Ezekiel 4:6-7

After the 390 days had expired, he was to lie on his right side for an additional 40 days. This was to represent the number of additional years the Southern Kingdom of Judah would have to suffer punishment for her sins. He was to face Jerusalem with his arm bared signifying Yahweh’s hostility toward His people. The prophesying that he was to do against Jerusalem (Ezekiel 4:7) was by means of this skit. The Septuagint has Ezekiel lying on his left side for 190 days and on his right side for 150 days, but the reason for these periods is unknown.

That these days represented years of divine punishment seems clear (Ezekiel 4:6), but what years are in view is a problem. Were they literal or figurative years, and were these years in the past or in the future? Unless they were literal years we have no way of knowing what they represented. If they were future years and began with the year of Jehoiachin’s deportation (597 B.C.), which is the date of reference that Ezekiel used throughout his book, the total 430 years would have ended about 167 B.C. This was the year of the Maccabean rebellion when the Jews began to throw off their foreign oppressors, the Syrians, and took control of their own affairs once again. [Note: Alexander, "Ezekiel," p. 770; Cooper, p. 95.] But why God divided these years into two such unusual segments remains a mystery. I think the 430 days may have been the total length of the siege of Jerusalem, which God viewed as punishment for 390 years of the Northern Kingdom’s sins and 40 more years of the Southern Kingdom’s sins. The fact that the length of time the Israelites were in Egypt was 430 years (Exodus 12:40) may have reminded Ezekiel’s audience of that former captivity. Likewise Israel’s 40 years in the wilderness has a parallel in this prophecy. In this case the years of sin would have been in the past. [Note: Dyer, "Ezekiel," pp. 1235-36.] Other views are that the 430 days represented the years of the monarchy, or the years Solomon’s temple stood. It still remains difficult, however, to explain exactly which 390 and 40 years God had in mind. [Note: See Allen, p. 66.] Perhaps they were the worst years of sin. In some way the length of the siege corresponded to the past years of Israel and Judah’s sin.