Ezekiel 4:4-5

4, 5. Lie thou also upon thy left side… three hundred and ninety days LXX., one hundred and ninety days. Most modern expositors do not believe that Ezekiel lay on one side three hundred and ninety or one hundred and ninety days without moving. Certainly if he did this he must have been paralyzed or cataleptic, as Klostermann, Kraetzschmar, etc., think. (Compare Piepenbring, Revue de L’Hist. des Rel., 1891.) Gautier, however, points out that all of these commands have reference to Ezekiel’s actions as a preacher. When alone, or in the seclusion of his own house, he can talk to his wife and walk as he pleases; but when the time comes for the sermon, and the people gather to hear the word of the Lord, they always find the prophet in the same place, and in the same posture, and maintaining an unbroken silence. This silent picture-prophecy of the length of the captivity continued week after week, and month after month, until all the exiles heard of it, as also, without doubt, the Israelites who remained in Jerusalem; for the communication seems to have been constant between Chebar and the holy city.

Thou shalt bear their iniquity This does not mean that the prophet is to be punished in their place, but that he thus prophetically announces their punishment; the term “iniquity” in this connection meaning penalty for iniquity. The duration has no reference to the days of the siege of Jerusalem, but to the years of exile. But how then can we accept as correct the figures three hundred and ninety which are given by our present Hebrew text, and which are wholly contrary to the facts in the case? Many of the old expositors, from Jerome to Keil, being unable to explain this number historically, have added to it the forty days which the prophet suffered for Judah, and have explained the total symbolically four hundred and thirty being the years spent in Egyptian bondage (Exodus 12:40). The meaning would then be that the punishment in Babylon would be as severe, though not necessarily as long, as their punishment in Egypt and their wandering in the wilderness (Deuteronomy 28:68). But the fact is that the Babylonian exile was in no respect equal in hardship to the Egyptian enslavement. We prefer, therefore, to accept the Hebrew text, which the Septuagint followed, rather than our present text. If this translation, which reads one hundred and ninety instead of three hundred and ninety, is to be accepted, it is then evident that, since the captivity of both Judah and Israel ends at the same time, the forty years are not to be thought of as added to the one hundred and ninety, but as included in them (Ezekiel 16:53; Ezekiel 37:16; Ezekiel 37:19; Ezekiel 37:22; Ezekiel 47:13). The forty years, then, is to be counted from the destruction of Jerusalem (586 B.C.) to the restoration. This gives exact and almost literal fulfillment to the prophecy, “forty” being the round number which is constantly used in Scripture for one generation (Ezekiel 29:11-14; Numbers 14:33, etc.). The captivity of Israel is here counted one hundred and fifty years longer than that of Judah; its beginning probably being reckoned from the invasion and deportation of Tiglath-pileser, 734 B.C. The one hundred and ninety years of Israel would extend, then, from 734 B.C. to 538 B.C., the year of restoration. (See chronological chart.)

I have laid upon thee the years of their iniquity, according to the number of the days Literally, the years of their iniquity do I make to be to thee as a number of days even as. The number of days that Ezekiel lies upon his side symbolizes the number of years daring which the people shall bear their iniquity “a day for a year” (Ezekiel 4:6). “Lying on his side, held down as with cords (Ezekiel 4:8) and unable to turn, he represents Israel pressed down and held in the grasp of the punishment of iniquity.” Davidson.