Ezekiel 12:17

_MOREOVER THE WORD OF THE LORD CAME TO ME, SAYING,_ No JFB commentary on this verse....

The Prophet is now ordered to represent the famine which awaited the Jews in both the siege and exile. But this prophecy ought to be especially referred to the time of the siege; for the Jews were in continual fear, and thought that by means of their garrison they would be impregnable. But as the Lord had often removed this trust from them, so he does now: hence therefore that miserable anxiety and fear, so that they never ate their bread but in fear, nor drank their water but in confusion. For a besieged city always fears for itself, and then the enemy so harasses them that fatigue at length compels the besieged to surrender. And it is probable, since the army of the Chaldees could often attempt to take the city with ease and without any great loss, that the Jews would daily be subject to fresh terrors, so that they could neither eat bread nor drink water except in anxiety and confusion...

17-20 The prophet must eat and drink in care and fear, with trembling, that he might express the condition of those in Jerusalem during the siege. When ministers speak of the ruin coming upon sinners, they must speak as those that know the terrors of the Lord. Afflictions are happy ones, however grievous to flesh and blood, that improve us in the knowledge of God....

EXPOSITION EZEKIEL 12:1 THE WORD OF THE LORD, etc. This formula, so familiar in Isaiah and Jeremiah, appears for the first time in Ezekiel, but occurs repeatedly afterwards, especially in this chapter (verses 8, 17, 21, 26. and again Ezekiel 13:1; Ezekiel 14:2, _et al._)_. _The teaching by "the visions of God" ceases, and that of direct message or symbolic acts is resumed. In each case the point aimed at was the same. The people who heard the one or saw the other were to be taught how utterly groundless was the hope that Jerusalem could hold out against its enemies. The interval between the two was probably a short one, and the new teaching, we may conjectu

MOREOVER THE WORD OF THE LORD CAME TO ME, SAYING. Here follows another sign of the desolation of the Jews, which the prophet was unto them; as the former signified their going into captivity, this their famine and distress at the siege of Jerusalem, and the dreadful calamities attending and following that....

CHAPTER S 12-19 Signs, Messages, and Parables _ 1. Signs given through the prophet (Ezekiel 12:1) _ 2. The message of speedy judgment (Ezekiel 12:21) 3. The message against false prophets and prophetesses. (Ezekiel 13:1) 4. The message against the elders (Ezekiel 14:1) 5. The parable of the vine given to the fire (Ezekiel 15:1) 6. The parable of the abandoned child and Israel's whoredom (Ezekiel 16:1)

THE STRAITS OF THE SIEGE. In another message whose symbols resemble those of Ezekiel 4:10 f., Ezekiel 4:16 f., he seeks to bring home to them the certain and horrible privations of the siege....

A new symbol of the terror and violence and desolation about to come upon the land....

B. The Suffering of Jerusalem's Inhabitants 12:17-20 TRANSLATION (17) And the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, (18) son of man, eat your bread with quaking, and drink your water with trembling and fear. (19) Say unto the people of the land, Thus says the LORD to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, unto the land of Israel: They shall eat their bread with fear, and their water they shall drink with astonishment, that her land may be desolate from its fullness, because of the violence of all those who dwell in her. (20) And the inhabited cities shall become desolate, and the land shall be an astonishment, that you may know that I am the LORD. COMMENTS After an interval of passivity and silence, another command came to Ezekiel (Ezekiel 12:17). He was to set forth symbolically the conditions which would exist in Jerusalem during the Babylonian siege. Meager ration

SYMBOLS OF EXILE, FLIGHT, AND FAMINE Ezekiel's audience being blind to the meaning of the vision he has just described, he is commanded to give them, in new symbolic actions, a further representation of the coming fate of Jerusalem and its king and people. He is told to gather together such things as one leaving home would take with him, and to carry these out of his house by day. At night he is to dig a hole in a wall, and pass through it with his face covered and his baggage on his shoulder. When the people ask hun next morning what these proceedings mean he is directed to tell them that the action of the daytime is a symbol of the captivity awaiting Jerusalem, and that the action of the evening foreshadows the secret flight which Zedekiah will attempt, and the punishment of blindness which will prevent him from seeing the land of his exile (Ezekiel 12:1). Another symbolic action,