Charles Ellicott Commentary Ezekiel 4:5-6

"For I have appointed the years of their iniquity to be unto thee a number of days, even three hundred and ninety days: so shalt thou bear the iniquity of the house of Israel. And again, when thou hast accomplished these, thou shalt lie on thy right side, and shalt bear the iniquity of the house of Judah: forty days, each day for a year, have I appointed it unto thee." — Ezekiel 4:5-6 (ASV)

EXCURSUS B: ON CHAPTER 4:5, 6.

The explanation of the periods of time mentioned here has caused great difficulty and difference of opinion among commentators. The subject may be best approached by first observing what points are clearly determined in the text itself, and then excluding all interpretations that 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 that 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 forty days are distinct. If the symbolism was carried out in reality, they must have been consecutive, and it is still the natural inference that they were consecutive, even if it was only in vision. The two periods together, then, constitute 430 days; yet this is not to be emphasized, since no express mention is made of the whole period.

These points themselves exclude several explanations that have been proposed from time to time. Among these must be mentioned, first, one that 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 counted from some point in the reign of Jeroboam to the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar.

This, however, was far more a period of Israel’s accumulating transgression than of suffering its punishment. Nor in this case could the period be fairly considered as extending beyond the end of the kingdom of Israel (which lasted in total only 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 count 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 far beyond the date of the prophecy, fails for lack of any definite event at the end of either 390, 40, or 430 years.

The periods cannot be understood to refer to events occurring in the course of the siege because, as already stated, the numbers are expressly said to stand for years. Moreover, even if they could be taken as 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 (2 Kings 25:1; 2 Kings 25:3; 2 Kings 25:8).

Regarding two other explanations, only a brief mention is necessary. Theodoret's explanation is based on the Greek version, which, by a curious mistake, has 190 instead of 390 days; it is, of course, invalidated when the true number is considered.

The ancient Jews and some early Christians interpreted the passage as a period of 430 years. They believed this period would be fulfilled from the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple, in the second year of the Emperor Vespasian, to its expected restoration—a belief that events have shown to be groundless.

Another ancient interpretation understands the period of 430 years as the time from the building to the destruction of Solomon’s Temple.

This view is open to the same objections already raised against others. Additionally, it makes the total number the prominent thing, while there is no point of division for the 390 and the 40.

St. Jerome counted the 390 years from the captivity of the northern kingdom to the deliverance of the Jews from danger in the time of Esther, and the 40 years from the destruction of the Temple by Nebuchadnezzar to the decree of Cyrus for the restoration of the Jews. However, his chronology is incorrect. The former part of his explanation ignores the main point—the siege of Jerusalem—while the events in the time of Esther cannot be seen as the end of the Israelites’ punishment.

Later Jewish interpreters construct the two periods by selecting, throughout the period of the Judges and the monarchy, various times when the sins of Israel and Judah were particularly prominent, and then adding these times together; but this method is utterly arbitrary and unsatisfactory.

So much space has been given to these different interpretations to show that there is no definite period of years, either before or after the date of the prophecy, that the ingenuity of commentators has been able to discover which satisfies the conditions of the prophecy itself. We are, therefore, free to accept the interpretation now generally given by the best modern expositors.

This interpretation takes as its starting point Ezekiel’s evident allusion to Numbers 14:14: After the number of the days in which ye searched the land, even forty days, each day for a year shall ye bear your iniquities; and the earlier prophecies declaring that the people, in punishment for their sins, should be brought again into Egypt—which, however, would not be the literal Egypt (Deuteronomy 28:68; Hosea 8:13; Hosea 9:3; Hosea 11:5), but Assyria or Babylonia, as is expressly defined in some of these prophecies.

The meaning is plainly that they should endure sufferings corresponding to the Egyptian bondage, but in another locality.

Ezekiel himself elsewhere (Ezekiel 20:35) speaks of God’s dealings with the captives as a pleading with them in the wilderness. Now, if this is once recognized as the basis of Ezekiel’s language—the representation of the future in terms of the historic past, which is so common in all prophecy—there need be no difficulty in mentioning the precise numbers.

They become mere catchwords to lead the mind to the period he wishes to indicate. The wanderings in the wilderness were always counted as 40 years, and the sojourn in Egypt as 430 years. Ezekiel merely follows his habit here of putting everything into vivid and concrete form.

Are His people to suffer for their sins as they suffered in the past? Judah is to endure the 40 years of wilderness sufferings, and Israel those of the Egyptian bondage. However, if Ezekiel spoke of the latter as 430 years, it might seem that Israel would endure the punishment belonging to both Israel and Judah. Therefore, he subtracts from it the period already assigned to Judah, leaving 390 years for Israel.

This accounts for his not mentioning the 430 years at all, and this could be done more easily because the actual bondage in Egypt was far less than either number. No precise period whatever is intended by mentioning these numbers, but only a vivid comparison of future woes to those of the past.

Again, whatever their present sufferings might be, they still had hope and even indulged in defiance while Jerusalem and the Temple stood. This hope was vain.

The holy city and the Temple itself would be destroyed, and then they would indeed know that the hand of the Lord was heavy upon them for the punishment of their sins.

The siege of Jerusalem is, therefore, the prominent feature of the prophecy. As a consequence of this, the eating of defiled bread among the Gentiles (Ezekiel 4:13) is foretold, as in Egypt in the past, together with the various forms of want and suffering portrayed in the striking symbolism of this chapter.

The years of their iniquity, according to the number of the days. Compare to Numbers 14:34. In regard to the number of the years, see Excursus II. at the end of this book.

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 periods 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 nonetheless always retained the worship of Jehovah, maintained the Aaronic priesthood, and preserved with more or less respect the law of Moses.

It was now entering the period of the Babylonian captivity, from which, after seventy years, a remnant was to be restored again to sustain 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 as they pleased of the lowest of the people, and as a consequence of their sins had been carried into a captivity from which they never returned.