Matthew Henry on Ezekiel 4:9–end
The best exposition of this part of Ezekiel's prediction of Jerusalem's desolation is Jeremiah's lamentation of it, Lam 4:3, Lam 4:4, etc., and Lam 4:10, where he pathetically describes the terrible famine that was in Jerusalem during the siege and the sad effects of it.
I. The prophet here, to affect the people with the foresight of it, must confine himself for 390 days to coarse fare and short commons, and that ill-dressed, for they should want both food and fuel.
1. His meat, for the quality of it, was to be of the worst bread, made of but little wheat and barley, and the rest of beans, and lentiles, and millet, and fitches, such as we feed horses or fatted hogs with, and this mixed, as m…
Read the whole note in the consoleJamieson-Fausset-Brown on Ezekiel 4:15
cow's dung--a mitigation of the former order (Eze 4:12); no longer "the dung of man"; still the bread so baked is "defiled," to imply that, whatever partial abatement there might be for the prophet's sake, the main decree of God, as to the pollution of Israel by exile among Gentiles, is unalterable.
Adam Clarke on Ezekiel 4:14
My soul hath not been polluted - There is a remarkable similarity between this expostulation of the prophet and that of St. Peter, Act 10:14.
John Gill on Ezekiel 4:15
Then he said to me,.... The Lord hearkened to the prophet's prayer and argument, and makes some abatement and alteration in the charge he gave him:
lo, I have given thee cow's dung for man's dung: that is, allowed him to make use of the one instead of the other, in baking his mingled bread:
thou shalt prepare thy bread therewith; having gathered cow's dung, and dried it, he was to burn it, and bake his bread with it, which is meant by preparing it. In some parts of our nation, where fuel is scarce, cow's dung is made use of; it is gathered and plastered on the walls of houses, and, being dried in clots, is taken and burnt.
John Calvin
