And you shall eat it as a barley cake, baking it in their sight on human dung.”
God tells Ezekiel to bake his ration as a barley cake and to cook it over human waste, in full view of the people. The command is shocking. It raises two questions. Why must the prophet go through what he announces? And what does defiled bread say about the nation's future?
The prophet carries the message in his own body
This sign is one Ezekiel must eat, not one he only displays. A writer notes that the question has now changed.
William KellyHere it is a different question. The prophet must show in his own person the humiliation as well as the judgment coming because of the sin of the people. In his measure Ezekiel is to taste the condition of Israel under the righteous dealings of God. This is not because he was personally out of God's favour, but on the contrary because he was near enough to God to enter into the reality of their misery.
Ezekiel was himself a priest. That makes the command heavier.
Leslie M. GrantGod makes him a living object lesson for Israel: he must feel for himself the bitterness of the things he prophesies. So here is another priest who, in a very practical way, "eats the sin offering." He has to feel not only the sin of God's people, but the judgments of God's government against that sin.
Two disasters shown in one meal
The scarce, weighed-out rations and the filthy fuel are not the same warning twice. They point to two stages of the same judgment.
Arno Clemens GaebeleinBoth the sign of the famine and the bread baked in an unclean way predict the horrors of famine during the siege of Jerusalem. They also predict how the people would live in defilement during the later captivity among the Gentiles.
The bread of the siege follows them out of the city
The same defiled loaf turns up again among the nations. What the siege means for them does not stop when the siege does.
Numerical Bible NotesScattered among the nations that led them captive, they are still bearing their iniquity before God. What we have here shows that the character of the siege reaches into the time that follows. The unclean bread they eat under the pressure of the siege is to be eaten among the nations where the Lord drives them too.
What the defilement exposes
Hunger is a hardship. Uncleanness is a change of status. The loss on show here runs deeper than a shortage of food.
Numerical Bible NotesThis third sign shows the state of the people even more than the distresses of the siege do, because it points to the destruction of their sanctification as a separate people. The polluted bread they eat among the Gentiles is no longer the result of being shut up inside the besieged city.
The same writer follows the defilement past the captivity, to those who returned from Babylon.
Numerical Bible NotesTheir bread became most fully defiled when they taught the doctrines of men as commandments, and once more put in place of the Word by which men live rules that were not good and judgments by which a man could not live. For a remnant of those who had returned from Babylon it was a time of famine of the word of God itself.
Defilement forced, not chosen
God commands Ezekiel's defilement; the prophet does not choose it. Another captive shows the other side.
F. G. PattersonDaniel settled it in his heart that he would not defile himself with the king's food or his wine. He would drink water and eat vegetables, nothing more. He kept his life of separation to God in the land of captivity, and he kept it according to the thoughts of God (compare Ezekiel 4:9-13). The time came when God stood by him and made him the vessel of His mind and will.
Summary
- Sign. Ezekiel shows the humiliation and the judgment in his own person. He acts the message; he does not only speak it.
- Shame. God makes him a living object lesson. He is a priest who must taste both his nation's sin and God's judgment on it.
- Siege. The weighed rations and the unclean fuel predict two things: famine during the siege of Jerusalem, and defilement afterwards among the nations.
- Scattering. They eat the same unclean bread far from Jerusalem. The siege ends, but they still bear their iniquity among the nations.
- Separation. The deepest loss is not food but their sanctification as a separate people. Daniel shows that a heart set on God can keep that separation, even in captivity.