Ezekiel 4

Chapter 4

Siege of Jerusalem Predicted

¹“Now you son of man, ^aget yourself a brick, place it before you and inscribe a city on it, Jerusalem.

²“Then ^alay siege against it, build a siege wall, ¹raise up a ramp, pitch camps and place battering rams against it all around.

³“Then get yourself an iron plate and set it up as an iron wall between you and the city, and set your face toward it so that ^ait is under siege, and besiege it. This is a ^bsign to the house of Israel.

⁴“As for you, lie down on your left side and lay the iniquity of the house of Israel on it; you shall ^abear their iniquity for the number of days that you lie on it.

⁵“For I have assigned you a number of days corresponding to the years of their iniquity, three hundred and ninety days; thus ^ayou shall bear the iniquity 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 iniquity of the house of Judah; I have assigned it to you for forty days, a day for ^aeach year.

⁷“Then you shall set your face toward the siege of Jerusalem with your arm bared and ^aprophesy against it.

⁸“Now behold, I will ^aput ropes on you so that you cannot turn from one side to the other until you have completed the days of your siege.

Defiled Bread

⁹“But as for you, take wheat, barley, beans, lentils, millet and ^aspelt, put them in one vessel and make them into bread for yourself; you shall eat it according to the number of the days that you lie on your side, three hundred and ninety days.

¹⁰“Your food which you eat shall be ^atwenty shekels a day by weight; you shall eat it from time to time.

¹¹“The water you drink shall be the sixth part of a hin by measure; you shall drink it from time to time.

¹²“You shall eat it as a barley cake, having baked it in their sight over human ^adung.”

¹³Then the Lord said, “Thus will the sons of Israel eat their bread ^aunclean among the nations where I will banish them.”

¹⁴But I said, “^aAh, Lord ¹God! Behold, I have ^bnever been defiled; for from my youth until now I have never eaten what ^cdied of itself or was torn by beasts, nor has any ^dunclean meat ever entered my mouth.”

¹⁵Then He said to me, “See, I will give you cow’s dung in place of human dung over which you will prepare your bread.”

¹⁶Moreover, He said to me, “Son of man, behold, I am going to ^abreak the staff of bread in Jerusalem, and they will eat bread by ^bweight and with anxiety, and drink water by ^cmeasure and in horror,

¹⁷because bread and water will be scarce; and they will be appalled with one another and ^awaste away in their iniquity.