Ezekiel 4:9
Take thou also unto thee wheat, and barley, and beans, and lentiles, and millet, and fitches, and put them in one vessel, and make thee bread thereof, according to the number of the days that thou shalt lie upon thy side, three hundred and ninety days shalt thou eat thereof.
Ezekiel 4:9 belongs to a realism in miniature in which the siege of Jerusalem and its consequences were acted out, typifying the awful judgments that awaited the Jews. In the sign the prophet lives for a time on a famine diet, lying a set number of days on his left side and then another number on his right side, eating bread by weight and drinking water by measure. The defiled bread made from mixed grains and eaten over the days of lying on his side represented the food the children of Israel would eat in their captivity among the Gentiles, showing the famine that would come upon Israel.
The 390 days of lying on his side belong to prophetic time in which a day symbolizes a year. They therefore support understanding prophetic days figuratively, with each day representing a year, and establish the day-for-a-year principle for interpreting prophetic days.
Having witnessed such a terrible scene in righteousness gives emphasis, positiveness, and dispatch to the message of those who have seen it, as illustrated by the Jamaica earthquake disaster.