Ezekiel 5:5

This] the city depicted on the tile (Ezekiel 4:1). In the midst of the nations] God gave Jerusalem a great opportunity of displaying His righteousness and truth to the world. Her position, near the highway between Asia and Africa, was peculiarly central and conspicuous.

Three hundred and ninety days] This is a difficult number. Ezekiel expected the captivities of Israel and Judah to end together (Ezekiel 37:15.). As Israel's captivity was to be 350 years longer than Judah's, it must have begun 350 years sooner. The captivity of Judah may be dated (a) from the first captivity (597 b.c.), or (b) from the second captivity (586 b.c.): The latter was still in the future at the time of this prophecy, and would not be a fixed date for Ezekiel, who would therefore probably reckon from 597 b.c., which he elsewhere calls 'our captivity' (Ezekiel 40:1). The captivity of Israel is most naturally reckoned (a1) from the fall of Samaria (721 b.c., 2 Kings 17:6); but it may possibly be calculated (b1) from the first ravages of Tiglath-pileser (734 b.c., 2 Kings 15:29). From (a1) to (a) gives 124 years, and from (b1) to (a) 137 years. Taking (b) instead of (a) for the captivity of Judah, these numbers become respectively 135 and 148. The LXX has 190 instead of 390, which would give 150 instead of 350 for the difference between the two captivities, and this would agree approximately with the actual elates, especially with (b1) to (b). The only way to reach anything like 350 years is to count Israel's captivity from the revolt of the Ten Tribes (939 b.c.). This was 342 years before (a) and 353 years before (b), but it is unlikely that Ezekiel should have given the time of Israel's sin and only the time of Judah's punishment. Another explanation is that since 390 + 40 = 430, Ezekiel represented the united captivities of the two kingdoms as equal in length to the bondage in Egypt (Exodus 12:40), and that of Judah as equal to the period of wandering in the wilderness (Numbers 14:34). The latter v. is certainly closely parallel to this passage, and possibly we have here an ideal and artificial scheme of numbers with no relation to actual historic dates. If a historic explanation be preferred, 350 (or 150) must be taken not as an exact, but as a round number.