Ezekiel 4:9-17 - They will waste away because of their sin

4:9-17

Having depicted the siege and punishment of Israel and Judah, Ezekiel is now instructed to dramatise the deprivations that would occur. There is debate about whether this is depicting the famine that occurred during the siege, or deprivations during the exile. It really doesn’t matter that much. He is depicting deprivations, that is the point. And there are two aspects to this. One is the lack of food. The types of food mentioned and the quantities indicate that food was in short supply. The amounts were at about subsistence level. The second aspect is the cooking over human waste. This would defile the food. During the siege religious rules would go out the window (they even ate their children in some cases!). When in exile it would be increasingly difficult to observe the Law. In fact 4:13 makes it clear that this drama does apply, at least in part, to the period of the exile.

Ezekiel objects to using human excrement as fuel (this would go against the Law), and God relents and allows him to use cow dung (a common source of fuel for food at the time). One might wonder why did God tell him to use human excrement in the first place, I would guess that it was to make Ezekiel aware of the reality of the situation he was to depict. God wants His messengers to really understand the message they are to proclaim.

While 4:13 implies that the drama applies to the exile, 4:16,17 implies that it applies to the siege. So the sensible understanding is that it applies to both the exile and the siege.