Ezekiel 4:12 - Exposition

Thou shall bake it with dung , etc. The process of baking in ashes was as old as the time of Abraham ( Genesis 18:6 ), and continues in Arabia and Syria to the present day. The kneaded dough was rolled into thin flat cakes, and they were placed upon, or hung over, the hot wood embers of the hearth or oven. But in a besieged city the supply of wood for fuel soon fails. The first resource is found, as still often happens in the East, in using the dried dung of camels or of cattle. Before Ezekiel's mind there came the vision of a yet more terrible necessity. That supply also might tail, and then men would be forced to use the dried contents of the "draught houses" or cesspools of Jerusalem. They would be compelled almost literally to fulfil the taunt of Rabshakeh ( Isaiah 36:12 ). That thought, as bringing with it the ceremonial pollution of Le Ezekiel 5:3 : Ezekiel 7:21 , was as revolting to Ezekiel as it is to us; but like Dante, in a like revolting symbolism ('Inf.,' 18.114), he does not shrink from naming it. It came to him, as with the authority of a Divine command, that he was even to do this, to represent the extreme horrors of the siege. And all this was to be done visibly, before the eyes of his neighbours at Tel-Abib.