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The Symbols of the Famine
v. 9. Take thou also unto thee wheat, and barley, these grains usually being eaten in the form of roasted kernels, and beans, and lentils, and millet, and fitches, or spelt, and put them in one vessel, as signifying the last of provisions to be had, gathered for the extremity of the siege, and make thee bread thereof, food in the customary roasted form, according to the number of the days that thou shalt lie upon thy side; three hundred and ninety days shalt thou eat thereof, the number of Israel's years of oppression being named as sufficient to emphasize the difficulty of the situation.
v. 10. And thy meat which thou shalt eat, the food which he should consume according to this strict rationing, shall be by weight, twenty shekels a day, estimated at some twenty ounces avoirdupois, about half as much as the average man needs for his daily sustenance; from time to time shalt thou eat it, not according to the demands of hunger, but according to the rations provided for, that is, at long intervals, very sparingly.
v. 11. Thou shalt drink also water by measure, instead of according to desire and ordinary need, the sixth part of an hin, approximately a pint and a half; from time to time shalt thou drink.
v. 12. And thou shalt eat it, the food provided for, as barley cakes, baked or roasted in the ashes of his fire, or on stones heated by this fire; and thou shalt bake It with dung that cometh out of man, whose use as fuel must have been exceedingly repulsive, in their sight. The situation, then, was this, that filth and misery surrounded the prophet on every side—a very vivid picture, in order to emphasize his message before his countrymen.
v. 13. And the Lord said, Even thus shall the children of Israel eat their defiled bread, polluted with the odor of the unspeakable fuel used, among the Gentiles, whither I will drive them, where they would be obliged to sojourn and come in contact with the abominations of the heathen. The uncleanness was not so much a Levitical defilement as a pollution outraging the universal feeling of human beings concerning decency.
v. 14. Then said I, in voicing an objection to the loathsome fuel proposed by the Lord, Ah, Lord God! Behold, my soul hath not been polluted, for so he might interpret Lev_5:3; Lev_7:21 as pertaining to this present case; for from my youth up even till now have I not eaten of that which dieth of itself or is torn in pieces, Cf Exo_22:30; Deu_14:21, neither came there abominable flesh into my mouth. Cf Deu_14:3. Note the emphasis of the prophet's expression in setting forth his consciousness of the loathsomeness of the method suggested to him.
v. 15. Then He said unto me, in yielding the point for the sake of the prophet's scruples, Lo, I have given thee cow's dung for man's dung, a fuel still used very extensively in the Orient, and thou shalt prepare thy bread therewith.
v. 16. Moreover, He said unto me, Son of man, behold, I will break the staff of bread in Jerusalem, bread being one of the chief articles of food, one of man's main articles of nourishment; and they shall eat bread by weight, in careful rations, as demonstrated by the prophet, and with care, in worried anxiety about the means of subsistence; and they shall drink water by measure and with astonishment, in dull grief, in speechless pain,
v. 17. that they may want bread and water, be in dire need of the food barely sufficing for their daily needs, and be astonied one with another, with the stupefied look of total despair, and consume away for their iniquity. Thus the Lord, by these various signs, set forth the early destruction of Jerusalem and the sufferings which would come upon its inhabitants in connection with the Chaldean conquest.