Ezekiel 4:12

"And thou shalt eat it as barley cakes, and thou shalt bake it in their sight with dung that cometh out of man. And Jehovah said, Even thus shall the children of Israel eat their bread unclean, among the nations whither I will drive them. Then said I, Ah Lord Jehovah! Behold, my soul hath not been polluted; for from my youth up even until now have I not eaten of that which dieth of itself, or is torn of beasts; neither came there abominable flesh into my mouth. Then he said unto me, See, I have given thee cow's dung for man's dung, and thou shalt prepare thy bread thereon. Moreover he said unto me, Son of man, behold, I will break the staff of bread in Jerusalem: and they shall eat bread by weight, and with fearfulness, and they shall drink water by measure, and in dismay: that they may want bread and water, and be dismayed one with another, and pine away in their iniquity."

"And thou shalt bake it in their sight with dung ..." (Ezekiel 4:12). The dung mentioned here was not to be a part of the food but was to be fuel for the baking of it, thus assuring the ceremonial uncleanness of the bread.

"Thou shalt prepare thy bread thereon ..." (Ezekiel 4:15). This means that the bread was to be baked upon afire made of cow chips. Such a product is still used as fuel in the Mid East. "Dried cow-dung and camel-dung is still used for fuel by the Bedouin."[17] It is not all that unsatisfactory as a fuel, as some of the pioneer high plainsmen of the USA have testified. More than a century ago, Robinson described his journey with some Arabs, "Who baked a large cake (an `ember cake') of bread in the embers of a fire made of camel's and cow-dung. They took it out when done, brushed the ashes off of it, and divided it among the party... I tasted it and found it quite as good as the common bread of that country."[18]

The big point about this use of dung for fuel is that in Jewish minds it made the bread ceremonially unclean. Cook pointed out that there are abundant echoes of the prohibitions in th'e Pentateuch, such as those in Leviticus 26:39 in Ezekiel.[19] Added to that, "All food eaten in a foreign land among the heathen was unclean to the Jews."[20]

"With his priestly background, Ezekiel had such injunctions as the prohibitions against eating an animal that had died of itself, etc. (Leviticus 7:24; 22:8; Exodus 22:31; Leviticus 17:11-16; and Deuteronomy 14:21) before him continually. This is especially true of the regulations in Leviticus."[21]

Thus, in Ezekiel we find exactly the same ever-present consciousness on the part of God's prophets of the prior existence of the covenant and every line of the Pentateuch. It was true in our studies of all twelve of the Minor Prophets, and without exception, all of the Major Prophets also.

"Pine away in their iniquity ..." (Ezekiel 4:17). "This is another echo from that book which had entered so largely into Ezekiel's education (Leviticus 26:39). where the Hebrew word for "pine" is the same word as 'consume.' To the wretchedness of physical privations there was to be added the consciousness on the part of the sufferers that their privations were caused by their own evil deeds."[22]

"Hunger and thirst, sorrow and dismay, would fall upon the sinners in Zion exactly as the ancient book of the law had foretold (Leviticus 26:39)."[23]