Notes on Ezekiel 3:16-4:17

3:16-7:27 form the first message given to Ezekiel for the people, the ending of which is marked by the date given to the new prophecy in 8:1. 

I will further divide this unit up into two sections: 3:16-4:17 and 5:1-7:27, and deal with each separately even though they are a single composition. 

Ezekiel waits for seven days before receiving a further message. At the end of the seven days, God begins to speak to him again. The number seven is a significant timeframe that denotes a time of completion or purification. Allen merely sees this as a week of refreshment after the powerful vision God gives to him.[1] However, God gives him this vision again immediately after in v. 23. If the vision was so powerful that he needed to have rest after seeing it, it is odd to give it to him again and then offer him no rest afterward. It may instead symbolize the idea that Ezekiel needed to purify himself before delivering the message of the Lord in the same way that God both previously instructed and will instruct him following this seven day period not to become corrupt himself in the process of both receiving God’s rebuke and rebuking the others with it.

God now speaks to Ezekiel and warns him of the peril of his ministry. He is a watchman, and as a watchman he is to warn the people of danger. In this case, the danger is their own sin for which God will take their lives. God now tells Ezekiel that if he fails to do his job, God will go ahead with His judgment anyway, but he will require the blood of the one killed from his hand (3:18-19; cf. 2 Sam 4:11-12). This phrase references the idea of murder. If Ezekiel fails to warn the person in sin to repent, God will consider Ezekiel’s passive sin as an active murder of the individual, and thus, will be executed himself under the judgment of God.

He moves to the valley where God tells him that the people will respond by imprisoning him (3:25), and a paradox is presented where God will make him mute so that he cannot correct them, but God will then open his mouth to rebuke them. The unteachable will not listen, but those who are obedient will (vv. 26-27).

This activity may be the first of the sign acts, as “Had his isolation been self-inflicted, he could have ended it when he chose; had it been by others, he could perhaps have escaped. But since it is placed on him by himself, by others, and by God, there is no escape.”[2] In this way, Ezekiel’s isolation mimics the exile of the Israelites. They have been placed there by themselves because of their actions, by God as a judgment upon their actions, and by others (i.e., the Babylonians). Hence, there is no escape from the judgment.

He cannot converse with them and seek to reason with them in his own personal rebuke, nor can he intercede for them, but he must only speak what God says, i.e., the scroll of God’s words he has eaten, which is judgment.

Ezekiel is told to go out and perform four or five sign acts (depending on what scholar argues for them[3]) that demonstrate God’s coming judgment upon Jerusalem. Both the acts and the interpretation are presented and is, perhaps, an early form of apocalyptic speech in development (as Ezekiel is a transitional book that moves in many ways from the genre of prophetic to apocalyptic). These sign acts consist of:

1.       Ezekiel’s being exiled to his house by God, himself, and others.

2.       Building a fort and playing with toy soldiers where he has the soldiers besiege the city. He is to set a hot iron pan between himself and the model city, representing God’s refusal to help them in their destruction.

3.       He is to lie on his left side for 390 days representing the sin of the house of Israel (i.e., the northern kingdom) and lie on his right side for 40 days, representing the sin of Judah. He is to be bound with rope and eat a small amount of food from a jar and a small amount of water, representing the lack of abundance they will have in the exile. He is to cook his food over human excrement to also convey the idea of the impoverishment.

4.       Ezekiel is then to cut off his hair and beard and strike a third of them with the sword, representing the people of Judah being killed with the sword, throw another third into the wind, which represents their running and being driven out by the sword, a few tucked away into the folds of his garment, and a few thrown into the fire, which represents those who die by famine and plague.

5.       Ezekiel is to take a backpack and dig a hole in the wall as he continually goes out from it to represent both that the people will go out to exile and the prince will try to go out a hole but be captured and die in exile instead (Chapter 12)

The sign-act itself is a type of mockery. The people reject the warnings of God as empty and false, and so God displays what are horrors in theatrical form almost to ignore their refusal to listen and to mock them in their destruction.

Each one seems somewhat explanatory except for a few oddities within the third. For instance, does “Israel” refer to the northern kingdom or what is left of Israel in the land as a whole? Are the numbers 390 and 40 literal or symbolic? What does it mean for the prophet to bear their guilt?

The mixture of different kinds of grains seem to indicate scarcity in that there is not enough of one grain to make a loaf of bread so they must be combined with others.[4]

As for the numbers, the number 40 is often a symbolic number that refers to a time of testing/trial period or judgment. The rain persists for 40 days and 40 nights in the deluge (Gen 7:4, 12; 8:6), the Israelites are tested at the foot of Sinai for 40 days and 40 nights while Moses is on the mountain (Exod 24:18; 34:28). It is the time period the Israelites have to wait in anticipation of the spies return (Num 13:25), and the amount of years Israel must wander in the wilderness (14:33-35; 32:13; Deut 2:7). Deuteronomy 8:2 describes it as a time of testing. Nineveh is given 40 days until its destruction in Jonah 3:4. There are quite a few other examples in the OT, as well as the famous example of Jesus in the wilderness for 40 days.[5]

 

The Old Greek has 190 years instead of 390, perhaps, because it takes “Israel” to mean the northern kingdom and seeks to add the time from which the north was judged to the end of the southern exile in order to come to a closer number of 190 years. However, as Duguid argues, Ezekiel does not usually use “house of Israel” to refer to the northern kingdom, but to whole of the covenant people of God, and the phrase “house of Judah” seems to refer to the community of the exiles throughout the book.[6] However, the 390 years seems to stretch back to the dedication of either the first temple,[7] as Duguid notes, but if this is a judgment for 390 years, it would refer to abandonment, and therefore, perhaps from the split of Israel or the setting up of foreign shrines to the end of the exile. It makes sense that it refers to the dedication of the temple when the Lord filled the temple with His glory: "for the glory of the Lord had filled the house of the Lord" (1 Kings 8:10–11; 2 Chronicles 5:13, 14). Now, as a judgment, the glory departs from the temple in the same way that the glory of God departed from the northern kingdom when they shunned Jerusalem and set up their shrines instead of having access to the glory of God through the temple. The split took place around 920 B.C., again, depending upon one’s chronology. It is probably therefore a reference to all of Israel being judged in two stages, so that Ezekiel’s use of the terms remains in tact as referencing the whole of God’s covenant people, but then referring to the two stage judgment of His people. If the glory departed from northern Israel around 920 B.C. (the numbers should be somewhat flexible and not exact) that leads to a literal time period where God’s glory has departed from some or all of Israel for around 390 years (from 920 B.C. to 600 B.C. plus the 70 year exile—it may be that the chronology is to be altered within the range of a few years here and there, since our numbers are not exact).

Of course, this means that one number is literal and the other figurative and some may have an issue with that, but it seems to be common to include both figurative and literal numbers together when describing periods of judgment (cf. the flood account[8]). It is possible that this number is taken from the 430 year time period Israel spent in Egypt.[9]

The phrase “bear their sin” is clearly a reference to Ezekiel depicting their punishment and not the prophet’s atonement for their sin, since they all had to endure the punishment and it was not removed by anything that Ezekiel had done. The phrase can refer to the atonement but also to undergoing judgment which is the clear reference here (cf. Num 14:33).

Ezekiel’s protest to God may display the idea that although He sees Israel as defiled like those who eat food cooked over human refuse, He will allow a remnant to remain pure.

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[1] Ezekiel 1-19, 60.

[2] Duguid, 80.

[3] Allen, Ezekiel 1-19, 61.

[4] Moshe Greenberg, Ezekiel 1-20, 106.

[5] B. C. Hodge, Revisiting the Days of Genesis, 150-52.

[6] Ezekiel, 90.

[7] The chronologies are disputed, but it ranges from anywhere between 1000-516 when the second temple was built. The 390 years could range from the building of the first temple to the exile, the end of the exile, or the rebuilding of the temple in 516, depending upon when one places the date of the first temple.

[8] Hodge, Revisiting the Days, 135-56.

[9][9] Duguid, Ezekiel, 91.