Ezekiel 4:4-8

(B) The Exile: its Duration. The next action is more curious. Ezekiel is represented as lying upon his side for 190 days (as LXX correctly reads in Ezekiel 4:5) to symbolise the years of punishment in exile a year for a day undergone by Israel and Judah for their sins. As the restoration of these two kingdoms is expected to occur simultaneously (Ezekiel 37:16 ff.) we must assume that, as he lies for forty days upon his right side to represent Judah (i.e. the southern kingdom), so he lies 150 days on his left to represent Israel (i.e. the northern kingdom), though the whole period of her exile covers, of course, 190 years. Forty is a round number: in point of fact, the exile of Judah (reckoning from the fall of Jerusalem) lasted almost fifty years (586- 538 B.C.). A hundred and fifty is also a round number: from the date at which Ezekiel is writing (592 B.C.) back to the fall of Samaria, the capital of the northern kingdom (721 B.C.), the exile of Israel lasted about 130 years, or more nearly 150, if we carry the date back to the Assyrian deportation of some of Israel's northern inhabitants, 734 B.C. (2 Kings 15:29).

Some think that this action points to the rigidity of catalepsy; but the sequel, in which Ezekiel bakes, eats, and drinks, shows that it cannot have been literally carried out. At most one may suppose that the symbolic action was deliberately performed for a certain time each day. Despite his silence, his strange posture and behaviour were charged with prophetic meaning.