Ezekiel 4:16 — meaning, Hebrew and Greek word study, commentary
Ezekiel 4:16
Moreover he said unto me, Son of man, behold, I will break the staff of bread in Jerusalem: and they shall eat bread by weight, and with care; and they shall drink water by measure, and with astonishment:
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Ezekiel 5:16 When I shall send upon them the evil arrows of famine, which shall be for their destruction, and which I will send to destroy you: and I wil…
Isaiah 3:1 For, behold, the Lord, the LORD of hosts, doth take away from Jerusalem and from Judah the stay and the staff, the whole stay of bread, and…
Leviticus 26:26 And when I have broken the staff of your bread, ten women shall bake your bread in one oven, and they shall deliver you your bread again by…
Psalms 105:16 Moreover he called for a famine upon the land: he brake the whole staff of bread.
Ezekiel 4:10-11 And thy meat which thou shalt eat shall be by weight, twenty shekels a day: from time to time shalt thou eat it.
Ezekiel 12:18-19 Son of man, eat thy bread with quaking, and drink thy water with trembling and with carefulness;
Ezekiel 14:13 Son of man, when the land sinneth against me by trespassing grievously, then will I stretch out mine hand upon it, and will break the staff…
Psalms 60:3 Thou hast shewed thy people hard things: thou hast made us to drink the wine of astonishment.
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
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…
staff of bread--bread by which life is supported, as a man's weight is by the staff he leans on (Lev 26:26; Psa 105:16; Isa 3:1).
by weight, and with care--in scant measure (Eze 4:10).
Adam Clarke on Ezekiel 4:16
I will break the staff of bread - They shall be besieged till all the bread is consumed, till the famine becomes absolute; see Kg2 25:3 : "And on the ninth of the fourth month, the famine prevailed in the city; and There Was No Bread for the people of the land." All this was accurately foretold, and as accurately fulfilled.
Abp. Newcome on Kg2 25:6 observes: "This number of years will take us back, with sufficient exactness, from the year in which Jerusalem was sacked by Nebuchadnezzar to the first year of Jeroboam's reign, when national idolatry began in Israel. The period of days seems to predict the duration of the siege by the Babylonians, Kg2 25:9, deducting from the year five months an…
Moreover he said unto me, son of man,.... What follows opens the design, and shows what was intended by the symbol of the miscellany bread, baked with cow dung, the prophet was to eat by measure, as, well as drink water by measure: namely, the sore famine that should be in Jerusalem at the time of the siege:
behold, I will break the staff of bread in Jerusalem: that is, take away bread, which is the staff of life, the support of it, and which strengthens man's heart; and also the nourishing virtue and efficacy from what they had. The sense is, that the Lord would both deprive them of a sufficiency of bread, the nourishment of man; and not suffer the little they had to be nourishing to them;…
The Church Fathers
(Verse 16, 17.) And he said to me: Son of man, behold, I will break the staff of bread in Jerusalem, and they shall eat bread by weight and with anxiety, and they shall drink water by measure and with dismay; so that when bread and water are lacking, each one shall stumble to his brother, and they shall waste away in their iniquities. The Hebrew word Mate () is interpreted as staff in the first edition of Aquila, and as firmament in the second edition and by Symmachus and Theodotion. But what he had shown through his work, he also demonstrates through his speech, and the silence of both the left and right sides, and the ash bread mixed with the six varieties of spices, signifying the evils of the world, he points to the fact that a famine of food and an incredible shortage of water will occur in Jerusalem, so that everyone will fall to their brother, hoping for help from another, which they do not foresee in themselves. For it is the nature of humans, when pressed by evils and the weight of distress, to have more confidence in what is close at hand than in themselves: and they waste away in their iniquities, while suffering everything because of their iniquities. And I fear lest this breaking of bread may also be found in our Jerusalem, in which the vision of peace is seen, which the Lord crushes when he is angry, and judges us unworthy of his bread. And if only we could at least merit to receive him with weight and solicitude, and wet the dry tongue with excessive dryness, like the last finger of Lazarus (Luke 16). But with the Church lacking in bread and water, a man will fall against his brother, and everywhere there is discord, as our Christ's tunic is torn apart by those who even the soldiers in the Savior's passion dared not tear apart (John 19); and as we waste away in our iniquities, for we do not possess the justice of God. It is written in Jeremiah that the little ones, that is, the common people of the Church, sought bread, and there was no one to break it for them (Lamentations 4:4). But Paul, truly a man of the Church, knew that Christ had broken the legal bread and given it to the disciples to distribute. He confidently speaks: The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the Body of Christ? (I Cor. X, 16.) And those who are weak and in need of the milk of infancy cannot eat the staff or the strength of bread, nor can they receive…
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Bread · General references — General references
Care, Overmuch · Sent as a punishment to the wicked — Sent as a punishment to the wicked
Famine · Sent as a — Sent as a
Instruction · Eating bread mixed with dung — Eating bread mixed with dung
Measures · Illustrative: (Drinking water, by measure) of severe famine — Illustrative: (Drinking water, by measure) of severe famine
Weights · Provisions were sold by, in times of scarcity — Provisions were sold by, in times of scarcity
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
Ezekiel 4:16-17
16. Moreover he said unto me, Son of man, behold, I will break the staff of bread in Jerusalem: and they shall eat bread by weight, and with care; and they shall drink water by measure, and with astonishment:
16. Et dixit mihi, Fili heminis, ecce ego frango [99] baculum panis in Hierusalem: [100] et comedent panem in pondere et metu, [101] et aquas in mensura, et in stupore bibent.
17. That they may want bread and water, and be astonied one with another, and consume away for their iniquity.
17. Ut indigeant pane et aquis [102] et obstupeant, [103] vir et frater ejus, et liquefiant [104] in iniquitate sua.
God returns again to the citizens of Jerusalem, and announces that…
The prophet protested that he had never eaten anything unclean. The Lord relented, allowing Ezekiel to cook his food over cow dung and to follow the law regarding disposal of human excrement (see Deut 23:12-14).
Rashi on Ezekiel 4:16
the staff of bread the support of bread, pozon de pan in Old French.
and with worry They will worry that their bread supply will be depleted.
דְּאָגָה means aynse in Old French, anxiety, and in our language [dialect] doubt, terror, fright.
