Historical
Like other prophets, Ezekiel often acts out his messages in bizarre ways. These chapters contain a series of prophetic actions that communicate God’s message in powerful, nonverbal ways. By dramatizing God’s plan before an audience, a prophet is better able to change the people’s perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors because they can see an outcome instead of just imagining it.
4 Eternal One: Now, son of man, put a brick in front of you, and draw a picture of the city of Jerusalem on it. 2 Then lay siege against it: build a wall around it and place a siege ramp against it; prepare to attack it by placing tiny battering rams and pitching tiny camps around it. 3 Then take an iron pan and put it between you and the city to represent the iron wall My people have put between them and Me. Turn your face toward it to show that Jerusalem will be under siege. This will be a sign to the people of Israel.
4 Then lie down on your left side, facing the Jerusalem brick, and place all of Israel’s sins on you. You are to carry their sins for as long as you lie on your left side. 5 I have decided you will represent the carrying of sins the exact number of days as the years of their sin. For 390 days, you will carry the wickedness of Israel’s Northern Kingdom. 6 After you have completed this, lie down again, this time on your right side. While you lie down on your right side, you carry the sins of the people of the Southern Kingdom, Judah. This time, you are to lie on your right side for 40 days, one day for each year of their wickedness. 7 Turn your face toward the siege on Jerusalem, and preach to her with raw passion, with your arm bared ready to strike. 8 I will see that you are tied up with ropes so that you cannot turn from side to side or move until the days of your siege are completed.
9 Then take wheat and barley, beans and lentils, millet and spelt; store them together in one crock; use them to make bread for yourself during the siege. Eat the bread during the 390 days you are lying on your left side. 10 Eat no more than 8 ounces of bread per day, and eat your portion at set times each day. 11 Drink no more than 11 ounces of water each day, and drink it at designated times. 12 Eat the bread in the same manner you would eat a barley cake. Let the people see you bake it, and use human excrement instead of animal dung as fuel. 13 This is exactly what will happen to the people of Israel. They will be forced to eat their bread defiled and impure when I drive them to other nations.
Ezekiel: 14 Never, Eternal Lord! I have never defiled myself in such a way. Since childhood, I have never eaten anything that is impure—nothing diseased or ripped apart by wild animals.[a] Not a morsel of impure meat has ever been in my mouth.
Eternal One: 15 All right then, I’ll let you bake your bread over cow dung instead of human excrement.
16-17 Son of man, I am going to cut off the food supply from Jerusalem. The people will slowly starve, living off minimal rations of food and water. As they eat their morsels of bread and drink their minimal ration of water, they will be constantly worrying about what they will eat and drink the next day. When bread and water become more and more scarce, everyone will look at each other in horror. They will slowly waste away beneath the weight of their sins.
5 Eternal One: Now, son of man, take a sharp sword and use it as a straight razor to shave your head and beard. Then take scales and divide the hair up by weight into thirds. 2 When the days prescribed for the siege are over, take a third of the hair and burn it in a fire within the city walls. Then take another third and thrash it with a sword all around the city. Scatter the last third of the hair to the wind. Then I will draw My sword and chase them! 3 Keep a few strands of the hairs and tie them to the edges of your garment. 4 Take some of these extra strands of hair and fling them into the fire to burn them up. From there, a fire will spread to the whole house of Israel.
5 This is what the Eternal One says:
Eternal One: This stands for Jerusalem. I have placed her at the center of all nations, with countries surrounding her. 6 Yet she has defied My teachings and acted more wickedly than any of the other nations living around her; she has rejected My decrees and ignored My guidance. 7 This is what I, the Eternal Lord, have to say: You have been more rebellious toward My guidance and decrees than any other nation, choosing not to live even under the ethical and moral standards of other nations, and certainly not under My laws. 8 Therefore, I say, I am no longer your ally, Jerusalem. I am your enemy! I am going to punish you in front of all nations. 9 Because of your shocking actions, I am going to do something I have never done before and will never do again: 10 The day will come when fathers will devour their sons, and sons will feed off their fathers’ flesh. This is how I will punish you and scatter the few of you who survive to the wind.
When a powerful army surrounds the walls of a city, it cuts off the people’s access to their fields, animals, and water sources. If the siege lasts long enough, death is inevitable for those inside the city walls. As the bodies pile up and hunger becomes unbearable, cannibalism may be the only way to stay alive. There is something horrid about cannibalism. The notion that parents may be reduced to eating their children disrupts every natural impulse a parent has. But Scripture teaches that those who break God’s law and violate His holiness may be cursed with this punishment (Leviticus 26:29).
Eternal One: 11 Consequently, as surely as I live, because you have degraded My holy sanctuary with all your detestable images and shocking actions, I will leave you. I will shed no tears of compassion over you. 12 One-third of your people will suffer during the siege, starving to death or dying from disease within the city walls. Another third of you will die in battles outside of the city walls as they try to escape. The remaining third will be scattered to the winds, and I will draw My sword and chase after them.
13 After this My anger will subside. I will not be satisfied until I have unleashed My fiery judgment on them. Then they will know that I, the Eternal One, am the one who commanded all of this, for I jealously desire their devotion. 14 When I am finished with you, your nation will lie in ruins. You will be mocked and ridiculed by the nations around you and those who pass by. 15 You will become a byword to the nations, a warning to the world as they watch your horrific downfall when I punish you with anger, with fury, and with fiery judgment. I, the Eternal One, have spoken. 16 When I shoot My deadly arrows of famine and war at you, I will shoot to kill. I’ll curse you with more famine and cut off your food supply. 17 And when the famine has run its course, I will send savage beasts to attack you and eat the rest of your children. Plague, disease, murder, and bloodshed will pass through your land as I wage war against you!
I, the Eternal, have spoken.
6 The word of the Eternal came to me about Israel’s coming destruction.
The personification of the mountains and land of Israel emphasizes the severity of the situation. The actions of God’s wayward people not only defile them—they defile the land.
Eternal One: 2 Son of man, turn your gaze to the mountains of Israel; prophesy against them. 3 Tell the mountains of Israel to listen to the word of the Eternal Lord. I have a message for the high mountains and green hills, riverbeds and lush, fertile valleys: I am bringing the weapons of war against you, and I will demolish the shrines on your heights. 4 Your sacrificial altars will be ruined, your incense altars smashed. I will throw down your slain before your lifeless idols. 5 I will lay the remains of the dead Israelites in front of your lifeless idols; and I will scatter your bones around your altars so the place is contaminated with death. 6 In every place you live, the towns will be left in ruins and the high places will be rubble so that every place becomes a desolate wasteland. Your sacrificial altars will be destroyed and abandoned, your idols crushed and flattened, your incense altars smashed, and all you have created will be wiped out. 7 Your towns will be full of corpses. Then you will know I am the Eternal One.
8 But I will spare a few of you, and those who escape My punishing war will be scattered throughout other lands and nations. 9 In the nations where they have been taken as exiles, those who have been spared will remember Me—how I have been wounded by their promiscuous hearts that turned away from Me, how I have been hurt by their wandering eyes that desired lifeless idols. They will hate themselves for the evil they have done and for their detestable actions. 10 Then they will know I am the Eternal One. They will understand I did not utter empty threats when I said I would bring disaster on them.
11 Here is what I, the Eternal Lord, have to say: Clap your hands together, stomp your feet, and shout, How awful it will be for the people of Israel because of all the evil, shocking actions they have committed. They will be slain. War, famine, and disease will fall upon them! 12 Those who are far away will die of disease; those who are near will fall in battle; those who are spared will die of starvation. This is how I will spend My wrath on them. 13 After all the destruction, you will know I am the Eternal—when the rotting corpses of their slain are spread out among their fallen altars and shattered idols, on every green hill and high mountaintop, beneath every green tree and leafy oak, any place they offered sweet incense to their breathless idols. 14 Wherever they live, I will stretch out My hand against them and make their land an empty wasteland, from the wilderness to Diblah. Then they will know I am the Eternal One.
After such visual and visceral displays as representing Jerusalem on a brick and prophesying against it; lying on his side for over a year; and taking his own cut hair, burning it, and scattering it with a sword; Ezekiel must have acquired quite a reputation. His very life becomes an object lesson and a teaching display for the Judean exiles.
God is concerned about the glory of His name, so He must punish Jerusalem and the Judean population for their adulterous rebellion. Ironically, it is in the very places where God desires to have sweet and unhindered fellowship with His people that all types of lewd, profane acts of worship transpire. If there is any confusion as to what the Eternal is planning to do, then one need look no further than Ezekiel’s daily behavior.
7 The word of the Eternal came to me.
2 Eternal One: Son of man, this is what I, the Eternal Lord, have to say to the land of Israel:
The end! The end has arrived
for the four corners of the land and everyone in it.
3 The end is upon you,
and I will release My wrath against you.
I will judge you according to your ways,
and I will repay you for all your shocking actions.
4 I will not look on you with pity or spare you—
I will fully repay you for your shocking behavior and despicable deeds.
Then you will know I am the Eternal One.
5 This is what I, the Eternal Lord, have to say:
Wave after wave of evil is coming!
6 The end has arrived! The end has arrived!
It has awakened against you! It has arrived!
7 Doomsday has come for all who live in this land.
The time has arrived; the day is near;
There is no joy upon the mountains—
only shouts of alarm and horrifying terror.
8 It won’t be long now until I pour out My wrath on you,
until I unleash My fierce anger against you;
I will judge you according to your ways
and repay you for all your shocking actions.
9 I will not look on you with pity or spare you.
I will fully repay you for your shocking behavior and despicable deeds.
Then you will know it is I, the Eternal, who have crushed you.
10 Look, the day is here! It has arrived!
Your doom has erupted.
The rod has budded; conceit has blossomed!
11 The consequence—violence—has grown up into a rod to punish the wicked;
no one will be left, not one of the many!
No wealth, no valuables will be left from this doomsday.
12 The time has arrived; the day is now.
Buyer, don’t celebrate; seller, don’t grieve,
for My anger will come to burn all of you!
13 The seller won’t regain his treasures while they both live;
for the vision has to do with everyone, and no one will escape My wrath!
Because of each person’s iniquity,
no one will be able to hold onto his life.
14 Though the trumpet will sound to get everything ready,
no troops will march into battle
because My wrath is against all the people of Jerusalem.
15 The sword falls on anyone outside the city;
disease and famine ravage those who remain inside.
Those in the open will die by the sword;
those inside the city walls will be consumed by famine and disease.
16 The survivors will run for the mountains
and moan like doves because of their sins.
17 Every hand will go weak and limp;
every knee will turn to water.
18 They will dress in sackcloth,
and horror will cover them.
Their faces will be plastered with shame,
and their heads will be shaved.
19 They will throw their silver into the streets
and treat their gold as impure, worthless,
Once they discover their silver and gold cannot rescue them
on the day the Eternal ignites His fierce anger.
They will not satisfy their hunger or fill their bellies with their riches,
for their earthly riches are what made them stumble into sin.
20 They took pride in their attractive jewelry
and constructed breathless idols and disgusting images with it.
Therefore, I will make their riches impure and disgusting to them.
21 I will give their religious rubbish away to strangers
as the wicked marauders of the earth loot and defile their treasures.
22 I will turn My head
so they may desecrate My treasured place;
Pillagers will enter into it, profane it, and vandalize it.
23 Forge a chain,
for the land is soaked in blood and violence,
And the city is brimming with brutality!
24 I will stir up the very worst of the nations
to take possession of their houses.
I will put an end to the strong ones’ pride,
and their most sacred sites will be desecrated.
25 When the horror of My wrath comes, they will look for a calm place,
but there will be nothing but torrential terror.
26 One disaster after another will hit them;
one bad report after another will come to them.
Then they will seek a vision from any prophet,
but no instruction in the law from the priest
and no wise counsel from the elders will be found.
27 The king will grieve,
the prince will wrap himself in despair,
and the hands of the common people will tremble.
I will deal with them according to the way they dealt with others;
I will judge them according to way they judged others.
Then they will know I am the Eternal One.
The Voice Bible Copyright © 2012 Thomas Nelson, Inc. The Voice™ translation © 2012 Ecclesia Bible Society All rights reserved.