Tag Archives: siege of Jerusalem

Lamentations 4 A Diminished People

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The Siege and Destruction of Jerusalem by Romans Under the Command of Titus, A.D. 70 by David Roberts 1850

Lamentations 4

1How the gold has grown dim, how the pure gold is changed! The sacred stones lie scattered at the head of every street.
2The precious children of Zion, worth their weight in fine gold — how they are reckoned as earthen pots, the work of a potter’s hands!
3Even the jackals offer the breast and nurse their young, but my people has become cruel, like the ostriches in the wilderness.
4The tongue of the infant sticks to the roof of its mouth for thirst; the children beg for food, but no one gives them anything.
5Those who feasted on delicacies perish in the streets; those who were brought up in purple cling to ash heaps.
6For the chastisement of my people has been greater than the punishment of Sodom, which was overthrown in a moment, though no hand was laid on it.
7Her princes were purer than snow, whiter than milk; their bodies were more ruddy than coral, their hair like sapphire.
8Now their visage is blacker than soot; they are not recognized in the streets. Their skin has shriveled on their bones; it has become as dry as wood.
9Happier were those pierced by the sword than those pierced by hunger, whose life drains away, deprived of the produce of the field.
10The hands of compassionate women have boiled their own children; they became their food in the destruction of my people.
11The LORD gave full vent to his wrath; he poured out his hot anger, and kindled a fire in Zion that consumed its foundations.
12The kings of the earth did not believe, nor did any of the inhabitants of the world, that foe or enemy could enter the gates of Jerusalem.
13It was for the sins of her prophets and the iniquities of her priests, who shed the blood of the righteous in the midst of her.
14Blindly they wandered through the streets, so defiled with blood that no one was able to touch their garments.
15“Away! Unclean!” people shouted at them; “Away! Away! Do not touch!” So they became fugitives and wanderers; it was said among the nations, “They shall stay here no longer.”
16The LORD himself has scattered them, he will regard them no more; no honor was shown to the priests, no favor to the elders.
17Our eyes failed, ever watching vainly for help; we were watching eagerly for a nation that could not save.
18They dogged our steps so that we could not walk in our streets; our end drew near; our days were numbered; for our end had come.
19Our pursuers were swifter than the eagles in the heavens; they chased us on the mountains, they lay in wait for us in the wilderness.
20The LORD’s anointed, the breath of our life, was taken in their pits — the one of whom we said, “Under his shadow we shall live among the nations.”
21Rejoice and be glad, O daughter Edom, you that live in the land of Uz; but to you also the cup shall pass; you shall become drunk and strip yourself bare.
22The punishment of your iniquity, O daughter Zion, is accomplished, he will keep you in exile no longer; but your iniquity, O daughter Edom, he will punish, he will uncover your sins.

Grief, despair, and depression are natural responses to traumatic events, and the destruction endured by the people of Jerusalem would have shattered the foundational beliefs of this once proud citizens of Zion. They can look at the way the deprivations of the siege of Jerusalem stripped them of their humanity and made them act like animals. Society broke down under the strain of starvation. Death reigned in the city and now in the aftermath they are a broken people who look at themselves wondering what they have become. They grieve the city, the life, and the friends and family that they have lost. Their world looks hopeless, and the briefly summoned hope of the previous chapter has been swallowed by despair. There is an exhaustion to this fourth poem which is one third shorter than the previous three. It still attempts to maintain the orderly composition of the acrostic form, but now each letter has two lines instead of three. The intensification of the form in the previous poem now relapses into a gasping poem of diminishment. Things once beautiful have become ugly, the noble has become not only common but cruel, the hope of the future has been consumed by the needs of the present. As Yael Ziegler describes this poem,

Despair colors this chapter in dark hues; the lustrous gold, shining white, and rosy-cheeked vigor of Jerusalem’s bright past fade, giving way to dark tones, the shadowy color of despondency. Blackened by hunger and desiccated by thirst, people no longer recognize their fellows. Lack of recognition metaphorically suggests antisocial behavior; society breaks down as hunger predominates, and every individual seeks his or her own survival at the expense of another. (Ziegler, 2021, pp. 341-342)

Yet, the poet attempts to bring some order to their disordered world. To honestly assess the present and look for something to hold onto but in the end the only thing the poet finds is a hope for revenge.

The characteristic of gold is that it does not tarnish like most other metals, and that is one of the properties that makes it valuable. Yet, the opening image is of gold dimming and being transformed to have the properties of a common metal. Sacred stones, perhaps the impressive stones used in the construction of the temple, now litter the streets as rubble. Yet, the gold and the sacred stones are now metaphorically related to the children of Zion—once its most valuable possession but now thrown away like the commonest of pot. It is the fate of the children of Zion which forms one of the central concerns of this poem.

Something has happened to transform this people which prized their children above all things into a people unfavorably compared with jackals and ostriches. The language of the book of Job seems a natural place to search for language that voices the suffering of the poet and the people of Zion in general, and Job 39: 13-18 portrays the ostrich (although it uses a different Hebrew word for this bird) as an uncaring mother who delivers her eggs onto the sand but may just as carelessly step on them. Throughout the Hebrew scriptures jackals are the inhabitants of ruins[1]and jackals and ostriches often appear together in the metaphors for judgment.[2] Now the people have become less maternal than the jackal and the ostrich during and after the siege of Jerusalem and infants and children suffer hunger and thirst by adults unable to see past their own hunger and struggle.

Another unhappy parallel for Jerusalem is Sodom. In Ezekiel 16 the infidelity of Judah is compared with Samaria and Sodom, and she is found worse than both destroyed societies. Yet, Sodom with its destruction by the LORD for its sins[3] is now viewed as favorable to the punishment Jerusalem has received. The rapid destruction of Sodom in the Genesis narrative does not have the dehumanizing effect that the siege and starvation of Jerusalem has had on the people. Sodom may be the representation of both wickedness and judgment in scriptures and is frequently used by the prophets as a warning for Israel, Jerusalem, and the prophets who have failed to faithfully communicate God’s word.[4]

The poet of Lamentations likely came from the nobility and priests of Jerusalem. He may have been an unwelcome voice to the nobles, like Jeremiah was, but he still can see in the diminishment of the nobles the dimming of the people. Those who ate fine food now perish in the street, and those who wore scarlet (NRSV purple)[5] now cling to the ash heap. The city which provided their position and privilege now lies broken and burning, and without Zion they are nothing. Princes and nobles whose skin was fairer and their hair clean and black[6] and compared to the dark blue sapphire or lapiz lazuli now are described as similar to Job with blackened skin which has shriveled on their bones. (Job 30:30) For both Job and the nobles God is the cause of their desperate situation where they suffer with the people they were supposed to lead.

Death by violence seems a preferrable state than what the residents of Jerusalem were reduced to. The cannibalistic action of the compassionate women who boil their own children may be hyperbolic, but the subject of mothers eating their own children comes up multiple times in relation to sieges in the Hebrew Scriptures.[7] Being reduced to survival by eating one’s own child, perhaps that has already died of salvation, is a horrific and inhuman image. These compassionate women are no longer titled as mothers. They, and by extension the rest of the people, have been reduced to animalistic actions by their starvation and deprivation.

The pillars of the Zionistic hope: the Davidic king, the city, the temple, and the land have all been consumed in the fiery wrath of God’s action against the people. There is a belief that God will not abandon the temple, the city, or the Davidic king. Yet, those very things have been destroyed or taken into exile in shackles. The poet turns to the prophets and priests who failed the people. Priests and prophets in Jeremiah were willing to shed his blood, but ultimately the people judge he has done nothing worthy of death[8] and Jeremiah earlier makes an accusation that the “blood of the innocent” being spilled in this place (the temple) is one of the things that the people of Jerusalem must turn from.[9] Ezekiel can declare that Jerusalem has become “the bloody city” by its unjust and violent ways.[10] Both prophets would have agreed with Lamentations identifying the priests and prophets as being active contributors to the judgement of the city. Now these priests and prophets who are supposed to embody holiness for the people have been reduced to the uncleanness of lepers. “Away! unclean!” is what lepers are required to shout in Leviticus 13: 45.

The siege of Jerusalem takes place in the context of the plotting of the leaders of Jerusalem to align themselves with Egypt rather than Babylon. The help they await during the siege was expected to come from their ally Egypt, but Egypt was unable to break the siege or to successfully challenge Babylon. Jeremiah challenges the reliance on Egypt by the leaders in Jerusalem, and there seems to have been the hope of a regional alliance against Babylon. Yet, many of these nations who may have been a part of the ‘regional alliance’ seem to have betrayed Jerusalem and sided with Babylon, like Edom who will be mentioned as deserving God’s revenge at the end of the poem. The Babylonians and their allies overwhelmed the defenders of Jerusalem and made daily life under the siege unbearable. Even when nobles and others attempted to escape through breaches in the wall they were captured and imprisoned by the Babylonians.

The LORD’s anointed, the Davidic king, is mentioned for the first time in the poem. The psalms of enthronement[11] draw this anointed king into a close relationship with the divine, standing as the LORD’s representative on earth. The language of these psalms will later be used by the New Testament to speak of Jesus, and they helped form the expectation of a messiah in post-exilic Judaism, but here this poem uses the evocative phrase the breath (ruach) of our life. Elsewhere the ruach of life is the spirit, wind, or breath of God which animates both in creation and in Ezekiel 37. Now the removal of the Davidic king is like the removal from the air from the lungs of the people. They have lost many of the things that defined their community and the foundational images of their life and it may have felt like in combination with the presence of death seen in the starvation and conflict that their way of life was dying as well.

Ultimately, this fourth poem ends like the first and third poems calling for God to judge others as harshly as they have been judged. Now the target is Edom, who has earned the rancor of God in numerous prophets.[12] The entire book of Obadiah, only one chapter, is against Edom. Edom apparently took advantage of Jerusalem’s fall and abused the people and city at its lowest point. Now the poet asks for the punishment to pass to them and that they would know shame, here represented by Edom’s nakedness. In the cup passing to Edom there is a moment of hope for the poet that now Jerusalem’s judgment may come to an end, that the exile may be now longer as God’s anger is redirected at Edom.

Having worked through Jeremiah and Ezekiel there are significant sections dedicated to the desire for revenge upon the enemies of the people. It is important to realize that these are the words of defeated people with no power to act upon this desired revenge and the vengeance that would belong to the LORD. Much like the imprecatory psalms[13] they bring their anger and commit it into the LORD’s hands. Lamentations is not easy reading but one of the gifts of our faith is the ability to take all our emotions and bring them into our relationship with God.

[1] Jeremiah 9:11.

[2] Job 30:29; Micah 1:8.

[3] In Genesis the sins of Sodom are primarily sins of inhospitality, the way it abused strangers in its midst.

[4] In addition to Ezekiel 16, mentioned above, Isaiah 1:9-10; 3:9; 13:19; Jeremiah 23:14; Amos 4:11; and Zephaniah 2:9.

[5] Scarlet has the association with royalty that purple does which is probably why the NRSV switches to this better known correlation.

[6] Fairer skin and clean and dark indicates a lifestyle out of the sun and which was viewed as a sign of prosperity and attractiveness in the ancient world, hence the shame of the female speaker in Song of Solomon over her darkness from being forced to work the fields (Song of Solomon 1: 5-6).

[7] 2 Kings 6: 26-30 in the siege of Samaria and Ezekiel 5:10 about the siege of Jerusalem. Although this language may be for shock, it may also report the desperate actions that people took during starvation.

[8] Jeremiah 26:15.

[9] Jeremiah 7:5-6.

[10] Ezekiel 24.

[11] E.g. Psalm 2, Psalm 110.

[12] Jeremiah 49:17-22; Ezekiel 25: 12-14; 35; Joel 3:19; Amos 1:11; Obadiah; Malachi 1:4.

[13] E.g. Psalm 58 and 109.

Ezekiel 24 The Painful Judgment of God

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By John Singer Sargent – This file was donated to Wikimedia Commons as part of a project by the National Gallery of Art. Please see the Gallery’s Open Access Policy., CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=81473181

Ezekiel 24:1-14 The Boiling Pot

1 In the ninth year, in the tenth month, on the tenth day of the month, the word of the LORD came to me: 2 Mortal, write down the name of this day, this very day. The king of Babylon has laid siege to Jerusalem this very day. 3 And utter an allegory to the rebellious house and say to them, Thus says the Lord GOD: Set on the pot, set it on, pour in water also;
4 put in it the pieces, all the good pieces, the thigh and the shoulder; fill it with choice bones.
5 Take the choicest one of the flock, pile the logs under it; boil its pieces, seethe also its bones in it.
6 Therefore thus says the Lord GOD: Woe to the bloody city, the pot whose rust is in it, whose rust has not gone out of it! Empty it piece by piece, making no choice at all.
7 For the blood she shed is inside it; she placed it on a bare rock; she did not pour it out on the ground, to cover it with earth.
8 To rouse my wrath, to take vengeance, I have placed the blood she shed on a bare rock, so that it may not be covered.
9 Therefore thus says the Lord GOD: Woe to the bloody city! I will even make the pile great.
10 Heap up the logs, kindle the fire; boil the meat well, mix in the spices, let the bones be burned.
11 Stand it empty upon the coals, so that it may become hot, its copper glow, its filth melt in it, its rust be consumed.
12 In vain I have wearied myself; its thick rust does not depart. To the fire with its rust!
13 Yet, when I cleansed you in your filthy lewdness, you did not become clean from your filth; you shall not again be cleansed until I have satisfied my fury upon you.
14 I the LORD have spoken; the time is coming, I will act. I will not refrain, I will not spare, I will not relent. According to your ways and your doings I will judge you, says the Lord GOD.

Before addressing the content of this allegory or metaphor[1]it is necessary to address the dating of this portion of Ezekiel. If the dating is done according to the pattern of the rest of the dates of Ezekiel then the time from the beginning of the siege until Ezekiel is notified that the siege has ended is almost three years. We know that the siege of Jerusalem lasted roughly eighteen months and it is unlikely that it would have taken another eighteen months for the information about the fall of Jerusalem to reach Ezekiel. Yet, it is not surprising that the dating changes since the same date is referenced in both 2 Kings and Jeremiah.

And in the ninth year of his reign, in the tenth month, on the tenth day of the month, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon came with all his army against Jerusalem, and laid siege to it; they built siegeworks against it all around. So the city was besieged until the eleventh year of King Zedekiah. On the ninth day of the fourth month the famine became so severe in the city that there was no food for the people of the land. 2 Kings 25:1-3, see also Jeremiah 39: 1-3.

Whether Ezekiel changes his dating scheme based on the command to write down the name of the day by the LORD, or whether a later scribe corrects Ezekiel’s dating scheme to reflect the standard dating practice, the siege of Jerusalem begins in the ninth year of King Zedekiah’s reign in the tenth day of the tenth month of the year. The prophesied siege has finally begun. The words of Ezekiel are finally occurring in a way that the people can now see that there has been a prophet among them.

Ezekiel has frequently built upon previously used images and throughout this metaphor he pulls together the image of the pot previously used in chapter eleven and the bloody city from chapter twenty-two. There is a poetic quality to the image, and it is possible that Ezekiel is utilizing a cooking ditty that gets repurposed into this image, taking something familiar and using it in an uncomfortable manner to warp the preconceived notions of the hearer. But even if this is utilizing a song about a cooking pot, this is no ordinary meal being prepared. The copper pot indicates either a cultic use or court use because most people at this time would use clay pots.

The translation of the corruption of the pot as rust is problematic because copper does not rust. Copper when it oxidizes turns green and so if the corruption is with the pot then a better translation would be corruption that would need to be smelted away if the pot is to be clean. Yet, the more likely indication is that the meat is corrupted rather than the pot and that rather than the content of the pot being choice cuts of the choicest animal of the flock what they ended up with is putrid flesh. (Block, 1997, p. 777) This resonates with the imagery of chapter eleven where the leaders view themselves as the choice meat safe within the pot, while the LORD indicates that they are rotten.

Ezekiel, along with Jeremiah and others, has been challenging the Zion theology that viewed the temple and Jerusalem as guarantees of the LORD’s protection for the people. In this theology the exiles were the ones discarded while those remaining in the city were the choice cuts who are safe. Now with the beginning of the siege the pot which once offered safety is now heated until it glows. If this was being used for either consumption or cultic use the law would expect the blood of the sacrificed animal to be poured out on the ground, but the blood is in the pot and everything in the pot is heated to the point where the corruption is consumed. The blood still testifies to the violence committed in the city and there is no beginning without the contents of the pot being consumed. There can only be a new beginning once there is an ending. God has spoken and now those words are realized. It is only in retrospect that the people can understand that a prophet has been among them. It is only after the destruction of the city and in the time of exile that a new beginning can occur. For Ezekiel, the judgment of this time is just and yet this journey will take a difficult toll on him personally as well as any loss he may feel at the destruction of the city he grew up in and the temple he had been trained to serve in.

Ezekiel 24: 15-27 A Tragic Final Sign

15 The word of the LORD came to me: 16 Mortal, with one blow I am about to take away from you the delight of your eyes; yet you shall not mourn or weep, nor shall your tears run down. 17 Sigh, but not aloud; make no mourning for the dead. Bind on your turban, and put your sandals on your feet; do not cover your upper lip or eat the bread of mourners. 18 So I spoke to the people in the morning, and at evening my wife died. And on the next morning I did as I was commanded.

19 Then the people said to me, “Will you not tell us what these things mean for us, that you are acting this way?” 20 Then I said to them: The word of the LORD came to me: 21 Say to the house of Israel, Thus says the Lord GOD: I will profane my sanctuary, the pride of your power, the delight of your eyes, and your heart’s desire; and your sons and your daughters whom you left behind shall fall by the sword. 22 And you shall do as I have done; you shall not cover your upper lip or eat the bread of mourners. 23 Your turbans shall be on your heads and your sandals on your feet; you shall not mourn or weep, but you shall pine away in your iniquities and groan to one another. 24 Thus Ezekiel shall be a sign to you; you shall do just as he has done. When this comes, then you shall know that I am the Lord GOD.

25 And you, mortal, on the day when I take from them their stronghold, their joy and glory, the delight of their eyes and their heart’s affection, and also their sons and their daughters, 26 on that day, one who has escaped will come to you to report to you the news. 27 On that day your mouth shall be opened to the one who has escaped, and you shall speak and no longer be silent. So you shall be a sign to them; and they shall know that I am the LORD.

Even though the book of Ezekiel is one of the longer books in the bible we know very little biographical information about the prophet: we know that he was thirty years old at the time of his call[2], that he was a part of the initial group of exiles in Babylon, that he is a priest and the son of Buzi, and now we learn that he is married. Being a thirty year old male we may have assumed he was married but in this time of upheaval it is likely that many traditional markers in the personal life of individuals may be delayed. Now that we have learned that he has a wife described here as the delight of his eyes it helps provide some answers to how the prophet was able to become the living sign that God required him to be. Presumably when Ezekiel portrays the siege of Jerusalem with his body for over four hundred days it would be his wife who ministered to him and cared for him. Throughout the book of Ezekiel, the prophet has been obedient in contrast to the disobedience of the people and only protests when he is asked to do something that makes him unclean or when he feels that all of Israel is being destroyed. Now Ezekiel who has occupied the space between a heartbroken God and the disobedient people endures his own personal heartbreak with no set of listening ears to hear his grief. Ezekiel has often been a living sign for the people of Israel and his actions have cost him physically, but now his family becomes one final sign before the destruction of Israel, and he is unable to collapse in mourning because of the imperative of his mission from God.

Ezekiel is addressed as Mortal[3] and then told that with ‘one blow’ God is taking away his wife and he is not to mourn of weep. The term translated ‘one blow’ elsewhere has referred to death from a plague, but here it conveys the suddenness of the death. There was no indication that Ezekiel’s wife is sick before this announcement but in the span of a day his wife is dead. The lack of the standard actions associated with mourning is a noticeable departure from the expected activity and it makes people demand an explanation from the prophet. Throughout the book the prophet has been both the medium and the messenger, but one last time he is both the physical sign to the people and the one to explain the sign. Instead of mourning and covering the upper lip,[4] he is to dress and carry on in a normal manner. In Leviticus Aaron and his sons Eleazar and Ithamar were not allowed to mourn Aaron’s two sons who offered an ‘unholy fire’ before the LORD and were killed (Leviticus 10: 6-7) and later this becomes the expected practice for the high priest (Leviticus 21: 10-12). In the absence of the temple, now perhaps we are to see the prophet as the new high priest for the people. The ‘stronghold, joy, and delight of the people’ (the city and temple) in addition to their sons and daughters of the people are being taken away and the prophets will become the new center of faith at the beginning of a new era in Babylon.

Ezekiel embodies obedience throughout his ministry, and this has come at a high cost. This portion of Ezekiel’s life resonates with Abraham’s call to sacrifice his beloved son Isaac. Yet, unlike Abraham’s offering in Genesis 22 there is no lamb to take the place of the beloved one.  Ezekiel pays a steep price for the privilege of serving as God’s agent charged with carrying the difficult message of the judgment on Jerusalem, the leaders of Israel, the temple, and the land. Daniel Block argues that he pays a price higher than any other recorded prophet. (Block, 1997, p. 793)

Why does God ask such a high price from God’s most faithful people? This is a difficult question without one simple answer, but this is a question that any reading of the scriptures does prompt. Prophets like Ezekiel and Jeremiah often find themselves caught between the people who God loves and the God who the people have rejected, and they become living witnesses to the tension in this broken relationship. I’ve often told my community that “God sends God’s very best in the hope that the people God loves will return.” This thought is captured in Jesus’ parable of the wicked tenants (Matthew 21: 33-46, Mark 12: 1-12, Luke 20: 9-19) where the house master (NRSV landowner) continually sends servants to tenants who resist them, eventually sending the Son. This is an opportunity for the tenants, but it means that the servants (or slaves) of God suffer abuse. Some prophets have protested the treatment they have received, but Ezekiel throughout these twenty-four chapters that lead to the exile has demonstrated a quiet obedience to God’s will. The book of Ezekiel does not consider sharing the emotional struggle of the prophet worthy of space (and any speculations we make are merely speculations) in contrast to the essential task of communicating the word of God to a resistant people.

The first half of Ezekiel has been leading to this point where the consequences of the disobedience of the people of Israel occur in the siege of Jerusalem by Babylon. This is a difficult portion of scripture to read but the people valued these difficult words enough to preserve them as a continual witness to warn against the loss of the covenantal dimension of the relationship between the people of God and the God of Israel. Ezekiel will be an influence on several later prophets as well as the New Testament, particularly Revelation. As we continue in this book the focus shifts from Judah to the nations. The LORD the God of Israel is not merely the God of Israel. Ezekiel like many prophets will have messages for many other nations and as the next eight chapters of Ezekiel will concern Ammon, Moab, Edom, Philistia, Tyre, and Egypt. Now that the forces of Babylon are on the march these nations which conspired with Judah will not be exempt from the judgment of King Nebuchadrezzar (and by extension the LORD).

[1] This is the Hebrew masal which can be translated parable, proverb, allegory or metaphor.

[2] Presuming the initial dating of the thirtieth year is Ezekiel’s thirtieth year, see chapter one.

[3] Literally son of man, as throughout the book. This is God’s characteristic address to the prophet Ezekiel.

[4] Elsewhere in the bible this is a sign of shame (Micah 3:7) and perhaps communal mourning, but this passage assumes that this is also a common practice symbolizing bereavement.

  Ezekiel 4 The Siege of Jerusalem Portrayed

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Jerusalem is on Fire from the Art Bible (1896)

Ezekiel 4

1 And you, O mortal, take a brick and set it before you. On it portray a city, Jerusalem; 2 and put siegeworks against it, and build a siege wall against it, and cast up a ramp against it; set camps also against it, and plant battering rams against it all around. 3 Then take an iron plate and place it as an iron wall between you and the city; set your face toward it, and let it be in a state of siege, and press the siege against it. This is a sign for the house of Israel.

4 Then lie on your left side, and place the punishment of the house of Israel upon it; you shall bear their punishment for the number of the days that you lie there. 5 For I assign to you a number of days, three hundred ninety days, equal to the number of the years of their punishment; and so you shall bear the punishment of the house of Israel. 6 When you have completed these, you shall lie down a second time, but on your right side, and bear the punishment of the house of Judah; forty days I assign you, one day for each year. 7 You shall set your face toward the siege of Jerusalem, and with your arm bared you shall prophesy against it. 8 See, I am putting cords on you so that you cannot turn from one side to the other until you have completed the days of your siege.

9 And you, take wheat and barley, beans and lentils, millet and spelt; put them into one vessel, and make bread for yourself. During the number of days that you lie on your side, three hundred ninety days, you shall eat it. 10 The food that you eat shall be twenty shekels a day by weight; at fixed times you shall eat it. 11 And you shall drink water by measure, one-sixth of a hin; at fixed times you shall drink. 12 You shall eat it as a barley-cake, baking it in their sight on human dung. 13 The LORD said, “Thus shall the people of Israel eat their bread, unclean, among the nations to which I will drive them.” 14 Then I said, “Ah Lord GOD! I have never defiled myself; from my youth up until now I have never eaten what died of itself or was torn by animals, nor has carrion flesh come into my mouth.” 15 Then he said to me, “See, I will let you have cow’s dung instead of human dung, on which you may prepare your bread.”

16 Then he said to me, Mortal, I am going to break the staff of bread in Jerusalem; they shall eat bread by weight and with fearfulness; and they shall drink water by measure and in dismay. 17 Lacking bread and water, they will look at one another in dismay, and waste away under their punishment.

Ezekiel has eaten and ingested the scroll that was given to him by the LORD and now he becomes the physical embodiment of the words of lament, morning, and woe. Previous prophets have used ‘sign-acts’ to convey a message. There is a societal expectation that prophets will do strange actions to convey a symbolic meaning: whether it is Ahijah the Shilonite tearing the new garment he was wearing into twelve pieces and handing ten to Jeroboam to indicate God was handing ten tribes to Jeroboam to reign over (1 Kings 11 29-39) or Zedekiah son of Chenaanah making horns of iron[1] (1 Kings 22: 11) Elisha having King Joash strike the ground with arrows to symbolize victory (2 Kings 13: 14-19), Isaiah walking around naked and barefoot for three years (Isaiah 20. Jeremiah burying and retrieving a loincloth, breaking an earthenware jug, or wearing a yoke[2] (Jeremiah 13: 1-11; 19: 1-13; 27) Hosea’s relationship with his wife becomes an enactment of God’s relationship with Israel (Hosea 1-3) or Zechariah’s creation of a crown to put on the high priest Joshua (Zechariah 6). Yet, Ezekiel makes this type of visual prophecy a central part of his ministry to the people. ‘Sign-acts’ are a part of the modus operandi of the prophet Ezekiel as he embodies the word of God he is given. The nature and duration of the acts assumes an audience. These actions are public actions which are designed to provoke reaction, discussion, and communication.

The actions as commanded by the LORD would take over the prophet’s life for over a year. As Ellen Davis writes, “The prophet so consumed the divine word that finally his life…was important only to illustrate it might well claim to speak for YHWH.” (Davis, 1989, p. 70) Ezekiel is going to feel the pain of his people in his body as he prefigures the action of the siege, the length of exile, and the meager rations that those remaining in Jerusalem will encounter. His strange actions will be observed by his fellow exiles, but they will ultimately be communicated through family, social, political, and religious networks to those in Judah. Although he is already in exile in Babylon and will not endure the siege like those in Jerusalem his actions will embody the pain that is coming upon the people as a result of their hardheaded and hard-hearted ways of resisting the LORD’s covenant.

Ezekiel and Jeremiah both are attempting to deconstruct the “four pillars upon which Judah’s (false) sense of security was built.” (Block, 1997, p. 162) Jeremiah was working among those still in Judah as Ezekiel began his work among the exiles. The four pillars centered on the LORD the God of Israel’s covenant with Israel, God’s commitment to the land, God’s commitment to Jerusalem and the temple, and finally God’s promises to David. The covenant that the LORD entered into with the people at Sinai provided divine protection but included the obligation of faithfulness to the commands and ordinances of the covenant. Although there is an understanding of God being the creator of the heavens and the earth there was also the expectation of their God as the sovereign tied to a specific land and having an interest in defending the territory of Israel. Frequently the Israelites used the framework of the surrounding nations view of their ‘territorial deities’ to shape their imagination of their LORD. Jerusalem and the temple were viewed as special because they were the place that was a residence for the name of God, and the turning away of Sennacherib and the Assyrian threat during the time of King Hezekiah and the prophet Isaiah had reinforced this belief of “Zion’s inviolability.” (Block, 1997, p. 163) Lastly there was the covenant with David in 2 Samuel 7 where the LORD would guarantee the Davidic dynasty. The message both Jeremiah and Ezekiel received demonstrated the fallacy of the trust the people placed on God’s protection of the people, the land, the city/temple, and the king because the people did not attend to the commandments and ordinances that were a part of the covenant. Due to the disobedience and rebellion of the people their LORD was oriented against them and was allowing the punishment to fall first on his prophet and then on the people.

Ezekiel’s sign-act begins with taking a presumably wet slate or brick of clay and inscribing a visual representation of Jerusalem upon it. Archeologists have unearthed similar tablets and bricks depicting other cities in this region of Babylon. (NIB VI: 1143) Then this representation of Jerusalem is placed under siege by building a siege wall to isolate the city, setting up ramps (most cities are built on hills and surrounded by walls thus requiring ramps to assault) encamping a representative army around it and placing battering rams around the city. Siege in the ancient world worked in a double fashion, it isolated the city from sources of food, water, supplies, and reinforcements and it actively worked to destroy the walls that protected the city and to hasten the end of the siege. The iron griddle or iron plate separates the prophet from the city, but also may indicate God’s separation from the city. The prophet can demonstrate the siege but is powerless to prevent its happening.

The prophet is then called to bear the iniquity or punishment of the people of Israel and Judah for a number of days representing the years of punishment. Ezekiel’s act of bearing the iniquities of the people does not serve an atoning function like the scapegoat on the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 16: 21) but instead becomes a demonstration of the consequence of the long-endured stubbornness of the people. The three hundred ninety days (representing three hundred ninety years) of punishment for Israel presents several questions for an interpreter: who is represented by Israel, when are the three hundred ninety years of disobedience and when does the judgment of Israel begin? Israel (Samaria) and Judah separated in 922 and Assyria conquers Northern Israel in 721 BCE (a period of two hundred years) so one may question if the Israel here refers to Samaria or some unified vision of Israel which includes Judah. Perhaps Samaria’s disobedience has continued until this time and that would bring it closer to the period of three hundred ninety years. 1 Kings would indicate from its perspective the northern kingdom of Israel was disobedient to the LORD from its foundation with no ruler who did what was right in the eyes of the LORD. This three hundred ninety years may also harken back to Israel’s history in Egypt and its eventual liberation, and Ezekiel may be imagining a new exodus event in the people’s future. The forty days of Judah is easier to relate to the experience of exile in Babylon, but it also follows the pattern of Israel’s history when the people wandered in the wilderness for forty years for their disobedience.

According to the number of days in which you spied out the land, forty days, for every day a year, you shall bear your iniquity, forty years, and you shall know my displeasure. Number 14: 34

The action of laying on the right side for three hundred ninety days bound in cords and then a further forty days on the left side sounds impossible to accomplish, but Ezekiel is physically putting his body on the line as an image for the people. It is worth remembering that at the end of the previous chapter Ezekiel We are not given the complete details of how the prophet enacted this, but this repeated action would attract curiosity from the exiles and would probably be communicated to the residents of Judah.

During this extended embodiment of Judah’s punishment, the prophet is on a highly restricted diet: roughly six hundred fifty grams of water a day and about one thousand calories of a bread-like cake. This is a nutrient and calorie poor diet which probably gave the prophet little energy to do anything beyond lying around in the warm climate of Babylon. This siege diet which represents “scraping the bottom of each of the storage barrels.” (Block, 1997, p. 184) creates a cake that a third century experiment recorded by the Babylonian Talmud (Erubin 81a) demonstrated that a dog would refuse. (NIB VI: 1148) Yet the only thing the prophet resists is the command to bake the cake over human excrement. This may go back to the provisions in Deuteronomy that required the people to bury their excrement outside the camp. (Deuteronomy 23: 12-13) This request for God to amend his command is the first time the prophet speaks in the book, and God grants the request to allow cow chips to be used instead. Other than this request it appears that Ezekiel obediently embodies God’s commands. He becomes a visual representation of the words of God and an image of a suffering servant bearing the punishment of his people.

Ezekiel used the language of the covenant to challenge the four pillars that the people of Jerusalem have placed their misguided belief in their safety from the Babylonians or any other invasion. The language of ‘the staff of bread’ echoes the language of Leviticus 26:26 where the result of disobedience results in a situation where bread is doled out by weight and those who eat are not satisfied. Ezekiel’s diet would put him in a significant caloric deficit until the end of his ordeal. The upcoming siege of Jerusalem will be an experience of extreme hunger and starvation for many in Jerusalem and they, like the prophet who is embodying this dark future, will waste away as the days crawl on and the food dries up.

[1] Zedekiah was a false prophet, but he illustrates the cultural expectations of a prophet.

[2] Hananiah breaking of Jeremiah’s yoke was also a ‘sign-act’ even though performed by a false prophet.