Fluent Translation · Read & Reflect
Ezekiel 4
A siege enacted
“Now you, son of man, take a brick, set it before you, and inscribe a city on it—Jerusalem. Lay siege to it: build siegeworks against it, heap up a ramp, set up camps, and place battering rams around it. Take an iron griddle and set it as an iron wall between you and the city. Turn your face toward it: it will be under siege, and you will besiege it. This is a sign for the house of Israel.
Bearing the guilt
Then lie on your left side and put the guilt of the house of Israel on it. For as many days as you lie on that side, you will bear their guilt. I have assigned you the years of their guilt as a number of days: 390 days. You will bear the guilt of the house of Israel. When you have finished those days, lie down again, this time on your right side. Bear the guilt of the house of Judah for forty days. I have assigned you a day for a year, a day for a year. Turn your face toward the siege of Jerusalem, bare your arm, and prophesy against it. Look, I will put ropes on you so that you cannot turn from one side to the other until you have completed the days of your siege.
Bread and water by measure
Take wheat, barley, beans, lentils, millet, and spelt. Put them in one vessel and make bread from them. Eat it throughout the 390 days you lie on your side. Weigh out your food: twenty shekels a day, eaten at set times. Measure your drinking water: one-sixth of a hin, drunk at set times. Eat the bread as a barley cake, baking it over human dung in their sight.” The LORD said, “This is how the Israelites will eat their food unclean among the nations where I drive them.” I said, “Ah, Lord GOD! I have never defiled myself. From my youth until now I have never eaten an animal that died on its own or was torn by beasts. No tainted meat has entered my mouth.” He answered, “Then I will allow you cattle dung instead of human dung. Bake your bread over that.” He said, “Son of man, I am about to break Jerusalem’s staff of bread. They will eat bread by weight in anxiety and drink water by measure in dismay. Food and water will run short. They will look at one another in horror and waste away in their guilt.”