Ezekiel Chapter 4 verse 5 Holy Bible

Pulpit Commentary

Pulpit CommentaryVerse 5. - Three hundred and ninety days, etc. The days, as stated in ver. 6, stand for years according to the symbolism (with which Ezekiel was probably acquainted) of Numbers 14:34. How we are to explain the precise number chosen is a problem winch has much exercised the minds of interpreters. I will begin by stating what seems to me the most tenable solution. In doing this I follow Smend and Cornill in taking the LXX. as giving the original reading, and the Hebrew as a later correction, made with a purpose. (1) Jerome and Origen bear witness to the fact that most copies of the former gave 190 years, some 150 and others, agreeing with the Hebrew, 390. The first of these numbers fits in with the thought that Ezekiel's act was to represent the period of the punishment of the northern kingdom. That punishment starts from the first captivity under Pekah about B.C. 734. Reckoning from that date, the 190 years bring us to about B.C. 544. The punishment of Judah, in like manner, dates from the destruction of Jerusalem in B.C. 586, and the forty years bring us to B.C. 546, a date so near the other, that, in the round numbers which Ezekiel uses, they may be taken as practically coinciding. It was to that date that the prophet, perhaps, unacquainted with Jeremiah's seventy years (Jeremiah 25:12), with a different starting point ( B.C. 600) and terminus ( B.C. 536), looked forward as the starting point of the restoration of Israel. It is obvious that Ezekiel contemplated the contemporaneous restoration of Israel and Judah (Ezekiel 16:53-55; Ezekiel 37:19-22; Ezekiel 47:13), as indeed Isaiah also seems to do (Isaiah 11:13, 14), and Jeremiah (Jeremiah 31:6, 12, 27). The teaching of Ezekiel's acts, then, had two distinct purposes. (a) It taught the certainty of the punishment. No plots, or rebellions, or alliances with Egypt, could avert the doom of exile from these who should survive the siege of Jerusalem. (b) It taught the exiles to accept their punishment with patience, but with hope. There was a limit, and that not very far off, which some of them might live to see, and beyond which there lay the hope of a restoration for both Israel and Judah. If that hope was not realized to the extent which Ezekiel's language impiles, the same may be, said of the language of Isaiah 40-66, whether we refer those chapters to Isaiah himself or to the "great unknown" who followed Ezekiel, and may have listened to his teaching. . . .

Ellicott's Commentary

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(5) The years of their iniquity, according to the number of the days.--Comp. Numbers 14:34. In regard to the number of the years, see Excursus II. at the end of this book.(6) The iniquity of the house of Judah forty days.--This forty days is clearly subsequent and additional to the 390 days, making in all a period of 430 days. (On these numbers see Excursus II. at the end of this book.) The great disproportion between the two is in accordance with the difference in the two parts of the nation, and the consequent Divine dealings with them. Judah had remained faithful to its appointed rulers of the house of David, several of whose kings had been eminently devout men; through whatever mixture with idolatry it had yet always retained the worship of Jehovah, and had kept up the Aaronic priesthood, and preserved with more or less respect the law of Moses. It was now entering upon the period of the Babylonish captivity, from which, after seventy years, a remnant was to be again restored to keep up the people of the Messiah. Israel, on the other hand, had set up a succession of dynasties, and not one of all their kings had been a God-fearing man; they had made Baal their national god, and had made priests at their pleasure of the lowest of the people, and in consequence of their sins had been carried into a captivity from which they never returned.EXCURSUS B: ON CHAPTER 4:5, 6.The explanation of the periods of time here mentioned has occasioned great difficulty and difference of opinion among the commentators. The subject may be best approached by first observing what points are clearly determined in the text itself, and then excluding all interpretations which are inconsistent with these.In the first place, it is expressly stated in each of these verses that these days represent years. No interpretation, therefore, can be admitted which requires them to be literal days. Secondly, it is plain that the period is one of "bearing their iniquity"; not a period in which they are becoming sinful, but one in which they are suffering the punishment of their sin. Thirdly, it is plain from the whole structure of the symbolism that this period is in some way intimately connected with the siege of Jerusalem. Finally, the two periods of 390 and of forty days are distinct. If the symbolism was carried out in act, they must have been consecutive, and it is still the natural inference that they were so, even if it was only in vision. The two periods together, then, constitute 430 days; yet this is not to be emphasised, since no express mention is made of the whole period.These points of themselves exclude several of the explanations that have from time to time been put forward. Among these must be mentioned, first, one which has perhaps been more generally adopted than any other of its class, the supposition that the 390 years of Israel's punishment are to be reckoned from some point in the reign of Jeroboam to the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar. This, however, was far more a period of accumulation of Israel's transgression than of suffering its punishment; neither in this case could the period be fairly considered as extending beyond the end of the kingdom of Israel (which lasted in all but 253 years) unless it was also extended indefinitely. Moreover, expositors who adopt this view are quite unable to give any satisfactory account of Judah's forty years; for the proposal to reckon them from the reformation of Josiah is quite at variance with the character of the period described.Every attempt to make these periods refer to a future time, stretching on far beyond the date of the prophecy, fails for want of any definite event at the end of either 390, 40, or 430 years.The periods cannot be understood of events occurring in the course of the siege because, as already said, the numbers are expressly said to stand for years. Moreover, even if they could be taken of literal days, there would be nothing to correspond to them, since from the investment of the city to the flight of Zedekiah was 539 days, and to the destruction of the Temple twenty-eight days more (2Kings 25:1; 2Kings 25:3; 2Kings 25:8). . . .