9 "Next I want you to take wheat and barley, beans and lentils, dried millet and spelt, and mix them in a bowl to make a flat bread. This is your food ration for the 390 days you lie on your side. 10 Measure out about half a pound for each day and eat it on schedule. 11 Also measure out your daily ration of about a pint of water and drink it on schedule. 12 Eat the bread as you would a muffin. Bake the muffins out in the open where everyone can see you, using dried human dung for fuel." 13 God said, "This is what the people of Israel are going to do: Among the pagan nations where I will drive them, they will eat foods that are strictly taboo to a holy people." 14 I said, "God, my Master! Never! I've never contaminated myself with food like that. Since my youth I've never eaten anything forbidden by law, nothing found dead or violated by wild animals. I've never taken a single bite of forbidden food." 15 "All right," he said. "I'll let you bake your bread over cow dung instead of human dung." 16 Then he said to me, "Son of man, I'm going to cut off all food from Jerusalem. The people will live on starvation rations, worrying where the next meal's coming from, scrounging for the next drink of water. 17 Famine conditions. People will look at one another, see nothing but skin and bones, and shake their heads. This is what sin does."
Matthew Henry's Commentary on Ezekiel 4:9-17
Commentary on Ezekiel 4:9-17
(Read Ezekiel 4:9-17)
The bread which was Ezekiel's support, was to be made of coarse grain and pulse mixed together, seldom used except in times of urgent scarcity, and of this he was only to take a small quantity. Thus was figured the extremity to which the Jews were to be reduced during the siege and captivity. Ezekiel does not plead, Lord, from my youth I have been brought up delicately, and never used to any thing like this; but that he had been brought up conscientiously, and never had eaten any thing forbidden by the law. It will be comfortable when we are brought to suffer hardships, if our hearts can witness that we have always been careful to keep even from the appearance of evil. See what woful work sin makes, and acknowledge the righteousness of God herein. Their plenty having been abused to luxury and excess, they were justly punished by famine. When men serve not God with cheerfulness in the abundance of all things, God will make them serve their enemies in the want of all things.