Ezekiel 4:8
And, behold, I will lay bands upon thee, and thou shalt not turn thee from one side to another, till thou hast ended the days of thy siege. And, behold, I will lay bands upon thee, and thou shalt not turn thee from one side to another, till thou hast ended the days of thy siege.
The verse belongs to a real acted miniature of the siege of Jerusalem and its consequence, setting coming judgment before the eyes in realistic form and not only by vision, similitude, symbolism, or words.
God himself lays bands upon the prophet to hold him so that he cannot turn from one side to another until the days of the siege are complete.
The binding goes with lying a set number of days on the left side and then another set number on the right side, 390 days on the left for Israel and 40 days on the right for Judah, together with eating bread by weight and drinking water by measure and eating defiled bread that represented the food the children of Israel would eat in their captivity among the Gentiles.
That enforced posture, lying as though bound, was a temporary sign of suffering and siege calamities, awful judgments, captivity and affliction to come upon the Jews, upon Israel and Judah.
In this chapter's prophetic symbolism a day represents a year.
Each such day represented a year of captivity, reaching through to the restoration after the seventy-year captivity.
The sign-act thus supplies the day-for-a-year principle for interpreting the 2300 days.
Such a witnessed terrible scene gives emphasis, positiveness, and dispatch to the message of those who have seen terrible things in righteousness.