeroboam’s golden calf worship), and stayed that way until God removed them from the land. Judah on the other hand, went through periods of apostasy, punctuated by revivals of varying degrees, so their punishment duration in this symbolic pantomime by the prophet was far shorter.

How many of us would instantly obey such an assignment? Here Ezekiel was given a singular vision of the cherubim in all their glory and splendor. He was overcome by the glory of God at least twice, falling to the ground as a dead man. He literally ate a scroll from heaven, and had the fire of the word penetrate his belly in such a way that it became a part of his soul. He was translated from one physical location to another. I cannot imagine a more vivid and spectacular preparatory experience to launch one’s prophetic ministry!

So you would assume that Ezekiel must be imagining himself as being sent to proclaim great truths, like Moses, or do great miracles, like Elijah. Instead, God has him build some miniature replica of Jerusalem, and then, to add insult to injury, goes and tells him to lie down awhile!

Really?

Once he is finished playing with his toys, he is to continue playing make believe by going to bed and pretending that he is demonstrating God’s imputation of guilt upon all the Hebrews. Not just the surviving Judeans, but also the long lost northerners, who had their kingdom taken away back in 722 BC. While they continued to be deported right until around 671 BC by the Assyrians, the few left in Samaria would have grossly intermingled with the other nations that were placed there. To be sure, some would be found in Babylon, where Ezekiel now resided, and could still trace their lineage back to the promised land.

Ezekiel is doing all this in 593 BC, many, many years after Ephraim (the northern kingdom) has ceased to exist. But in God’s eyes, they have not been utterly forgotten. This is another confirmation that there is no such thing as the 10 lost tribes, as heretical replacement theologians try to claim in order to try and prove that the church has replaced Israel in God’s plan. Over 100 years after their destruction, God has Ezekiel bring their plight to light, in the most demonstrative way imaginable.

This word aw-vone (perversity, moral evil, punishment of iniquity) will be used time and time again by God to describe the behavior of his people. It not only has the connotation of an especially egregious type of sin, but also contains the idea of the just and appropriate punishment that such sin attracts.

With the shooting of Charlie Kirk in September of 2025, America has been jarred out of its complacency, and hopefully out of its severely erroneous viewpoint regarding the nature of evil. The church must stop teaching that all sin is the same. It must stop all tolerance for wickedness. As a society we cannot keep turning the other cheek, and leave wickedness unpunished. We must do all that we can to restrain evil, as a Christian nation, or the nation will be no more.

The string of murders done by an extremely small segment of society, the transgender freaks, may be what is needed to bring us back to the truths that were so clearly stated in the bible, but that we refuse to read. Do we not remember the story of the homosexual Benjamites in the book of Judges, who demanded that every male stranger who spent a night in their town was to be raped (Jdg 19:22-30)? Have we forgotten the story of Sodom, where they demanded that they be allowed to rape the visiting angels (Gen 19:4-11, Jud 7)?

When all restraint over the sexual impulse is removed, a nation plunges into a bottomless pit of filth and abominable practices, that normal people could never imagine in their darkest dreams. People are now being murdered because they simply do not agree with every topic that the sexually insane promulgate. It does matter what someone is doing in their bedrooms. We think as long as people keep it to themselves, then it’s okay. It is not okay. Until we start to believe and teach and practice the entire word of God, and quit making excuses for the righteous punishments that God demands for certain sins, then we will continue to slide towards utter ruin. When God says certain sins demand the death penalty, he is not simply making an accommodation to a primitive culture. He knows what unrestrained sexual behavior leads to. Every sin imaginable. He knows that those who practise no restraint in regards to their sexual appetite, will be stricken with such ferocious and implacable demonic forces, that repentance becomes literally impossible.

There will be no reasoning with such creatures. The only solution is their destruction, so that their fatal demonic disease of unrestrained sexual depravity is removed from off the face of the earth.

When Jesus comes back, he is coming to rule with a rod of iron. Tell me, do you think that he will ignore the laws that he created in the first place regarding the righteous punishments for wilful sins? Do you think the transgenders, the homosexuals, the pedophiles, and the molesters will escape immediate execution, as the scripture demands? I leave it for you to decide.

Eze 4:5 For I have laid upon thee the years of their iniquity (aw-vone), according to the number of the days, three hundred and ninety days: so shalt thou bear the iniquity (aw-vone) of the house of Israel.

This is a pretty specific number. Not 300. Not 400. Not even 350. No, 390 years.

The precision of the word of God continues to stun and amaze. When God gives a specific number, you can take it to the bank. The problem is men don’t always interpret the prophecies correctly. Then, they claim biblical error, when it is in fact they who are in error.

Perhaps the most notable prophecy involving a specific number was Jeremiah’s 70 year prophecy:

Jer_25:11 And this whole land shall be a desolation, and an astonishment; and these nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years.
Jer_25:12 And it shall come to pass, when seventy years are accomplished, that I will punish the king of Babylon, and that nation, saith the LORD, for their iniquity, and the land of the Chaldeans, and will make it perpetual desolations.

Jer_29:10 For thus saith the LORD, That after seventy years be accomplished at Babylon I will visit you, and perform my good word toward you, in causing you to return to this place.

Some prophecies may even have more than one specific fulfilment. I think the following excerpt, extracted from some online content, sums up the dual fulfilment of this particular prediction:

The Expositor’s Bible Commentary states the following: “Note that it is important to keep these stages of the Captivity in mind when computing the seventy years of exile announced by Jeremiah 29:10; the interval between the first deportation in 605 B.C., in which Daniel himself was involved, and 536 B.C., when the first returnees under Zerubbabel once more set up an altar in Jerusalem, amounted to seventy years. Likewise, the interval between the destruction of the first temple by Nebuzaradan in 586 and the completion of the second temple by Zerubbabel in 516 was seventy years”. {end}

One may quibble and point out that the first fulfilment seems to be 69 years, and not 70. I have no doubt that one of the 2 actual dates may be a year off, and that the total time span would be in fact, 70 years.

Keeping this dual fulfilment in mind, scholars can come to no firm consensus regarding this 390 year time period. Some think that it refers to the period between the first organized form of government under the prophet Samuel, to the destruction of the northern kingdom. The approximate years of Samuel’s birth is 1100 BC, Saul’s kingship began 1050 BC, the north destroyed in 722 BC, and fully dispersed in 971 BC. 1100 to 700 is 400 years. The problem with this theory is that the dates do not quite seem to match.

The second theory dates it from the time of Jeroboam’s rebellion (930 BC) to the decree to rebuild the temple by Cyrus (536 BC). Again, not exactly 390 years.

Before we complete our thoughts on this verse, let us take a look at the next verse, and then we will complete our comments on both.

Eze 4:6 And when thou hast accomplished (completed) them, lie again on thy right side, and thou shalt bear the iniquity (aw-vone) of the house of Judah forty days: I have appointed thee each day for a year (yom shaw-neh yom shaw-neh – day year day year).

Again, no clear consensus on the meaning of this 40 years. Some think it may refer to the worst 40 years of Manasseh’s reign. That is doubtful.

So there you have it. A total of 430 mystery years. What could God possibly be referring to?

There is a tantalizing hint found in the book of Exodus:

Exo 12:40 Now the sojourning of the children of Israel, who dwelt in Egypt, was four hundred and thirty years.
Exo 12:41 And it came to pass at the end of the four hundred and thirty years, even the selfsame day it came to pass, that all the hosts of the LORD went out from the land of Egypt.
Exo 12:42 It is a night to be much observed unto the LORD for bringing them out from the land of Egypt: this is that night of the LORD to be observed of all the children of Israel in their generations.

I believe it cannot be a coincidence that God specifically refers to a 430 year time period a second time.

In this first instance in Exodus, God says that this was fulfilled to the very day. That is, the time period was exactly 430 years. This period was from some point in Abraham’s life to the night of the first passover, right before they left Egypt. It was most likely the day that Abram left Ur on the command of the Lord. That would line up with the words of this verse, as God began to count the sojournings from the first day that Abram was commanded to move, or sojourn away from his ancestral homeland. He first stopped at Haran, then moved on to Canaan, before his posterity went down to Egypt, until the night that they finally left.

So now God is making reference to the number 430 once again. By splitting it up between 390 and 40, I believe he is also making a reference to the subsequent 40 years that Israel spent wandering in the wilderness.

So what is Yahweh really trying to say here? Instead of trying to get all bent out of shape in proving one time period or another that this really pertains to, let us try to extract the spiritual principles of the time period that God seems to be pointing back to. What are the comparisons between these 2 eras? What lessons does God want us to take away?

The initial era was one of wandering. Moving from the world (Ur) to the promised land (Canaan). While Abraham sampled the promised land, his descendants quickly ended up in Egypt (the world of the flesh). So too did Israel and Judah experience glimpses of Canaan in the reign of David (together), and perhaps in moments of Hezekiah’s and Josiah’s reigns (Judah only), but the majority of the time they were simply wanderers from one wilderness to another. Sojourners under the rule of various false gods. In essence, God saw his people as not living under his rule, but as wanderers from the true faith, lost in the wilderness of sin. He wanted to bring back the imagery of Israel’s birth, where God had taken a man, blinded to the truth, and transformed him into the father of many nations. By grace, Abram became Abraham. By faith, he exchanged idol worship for the worship of the one true God. But where did his posterity end up? In Egypt. Lost, in bondage, worshipping false gods. So Israel and Judah wandered, ending up in apostasy. They too ended up in a land far away from the kingdom of God.

The prophet would now demonstrate in vivid terms this terrible truth. The emphasis should not be so much on the exact number of years, but the fact that the punishment of their sins would encompass a long time period. Even as Ezekiel would be forced to endure lying on his side for 430 days, so the Hebrew people would be forced to endure a just punishment of their sin a period of time notable for its lengthiness.

This should make us understand that there are real consequences for our sin. Sometimes our churches give the wrong impression. Just come to Jesus, and he will wash your sins away, which is true. But along with that, we also get the idea that all ramifications of our sin are also somehow expunged. And that is simply not true. Consequences may last a lifetime. You murder someone, that person and his loved ones bear the consequence forever. You might be executed, or spent the rest of your life in prison, regardless of whether you subsequently repent or not. In the same way, a nation that has sinned will pay a price.

Even as we watch America try to recover a righteous path in Trump’s second term, and as all sensible souls cheer them on, we also must be mindful that there is a bill that is well past due. The sins already committed by our forefathers and not repented of, have a price tag. Yes, as individuals we may be forgiven. Yes, if our current leaders walk softly and govern righteously, judgment may be postponed. Postponed, but not eradicated.

A great example of this is found in the life of Josiah. They had found a long lost copy of the Torah (imagine that – Judah was without a copy of the law for a goodly time period!). When Josiah heard it read, he asked for a word from the Lord:

2Ch 34:21 Go, enquire of the LORD for me, and for them that are left in Israel and in Judah, concerning the words of the book that is found: for great is the wrath of the LORD that is poured out upon us, because our fathers have not kept the word of the LORD, to do after all that is written in this book.
2Ch 34:22 And Hilkiah, and they that the king had appointed, went to Huldah the prophetess, the wife of Shallum the son of Tikvath, the son of Hasrah, keeper of the wardrobe; (now she dwelt in Jerusalem in the college:) and they spake to her to that effect.
2Ch 34:23 And she answered them, Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, Tell ye the man that sent you to me,
2Ch 34:24 Thus saith the LORD, Behold, I will bring evil upon this place, and upon the inhabitants thereof, even all the curses that are written in the book which they have read before the king of Judah:
2Ch 34:25 Because they have forsaken me, and have burned incense unto other gods, that they might provoke me to anger with all the works of their hands; therefore my wrath shall be poured out upon this place, and shall not be quenched.
2Ch 34:26 And as for the king of Judah, who sent you to enquire of the LORD, so shall ye say unto him, Thus saith the LORD God of Israel concerning the words which thou hast heard;
2Ch 34:27 Because thine heart was tender, and thou didst humble thyself before God, when thou heardest his words against this place, and against the inhabitants thereof, and humbledst thyself before me, and didst rend thy clothes, and weep before me; I have even heard thee also, saith the LORD.
2Ch 34:28 Behold, I will gather thee to thy fathers, and thou shalt be gathered to thy grave in peace, neither shall thine eyes see all the evil that I will bring upon this place, and upon the inhabitants of the same. So they brought the king word again.

Notice that judgment was not averted, only postponed. We in the west are in the same boat. I fully believe that we can only postpone the certain judgment, and never avert it anymore. The time for the cancelling of judgment has long come and gone. I believe the greatest blessing that we can hope for in our day is to not have to witness it while we yet live. Total judgment is something no sane person would ever want to have to live through. It is suffering on an unimaginable scale.

While we have been busy trying to unravel the secrets of the dates in these verses, we are in danger of missing the central truth. And that is that Ezekiel was commanded to do something very unusual and embarrassing. I have no doubt that he would have been mocked and jeered profusely. But he did not hesitate. He obeyed.

Would we have done the same?

Eze 4:7 Therefore thou shalt set thy face toward the siege (hemming in of) of Jerusalem, and thine arm shall be uncovered (made naked), and thou shalt prophesy (naw-baw – inspired speech) against it.

Now we shall examine some of the details of his current assignment. As we spoke of already, he either faced his miniature depiction that he had built of the coming siege of Jerusalem, or he faced in the direction of Jerusalem itself. Either way, he was going to lie on his side for 430 days (that’s around 14 months!), and bare his arm while speaking judgments toward that city.

This will not help his chances of being elected head of the local pastor’s association, I can guarantee you!

Eze 4:8 And, behold, I will lay bands (ab-oth – something entwined) upon thee, and thou shalt not turn (haw-vak – pervert, turn about) thee from one side to another, till thou hast ended the days of thy siege (hemming in).

I take this verse as saying that God will supernaturally bind the prophet to his bed. In the natural, who could not toss and turn in the boredom of laying on one side day after day? Now no one knows exactly how long Ezekiel laid on his side each day. He must have had to get up to answer nature’s call, at the very least! I suppose his wife could have prepared his food, so he may have been free to engage in this very boring assignment for most of each day. Even if it was just for a half day each day, that would be an extremely difficult duty. And remember, he did not have a tablet or a laptop or a big screen TV that he could turn on and binge watch his favorite TV show! He would have needed some supernatural bindings about him in order to keep him still.

Eze 4:9 Take thou also unto thee wheat, and barley, and beans, and lentiles, and millet, and fitches (spelt, rye), 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.

For some reason, no mention is made of the 40 additional days. Perhaps God is assuming that Ezekiel will follow the same directive for the subsequent time period.

God is so concerned that Ezekiel carries out this assignment to the letter, that he even selects his menu for him, in order that he doesn’t find excuse to waste time searching for new recipes in order to feed himself. Rather, God wants him to concentrate on this one thing.

How many times has God told us to do something, like pray a certain amount of hours each day, but time and time again, the trivialities of everyday life draw us away, and our time with the Lord is invariably cut short? When God asks us to do something, do the mundane things of this life take priority? That is one of the main reasons that God asks us to fast from time to time. To remind us and to discipline us, so that our bodies don’t dictate how well we obey his word.

Eze 4:10 And thy meat (food) which thou shalt eat shall be by weight (mish-kole, only time in OT), twenty shekels a day: from time to time shalt thou eat it.

Now here comes a real shocker. From what I have read, the commentators agree that 20 shekels weight was no more than 11 ounces, barely enough food to sustain life. Here was a practical reason for Ezekiel not to move around! God wanted him to experience the same level of hunger that those in Jerusalem would shortly experience during the 18 months of the final siege.

Sometimes God asks of us difficult things. When Jesus says that we must give our lives over to him, he means it literally. He reserves the right to ask anything of us. Here Yehovah asked Ezekiel to eat only enough to survive. He would have to endure this bland, insufficient diet for 14 months. He would have much time to contemplate his hunger pangs.

Pain is often used by God to focus our attention. It is in our deepest pain that we tend to think upon those things that really matter. If we are given a terminal diagnosis, the true believer becomes laser focused on the things of eternity. If we lose a loved one, we spend much more time meditating and pondering eternity. When we experience great loss in the physical world, we are starkly reminded of the transience and impermanence of all things in this plane of existence.

Eze 4:11 Thou shalt drink also water by measure, the sixth part of an hin (a liquid measure): from time to time shalt thou drink.

The sixth part of a hin was a little less than a pint of water. Not only was his food to be severely limited, but his water intake as well.

What a challenging assignment that would test a man’s level of obedience! How many of us, living in our overindulgent societies of today, would be able to manage this? How many days do you think you could endure before giving up? I know I couldn’t do it. Not without some radical supernatural help. I have only fasted more than 3 days in a row once in my life. I have never gone on a long partial fast. And we have the Holy Spirit living inside of us. Yet if we would try to do this in the flesh, we would most certainly fail. You cannot hope to imitate another person. Only by a direct word from the Lord could you ever do this.

Eze 4:12 And thou shalt eat it as barley (grain) cakes, and thou shalt bake it with dung that cometh out of man (adam), in their sight ah-yin – eye).

To eat your food using human dung as your fuel would represent the most dire of circumstances, as one would find in a siege.

Eze 4:13 And the LORD said, Even thus shall the children (bane – sons) of Israel eat their defiled (taw-may – foul, polluted) bread among the Gentiles (goy), whither I will drive (naw-dakh – banish) them.

Because Israel’s sins have caused the perfect will of God to fall by the wayside, they would now have no regard to any nuances and niceties of the law. This act by Ezekiel was to show his audience that Israel would be brought down to the lowest of lows. Their lives were about to become unimaginably brutal and inhumane.

Eze 4:14 Then said I, Ah (alas) Lord GOD! behold, my soul (nephesh) hath not been polluted (taw-may): 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 (pig-gool – unclean, fetid) flesh into my mouth.

Based on the following verses in the Torah, Ezekiel would take objection to this requirement by the Lord:

Deu 14:3 Thou shalt not eat any abominable thing.

Deu 23:12 Thou shalt have a place also without the camp, whither thou shalt go forth abroad:
Deu 23:13 And thou shalt have a paddle upon thy weapon; and it shall be, when thou wilt ease thyself abroad, thou shalt dig therewith, and shalt turn back and cover that which cometh from thee:
Deu 23:14 For the LORD thy God walketh in the midst of thy camp, to deliver thee, and to give up thine enemies before thee; therefore shall thy camp be holy: that he see no unclean thing in thee, and turn away from thee.

It is interesting that in regards to food laws, these Hebrews were especially fastidious. Remember Peter’s hesitation over something similar:

Act 10:12 Wherein were all manner of fourfooted beasts of the earth, and wild beasts, and creeping things, and fowls of the air.
Act 10:13 And there came a voice to him, Rise, Peter; kill, and eat.
Act 10:14 But Peter said, Not so, Lord; for I have never eaten any thing that is common or unclean.

I find it somewhat amusing, and certainly ironic, that up until now, Ezekiel had no objection to anything God had asked him to do, no matter how bizarre or seemingly ridiculous. But once it came down to food laws, now he felt he had to say something. Whether he thought he saw a loophole, or was sincerely concerned about ritual impurity, we cannot know for certain, though I suspect it was the latter. Jewish priests would especially be made aware and sensitive to ritual contamination in the performance of their duties.

What is mildly shocking is that God would ask him to seemingly break a Torah command. But just as in Jesus’ day, God was not asking him to eat anything unclean. No, Ezekiel was really objecting to some man made tradition to the Torah. Rabbis spent their days in nothing more than coming up with extra rules and regulations to burden the people with. Thinking that they were building a fence around the Torah, in order to keep people far away from even thinking of breaking the law, all that they ended up doing was placing impossible burdens upon men’s shoulders that they themselves would not bear.

Jesus had a lot to day about these kinds of practices:

Mat 23:2 Saying, The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat:
Mat 23:3 All therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do; but do not ye after their works: for they say, and do not.
Mat 23:4 For they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers.

Luk 11:46 And he said, Woe unto you also, ye lawyers! for ye lade men with burdens grievous to be borne, and ye yourselves touch not the burdens with one of your fingers.

Let us see how God responds to this request.

Eze 4:15 Then he said unto me, Lo, I have given thee cow’s dung for man’s dung, and thou shalt prepare thy bread therewith.

God makes allowance for Ezekiel’s scruples. While cooking his food over man’s dung did not technically break the law, and would provide a further stark example of the severity of the upcoming siege, God was willing to let that part of the pantomime go.

This is an important principle. How many of us get into big fights over something trivial? Why do we strive over things that really don’t amount to a hill of beans? So the church band likes to sing a certain song in a certain way that you don’t like. Maybe a certain sister draws out her prayers in an inordinate fashion. Can we not die a little more to self, in order to keep the peace in the house of the Lord? Or do we need to take offence at every little thing? God could have insisted that Ezekiel obey him. But then the prophet would have been needlessly troubled, perhaps even wondering if it was God that was speaking to him, since he was asking something that violated Ezekiel’s conscience. I suppose that is why Jesus said above to do whatever those in leadership ask, as long as it does not violate the clear teaching of scripture, of course. Perhaps what is being violated is your religious tradition, and nothing else!

Eze 4:16 Moreover he said unto me, Son of man, behold, I will break (shaw-bar – crush, destroy) the staff (mat-teh – branch, tribe, sceptre, rod) of bread in Jerusalem: and they shall eat bread by weight, and with care (deh-aw-gaw – anxiety, fear, heaviness, sorrow); and they shall drink water by measure, and with astonishment (stupefaction):

Here God explains to the man of God as to why he wants him to engage in this drawn out charade. It is to be a stark object lesson to those in exile. If they think they have it bad, they have not yet witnessed the true anger of the Lord. The upcoming siege will be far worse than the deprivations that they have had to endure up until now. While they may be envying the people who have seemed to have escaped the wrath of the Babylonians thus far, in truth these exiles are the fortunate ones. What is about to happen to the remaining residents of Jerusalem will be horrific beyond measure.

This is another great lesson. In the moment, we may believe that God has given us the short end of the stick. Down the road, we may find out that we were the blessed ones, in comparison to what is being done to others whom we initially thought were being treated better than us. We are so prone to making judgments before the time, are we not?

Eze 4:17 That they may want (khaw-sare – lack) bread and water, and be astonied (shaw-mame – stunned, devastated, stupified) one with another, and consume away (maw-kak – melt, dissolve, vanish) for their iniquity (aw-vone).

The purpose of all this evil is to show them that their aw-vone, or moral perversity, always comes at a great cost. While the perversion may have been enjoyable for a moment, the coming calamities will wipe out any and all pleasant memory of their lives of wickedness. They will be stunned. Their brains will not be able to process what they are seeing. They will literally melt before each other’s eyes. Not only physically, but inside as well. As their bodies starve, so will all they believe and hold dear melt away.

So there we have it. The life of a prophet. Not too much glory and glamor so far, is there?

Let us take stories such as this not as a license to act crazy and say that God told us to do it. Too many flaky, frivolous, fruitcakes seem to think that being filled with the Spirit is an invitation to weirdness. Often all they are doing is exhibiting their desire to be the center of attention.

While God calls very few to extreme behavior such as this, he does call some. Just be sure that it really is the Lord who is doing the calling, and not your need to be noticed.

Solitary Man
solitaryman.substack.com