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“Take for yourself also wheat, barley, beans, lentils, millet, and spelt, and put them in one vessel. Make bread of it. According to the number of the days that you will lie on your side, even three hundred ninety days, you shall eat of it. 10 Your food which you shall eat shall be by weight, twenty shekels[a] a day. From time to time you shall eat it. 11 You shall drink water by measure, the sixth part of a hin.[b] From time to time you shall drink. 12 You shall eat it as barley cakes, and you shall bake it in their sight with dung that comes out of man.” 13 Yahweh said, “Even thus will the children of Israel eat their bread unclean, among the nations where I will drive them.”

14 Then I said, “Ah Lord Yahweh! Behold, my soul has not been polluted; for from my youth up even until now I have not eaten of that which dies of itself, or is torn of animals. No abominable meat has come into my mouth!”

15 Then he said to me, “Behold, I have given you cow’s dung for man’s dung, and you shall prepare your bread on it.”

16 Moreover he said to me, “Son of man, behold, I will break the staff of bread in Jerusalem. They will eat bread by weight, and with fearfulness. They will drink water by measure, and in dismay; 17 that they may lack bread and water, be dismayed one with another, and pine away in their iniquity.

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Footnotes

  1. 4:10 A shekel is about 10 grams or about 0.35 ounces.
  2. 4:11 A hin is about 6.5 liters or 1.7 gallons.

Ezekiel’s Strange Defiled Meal

“And you, take for yourself[a] wheat and barley and beans and lentils and millet[b] and spelt, and you must put them in one vessel, and you must make them for yourself[c] into a food during the number of days that you are lying on your side; three hundred and ninety days you shall eat it. 10 And your food that you will eat[d] will be according to weight; twenty shekels for each day at fixed times[e] you shall eat it. 11 And an amount of water[f] you shall drink, a sixth of a hin; at fixed times[g] you shall drink it. 12 And as a bread-cake of barley you shall eat it, and with human excrement[h] you shall bake it before their eyes.” 13 And Yahweh said, “Thus shall the Israelites[i] eat their unclean food among the nations where I will scatter them.”[j] 14 And I said, “Ah, Lord Yahweh! Look! I have not been defiling myself, and a dead body and mangled carcass I have not eaten from my childhood until now, and unclean meat[k] has not come into my mouth!” 15 And he said to me, “See I will give you cattle manure[l] in the place of the feces of a human, and you may prepare your food on it.” 16 And he said to me, “Son of man,[m] look, I am going to break the supply[n] of bread in Jerusalem, and they will eat bread by weight, anxiously,[o] and rationed water,[p] and they will drink with horror, 17 so that they will lack food and water, and they will be appalled with one another,[q] and they will waste away because of their guilt.[r]

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Footnotes

  1. Ezekiel 4:9 Hebrew “you”
  2. Ezekiel 4:9 Or “sorghum”
  3. Ezekiel 4:9 Hebrew “you”
  4. Ezekiel 4:10 Hebrew “will eat it”
  5. Ezekiel 4:10 Literally “from time to time”
  6. Ezekiel 4:11 Literally “water by amount”
  7. Ezekiel 4:11 Literally “from time to time”
  8. Ezekiel 4:12 Literally “with human dung of the excrement of the human”
  9. Ezekiel 4:13 Literally “sons/children of Israel”
  10. Ezekiel 4:13 Literally “which I will scatter them there”
  11. Ezekiel 4:14 Literally “flesh of unclean meat”
  12. Ezekiel 4:15 Literally “the manure of cattle”
  13. Ezekiel 4:16 Or “mortal,” or “son of humankind”
  14. Ezekiel 4:16 Literally “staff”
  15. Ezekiel 4:16 Literally “and with worry”
  16. Ezekiel 4:16 Literally “and water by amount”
  17. Ezekiel 4:17 Literally “a man and his brother”
  18. Ezekiel 4:17 Or “punishment”