Ezekiel 4:16

the staff of bread i.e. the staff which bread is; a common figure, ch. Ezekiel 5:16; Leviticus 26:26; Isaiah 3:1; Psalms 105:16.

It is scarcely necessary to say that the symbolical actions of this chapter were not actually performed. They naturally passed through the mind of the prophet as described, but so far as others were concerned they were merely narrated. The truth expressed by the symbolical action was as plain when the action was merely described as it would have been had the action been performed and seen. It is evident that the actions referred to here could not have been performed because they are represented as being done simultaneously. It is while he presses the siege with arm uncovered that the prophet also lies on his side held down by bands, bearing the sin of the people (Ezekiel 4:5; Ezekiel 4:7), and it is while lying immoveable in this condition that he prepares cakes upon the coals and eats them (Ezekiel 4:8-9). The prophet's symbols merely express an idea; it is only when supposed to be actually performed that inconsistencies appear.

The siege and the hardships of it prolonged into the exile the people's bearing their sin are the two chief ideas of the chapter. These are of course contemporaneous with one another so far, but they are spoken of separately in Ezekiel 4:1-6, the siege in Ezekiel 4:1-3, and the hardships of it and the exile in Ezekiel 4:4-6. But from Ezekiel 4:7 onwards they are somewhat mixed together. Cornill reconstructs the chapter in a very drastic way with the view of keeping the two things, the siege and the exile, distinct throughout. He groups the verses as follows: first, bearing the sin of the people, i.e. the exile with its uncleanness, Ezekiel 4:4-6; Ezekiel 4:8(7 is a gloss), 9, 12 5; and secondly, the siege with its scarcity, Ezekiel 4:1-3; Ezekiel 4:10; Ezekiel 4:16. This reconstruction of the text is too violent to have any probability. A different suggestion was made by Well. (Hist. p. 273, note), to the effect that in Ezekiel 4:9, 390 is the right reading (though erroneously transferred also to Ezekiel 4:5 for 190), and that the reference is exclusively to the siege, which the prophet calculated would last so long. Further, the prophet's lying on his side and being bound with bands, Ezekiel 4:8, is a different thing from his lying on his side, Ezekiel 4:5. In Ezekiel 4:5 he represented the bondage of the exile, in Ezekiel 4:8 seq. the straitness of the siege. This view requires that Ezekiel 4:13, which interprets Ezekiel 4:8 seq. of eating unclean food in the dispersion, should be struck out as a gloss. The verse certainly appears in a shorter form in LXX., though there seems no ground for considering it wholly interpolated. And it is more natural that the repulsive symbol of Ezekiel 4:12 should refer to the fact that all food eaten in exile was unclean rather than to uncleanness due to scarcity of fuel during the siege. The introduction too of a literal number of 390 days among other numbers of days which are symbolical is scarcely probable.