Ezekiel 4:9

and fitches So Vulg. viciam, vetches. Others spelt, as marg. and R.V. Bread was usually made of wheat, the addition of the other coarser materials and their mixture indicate the straits to which men will be reduced in the siege and perhaps after the fall of the city; cf. Lamentations 5:6; Lamentations 5:10, "We gave the hand to the Egyptians and to the Assyrians to be satisfied with bread … Our skin was black like an oven because of the terrible famine." It is not certain that a mixture of various kinds of grain was regarded as a thing unclean, though the Law forbade sowing a field with divers sorts of seed, Leviticus 19:19; cf. Deuteronomy 22:9.

three hundred and ninety Probably 190 should be read as in Ezekiel 4:5. The language here shews that the 190 (or, 390) was the whole number, and that the 40 for Judah were not additional but included.