Ezekiel 4:1 - Meaning and Application

The prophet is told to act out the siege of Jerusalem in signs that would strongly catch people’s attention and move their hearts. In this way, his actions would serve as a warning and a prediction. First, he must draw a picture of Jerusalem on a tile, or clay tablet (Ezekiel 4:1). Jerusalem once had great honor, because while she stayed faithful, God had engraved her on the palms of his hands (Isaiah 49:16), and the names of the tribes were engraved on the high priest’s breastpiece. But now the faithful city has become like an unfaithful woman, so a cheap, brittle tile is enough to represent her.

Next, he must place small siege works against the drawing, like the battering ramps an enemy army would build (Ezekiel 4:2). Between the city and himself, he is to set up an iron pan like an iron wall (Ezekiel 4:3). This picture shows how firmly both sides were set. The Babylonians were determined to take the city, no matter the cost, and the Jews were determined not to surrender until the very end.

He is also told to lie on his side before the model city, as if he were surrounding it and helping to blockade it. In this way, he pictured the Babylonian army shutting the city in so no food could go in and no one could get out. He was to lie on his left side for 390 days (Ezekiel 4:5), which was about thirteen months. The siege of Jerusalem lasted eighteen months (Jeremiah 52:4-6), but if we subtract the five months when the Babylonians withdrew because Pharaoh’s army approached (Jeremiah 37:5-8), the close siege comes to 390 days.

Those 390 days also had a deeper meaning. In prophetic language, a day can stand for a year, so the 390 days pointed to 390 years. By lying there, the prophet symbolically carried the guilt of Israel, the ten tribes, for the years of their sin from the time of Jeroboam’s first rebellion until the destruction of Jerusalem, which completed the ruin of the few who had joined themselves to Judah. Then he was to lie on his right side for forty days, bearing the guilt of Judah, the kingdom of the two tribes. This matched the final forty years before their captivity, beginning with the thirteenth year of Josiah, when Jeremiah began to prophesy (Jeremiah 1:1-2), or, as some count, from the eighteenth year, when the law book was found and the people renewed their covenant with God.

If they kept on in their sins and idol worship, despite having such a prophet, such a king, and such a covenant, nothing but ruin could follow. Judah had more help and better opportunities to turn back, so it filled up its guilt in less time than Israel did. We should not imagine that the prophet lay day and night without moving for all those days. Rather, each day, at a set time when visitors came, he was found lying on one side or the other before his picture of Jerusalem. Everyone who saw it could easily understand that the city was being tightly besieged, and people would keep coming to watch, some out of curiosity and some out of concern.

His staying on the same side, as though cords were holding him there, showed the enemy’s constant pressure around the city during all those days. He could not turn from one side to the other until the time of the siege was complete. He is also told to press the siege with full force (Ezekiel 4:7). He must set his face toward Jerusalem, fully fixed on the task, because the Babylonians would be just as determined. They would not be bribed or forced away. Nebuchadnezzar was deeply angry because Zedekiah had broken his treaty with him, and he pushed the siege hard to punish that false king and people. His army also expected a rich spoil from that proud city, so both king and soldiers were set against it with great resolve.

They would also work with great energy, which the prophet showed by uncovering his arm, or, as some read it, stretching out his arm as if striking without mercy. When God prepares to do a great work, Scripture says he makes bare his arm (Isaiah 52:10). In short, the Babylonians would go about their work with purpose and keep at it until they succeeded.

This whole acted sign was meant for the house of Israel (Ezekiel 4:3), both the people already in Babylon, who could see the prophet’s actions, and those still in their own land, who would hear about them. The prophet had been made mute and could not speak (Ezekiel 3:26). Yet even his silence had a message, because it rebuked the people for their deafness. God was not left without a witness, so he told the prophet to use signs, just as a mute person might do, or as Zechariah did when he could not speak. In this way, he made known God’s mind to the people.

This also exposed the people’s dullness. They were not willing to learn from plain words, so they had to be taught like children, with pictures, or like deaf people, with signs. It may also have exposed their hatred of the prophet. If he had said in words everything these signs meant, they might have trapped him in his speech and accused him of treason. People know how to make a person guilty over a word (Isaiah 29:21). To avoid that, he was told to use signs. Or, as with Christ’s parables, they were left to hear without understanding and see without perceiving (Matthew 13:14-15). Since they would not understand what was clear, they would now be taught by what was harder to miss, and in this the Lord was right and just.

Thus the prophet was speaking against Jerusalem (Ezekiel 4:7). Some who saw this understood the message more deeply because it was acted out before their eyes. Pictures often leave a stronger mark on the mind than words alone, and that is one reason sacraments are given, to show divine truths in a visible way so we may see, believe, and be moved by them. We can expect this help when we use only the signs God himself has clearly appointed, because those are surely the best ones.

The imagination, when it is kept under the rule of reason and faith, can help stir up holy feeling. That was true for Ezekiel and the people around him. Thoughts such as, “I see myself dying, time ending, the world burning, the dead rising, and the great judgment seat set up,” can have a strong effect on us. Imagination is like fire, a good servant but a bad master.

This whole act included things that Ezekiel might have had strong reasons to resist, yet he obeyed God and carried it out as commanded. It may have seemed childish or silly, and people could have mocked him for it. But God’s command gave enough honor to what otherwise looked lowly, and that was enough to protect Ezekiel’s good name.

It was also hard work and wearisome to do. Still, we must give up our comfort as well as our reputation when duty calls, and we should never treat God’s service as if it were too hard. It must have gone against Ezekiel’s heart to stand against Jerusalem, the city of God and the holy city. He was a true friend of that city, but as a prophet he had to follow God’s directions, not his feelings, and plainly announce the ruin of a sinful place, even while he deeply desired and prayed for its good.

All of this was meant to bring the children of the people to repentance. By showing them the sin that brought on Jerusalem’s destruction, he showed them the very thing that had ruined that once-flourishing city. Nothing could be more powerful for teaching them to hate sin and turn away from it. While Ezekiel described the disaster in a vivid way and at personal cost, he was also bearing the guilt of Israel and Judah.

He was, in effect, saying, “Look and see what sin produces, what a harmful and bitter thing it is to turn away from God. This is what came from sin, your sins and the sins of your fathers. Let that be your daily grief and shame now in exile, so that you may make peace with God and he may return to you in mercy.” Yet we should notice this too: a day was appointed for each year of sin. The siege lasted 390 days, standing for 390 years of guilt. So they rightly admitted that God had punished them less than their sins deserved (Ezra 9:13).

But unrepentant sinners should know that if God is patient with them now, there is endless punishment in the world to come. When God put bands on the prophet, it showed how they were bound by the cords of their own sin (Lamentations 1:14), and now they were held fast by the cords of suffering. We can also feel compassion for the prophet himself when God laid the bands of duty on him, as he does on all his ministers (1 Corinthians 9:16). Paul said, “Necessity is laid on me, and woe to me if I do not preach the gospel.” And Ezekiel also had men lay restraints on him (Ezekiel 3:25). Even under both kinds of bonds, it was enough that he was serving the interests of God’s kingdom among people.