You also, son of man, take you a tile, and lay it before you, and portray on it the city, even Jerusalem:
And lay siege against it, and build a fort against it, and cast a mount against it; set the camp also against it, and set battering rams against it round about.
Moreover take you to you an iron pan, and set it for a wall of iron between you and the city: and set your face against it, and it shall be besieged, and you shall lay siege against it. This shall be a sign to the house of Israel.
Lie you also on your left side, and lay the iniquity of the house of Israel on it: according to the number of the days that you shall lie on it you shall bear their iniquity.
For I have laid on you the years of their iniquity, according to the number of the days, three hundred and ninety days: so shall you bear the iniquity of the house of Israel.
And when you have accomplished them, lie again on your right side, and you shall bear the iniquity of the house of Judah forty days: I have appointed you each day for a year.
Therefore you shall set your face toward the siege of Jerusalem, and your arm shall be uncovered, and you shall prophesy against it.
And, behold, I will lay bands on you, and you shall not turn you from one side to another, till you have ended the days of your siege.
Take you also to you wheat, and barley, and beans, and lentils, and millet, and fitches, and put them in one vessel, and make you bread thereof, according to the number of the days that you shall lie on your side, three hundred and ninety days shall you eat thereof.
And your meat which you shall eat shall be by weight, twenty shekels a day: from time to time shall you eat it.
You shall drink also water by measure, the sixth part of an hin: from time to time shall you drink.
And you shall eat it as barley cakes, and you shall bake it with dung that comes out of man, in their sight.
And the LORD said, Even thus shall the children of Israel eat their defiled bread among the Gentiles, where I will drive them.
Then said I, Ah Lord GOD! behold, my soul has not been polluted: for from my youth up even till now have I not eaten of that which dies of itself, or is torn in pieces; neither came there abominable flesh into my mouth.
Then he said to me, See, I have given you cow's dung for man's dung, and you shall prepare your bread therewith.
Moreover he said to me, Son of man, behold, I will break the staff of bread in Jerusalem: and they shall eat bread by weight, and with care; and they shall drink water by measure, and with astonishment:
That they may want bread and water, and be astonished one with another, and consume away for their iniquity.
Canonical academic citations for Ezekiel 4 (AKJV) — copy in your preferred format.
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God instructs Ezekiel to enact Jerusalem's siege symbolically: Draw the city on a tile, build siege works around it, place an iron pan as a wall between him and it (representing God's separation), and lie on his left side 390 days for Israel's iniquity, then right side 40 days for Judah's, bearing their sins. For food during this period, Ezekiel is to bake barley cakes over human dung (later changed to cow dung at his protest, symbolizing defiled exile bread), with rationed water and food to represent famine scarcity in the besieged city.
Symbolic actions and visions offering judgment and future hope.
Ezekiel 4 is presented with the full Hebrew interlinear, Strong's numbers, and verse-by-verse cross-references on Prime Bible — a free, nonprofit Bible study platform.