“And you, take wheat and barley, beans and lentils, millet and emmer, and put them into a single vessel and make your bread from them. During the number of days that you lie on your side, 390 days, you shall eat it.
God tells the prophet to bake his own bread from six different grains and beans scraped together, and to live on it for 390 days. It is not a recipe but a sermon. This is the food of a city under siege, made in public where the exiles could watch it day after day.
The prophet as the message
The sign does more than announce judgment. It puts the humiliation of the people on display in the body of the man who carries God's word to them.
William KellyThe prophet must show in his own person what is coming on the people because of their sin — the shame of it as well as the judgment.
Ezekiel was a priest, and the demand made of him matches that calling — he must taste what he announces.
Leslie M. GrantGod makes him a living object lesson for Israel: he must himself feel the bitterness of the things he prophesies. Here is another priest who "eats the sin offering" in a very practical way. He has to feel the sin of God's people. He also has to feel the judgments God brings on that sin as He governs them.
What went into the loaf
The list is not the diet of a settled household. Beans, for example, belonged to the table of those who had little.
Morrish Bible DictionaryThe common and well-known bean. It grows well in Palestine. People eat it with rice, or mix it with wheat and barley to make bread for the poor. 2 Samuel 17:28; Ezekiel 4:9.
Translations differ on the last grain in the list. The ESV has "emmer"; older versions have "fitches".
Morrish Bible DictionaryThe word is taken to mean "spelt", a kind of grain like wheat. Exodus 9:32; Isaiah 28:25. The same Hebrew word in Ezekiel 4:9 is translated "fitches", with "spelt" in the margin.
Why 390 days, and not 430
Ezekiel lay on his side for 390 days and then a further forty, yet the bread is tied only to the first figure. One writer sees a real distinction there.
F. W. GrantThe prophet is to put all this mixed grain into one vessel and make bread of it. He is to eat it for as many days as he lies on his side. But notice, the limit given here is 390 days only, not 430 as we would have imagined. So there is clearly a distinction of some sort between this period and the 40 days that follow.
The bread beyond the city walls
The same writer looks past the siege itself. The unclean bread is also eaten among the Gentiles, and that points to something worse than hunger.
F. W. GrantThis third sign shows the state of the people even more than the distresses of the siege do. It signifies the destruction of their sanctification — their standing as a people set apart. This polluted bread eaten among the Gentiles is no longer the result of being shut up inside the walls of the besieged city.
Another writer ties the famine and the unclean bread together and looks ahead.
Arno C. GaebeleinThe sign of the famine and the bread baked in an unclean way point the same way. They predict the horrors of hunger during the siege of Jerusalem. They also predict that the people would later live in defilement among the Gentiles.
A man who took his people's guilt on himself
The months of hard living were not a performance. Ezekiel owned the nation's sin as his own.
W. T. P. WolstonThe guilty nation may have felt little. This godly prophet felt the sin of his nation, confessed it before God, and accepted its consequences... He identifies himself with the sin of his nation. He is ready to bear what that sin deserves, and to bear it without a complaint.
The limit of the sign
Ezekiel shielded himself from a full taste of what he was showing. That is where the sign reaches its limit.
William KellyEzekiel is to taste, in his measure, what Israel suffers under the righteous dealings of God. This is not because he had fallen out of God's favour. The opposite is true: he was near enough to God to enter into the reality of their misery. Yet only the Son of man could go down in grace into its depths, take it up in full, and suffer to the end... Never did He shield Himself, as Ezekiel does here, from a full taste of Israel's ruined state.
Summary
- Sign — the prophet does not just announce the judgment. He shows in his own body the shame their sin has earned.
- Siege — the mixed grain is famine food — six poor ingredients scraped into one pot because nothing better is left.
- Scattering — the same defiled bread is eaten among the nations, so the sign reaches past the city walls into the captivity.
- Separation lost — the polluted bread means the end of Israel's standing as a people set apart to God.
- Substitute — Ezekiel bore his nation's guilt in his own measure, yet he shielded himself from a full taste of it. Only the Son of man went down into the depths and suffered to the full.