Q: In Ezekiel 4:12, God tells Ezekiel to bake bread "with dung that cometh out of man." Bleah. What an absurd thing to do!
A: Here's the deal: Ezekiel is dramatizing the future of Jerusalem. (Ezekiel had been taken into exile in about 597 B.C.; Jerusalem was to be destroyed in 586 B.C.) He is, by means of dramatic actions, indicating the future fate of the inhabitants of the city. This may be more obvious if one reads Ezekiel chapter 4 all at once.
In Ezekiel 4:12, the prophet is commanded to bake bread that he is going to eat while dramatizing a prophecy of the seige of Jerusalem. The idea is that Ezekiel's actions foreshadow what will happen in Jerusalem. Ezekiel eats bread cooked over dung (the dried dung is cooking-fuel, not an ingredient in the bread). The use of human dung would have conveyed the ideas that (a) the city would be under seige until there were no more animals in the city, and (b) after the seige, the people would eat defiled bread -- i.e., they will lose, and will have to eat whatever's given to them by their captors. As 4:13 says, "Thus shall the children of Israel eat their defiled bread among the Gentiles, whither I will drive them."
Since Ezekiel, a scrupulous priest, protests the use of human dung in the drama-illustration, and since the point is still conveyed once the original instructions + Ezekiel's protest are made known, God allows Ezekiel to use animal dung in the drama, illustrating the dire straits in which the inhabitants of Jerusalem would soon be in.
There's no absurdity here. The only surprising feature is that God commands Ezekiel to do something, Ezekiel objects, and God basically says, "Okay. Here, do this instead." But I figure that God foreknew Ezekiel's objection and was just assuring that people would see the correct meaning of the dung in the drama. The attachment of the explanation in 4:12-15 assured that people would not misinterpret Ezekiel's drama to mean that during the seige, there would be plenty of animals in Jerusalem from which dung for cooking might be obtained.
Yours in Christ,
Waterrock
A: Here's the deal: Ezekiel is dramatizing the future of Jerusalem. (Ezekiel had been taken into exile in about 597 B.C.; Jerusalem was to be destroyed in 586 B.C.) He is, by means of dramatic actions, indicating the future fate of the inhabitants of the city. This may be more obvious if one reads Ezekiel chapter 4 all at once.
In Ezekiel 4:12, the prophet is commanded to bake bread that he is going to eat while dramatizing a prophecy of the seige of Jerusalem. The idea is that Ezekiel's actions foreshadow what will happen in Jerusalem. Ezekiel eats bread cooked over dung (the dried dung is cooking-fuel, not an ingredient in the bread). The use of human dung would have conveyed the ideas that (a) the city would be under seige until there were no more animals in the city, and (b) after the seige, the people would eat defiled bread -- i.e., they will lose, and will have to eat whatever's given to them by their captors. As 4:13 says, "Thus shall the children of Israel eat their defiled bread among the Gentiles, whither I will drive them."
Since Ezekiel, a scrupulous priest, protests the use of human dung in the drama-illustration, and since the point is still conveyed once the original instructions + Ezekiel's protest are made known, God allows Ezekiel to use animal dung in the drama, illustrating the dire straits in which the inhabitants of Jerusalem would soon be in.
There's no absurdity here. The only surprising feature is that God commands Ezekiel to do something, Ezekiel objects, and God basically says, "Okay. Here, do this instead." But I figure that God foreknew Ezekiel's objection and was just assuring that people would see the correct meaning of the dung in the drama. The attachment of the explanation in 4:12-15 assured that people would not misinterpret Ezekiel's drama to mean that during the seige, there would be plenty of animals in Jerusalem from which dung for cooking might be obtained.
Yours in Christ,
Waterrock
