Ezekiel 4 Bible Verses
Lie thou also upon thy left side, and lay the iniquity of the house of Israel upon it: according to the number of the days that thou shalt lie upon it thou shalt bear their iniquity. For I have laid upon thee the years of their iniquity, according to the number of the days, three hundred and ninety days: so shalt thou bear the iniquity of the house of Israel. And when thou hast accomplished them, lie again on thy right side, and thou shalt bear the iniquity of the house of Judah forty days: I have appointed thee each day for a year.
Ezekiel 4:4-6
Ezekiel had a vision on Tammuz 5. A week later, he acted out a siege mime against Israel for 390 days, against Judah for another forty days, and had another vision seven days later on Elul 5, totaling 443 days. Where did the extra thirty days come from? What calendar did Ezekiel use?
The Siege of Ezekiel
Click to show Ezekiel 4:1-8We must ask: does our calendar match any known Hebrew dates before 70 AD? We do not expect our Elephantine calendar to always align with Hebrew dates after then because the Hebrews adopted a new calendar to serve the diaspora. Very few hard Jewish dates from ancient times exist, but the Bible provides many intuitive dates that we can use to verify our calendar. Ezekiel's siege mime is a good example. The saga lasted from Tammuz 5, 593 BC until Elul 5, 592 BC. This period covers 443 days, equaling fifteen synodic months. Normally, however, only fourteen months fall between Tammuz and Elul in the next year. An extra month clearly fell between the two visions. Let us see:
Now it came to pass in the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, in the fifth day of the month, as I was among the captives by the river of Chebar …, which was the fifth year of king Jehoiachin’s captivity, the word of the LORD came expressly unto Ezekiel the priest … (Ezekiel. 1:1–3).
And it came to pass in the sixth year, in the sixth month, in the fifth day of the month, as I sat in mine house, and the elders of Judah sat before me, that the hand of the Lord GOD fell there upon me (Ezekiel 8:1).
Ezekiel became a prophet when he was thirty years old, which, as a priest, meant he was mature enough to teach. Ezekiel, like Jeremiah who was also a priest, dated events using the ecclesiastic year, spanning from Nisan to Nisan. He went into captivity with King Jehoiachin and others on Nisan 10, 597 BC, and he used that event as a dating epoch. Jehoiachin only ruled for three months. He acceded the throne during a winter siege after his father’s lifeless body was cast outside the city, where it lay exposed to the sun and “the frost.” A Chaldean record says King Nebuchadnezzar was in the Levant during Kislimu in the winter of his seventh year (his eighth Hebrew year). His reign is solidly fixed in absolute time. The record says that he arrested a king (Jehoiachin) and replaced him with a new king (Zedekiah). The city fell in Adaru. A few weeks later, Jehoiachin, Ezekiel, and a wave of Hebrews were taken captive on Nisan 10, April 23, 597 BC, the first year of Jehoiachin’s captivity in Babylon. More than four years later, on Tammuz 5, July 2, 593 BC, during Jehoiachin’s fifth ordinal year of captivity, Ezekiel saw his first vision.
During that first vision, Ezekiel witnessed the machinations of God’s glorious movable throne. The Shekhinah glory had departed from the temple In Jerusalem. Astonished, the prophet remained among the principal captives for seven days until Tammuz 12, when he acted out a 430-day double siege. More than a year later, on Elul 5, Sept. 18, 592 BC, in the sixth year of captivity, he was sitting upright and unfettered by the elders. The Spirit carried him in vision back to Jerusalem, where he saw the abominations committed by worshipers in the temple. By this time, Ezekiel could speak again. The latter vision came seven days after the completion of the 430-day interval.
The full sequence spanned fifteen lunar months, starting from Tammuz 5 in the fifth year of captivity and ending on Elul 5 in the sixth year. Ezekiel reclined on his side during a portion of each day during those fifteen months, warning of impending doom and baking his bread over a fire of dry manure. The episode lasted 443 days. Typically, only 413 days pass between Tammuz and the Elul in the next year. The extra thirty days belong to an intercalary month. Did he use the Babylonian calendar? Did the Babylonians add an extra Adaru in 592 BC?
An artifact in the British museum, BM 38462 (LBAT 1420), shows that a second Adaru fell in the spring of 594 BC, during King Nebuchadnezzar’s eleventh year. Another artifact shows that an extra Adaru fell three years later, in 591 BC, during his fourteenth year. The Babylonian calendar did not add an extra month in 592 BC. As for the proleptic Hillel II calendar, it would have added a second Adar in 593 BC, not 592 BC. However, our Bible calendar added an extra Adar in the spring of 592 BC—the fifteenth year of the 19-year cycle. A scribe drafted KR-10 in the same intercalary Adar 190 (19 x 10) years later.
In the five and twentieth year of our captivity, in the beginning of the year, in the tenth day of the month, in the fourteenth year after that the city was smitten, in the selfsame day the hand of the Lord was upon me, and brought me thither (Ezekiel. 40:1).
Ezekiel saw his temple vision exactly twenty-four years after Jehoiachin went into captivity, in the twenty-fifth ordinal year, on a prominent date, Nisan 10. It was the fourteenth ordinal year since Nebuchadnezzar had smitten Jerusalem in the late summer of 586 BC.
And the glory of the Lord went up from the midst of the city, and stood upon the mountain which is on the east side of the city (Ezekiel 11:23).