Ezekiel 4:7, commentary and pictures

Ezekiel 4:7 is part of a real acted miniature and not only vision, similitude, symbolism, or verbal word-picture. Ezekiel was to set himself toward an acted siege of Jerusalem and prophesy against it, performing the siege and its consequence before the eyes of the people. God directed Ezekiel to use a picture of a city under siege and actions involving himself to illustrate the message to Judah's captives, so the verse supports the use of visible representations to communicate God's word. Ezekiel was a living sign of the awful judgments awaiting the Jews, and setting his face toward the siege of Jerusalem with uncovered arm and prophesying against it belonged together with lying days on his left side and then days on his right side, and with eating bread by weight and drinking water by measure and eating defiled bread, to portray the siege, the captivity among the Gentiles, and the food the children of Israel would eat in captivity. It is an instance in which a sacred writer acts in his own person to represent the future experience of others.

The symbolic enactment portrayed the coming siege of Jerusalem and the judgments and calamities that would befall the Jews. The prophet's own hardship pictured famine, captivity, and the loss of Jerusalem, and his actions warned the people of the calamity ahead. The chapter gives a key to prophetic time: a day in prophecy represents a year.

The days of lying on the sides represented years of captivity, 390 days for Israel and 40 days for Judah, extending through the captivity and toward restoration after seventy years. The day-for-a-year principle is applied to the 1,260 prophetic days, understood as 1,260 years. Terrible things seen in righteousness give emphasis, positiveness, and dispatch to the message of those who witness them, as with delegates gathered from the Americas who saw the Jamaica disaster.