Ezekiel Chapter 4 verse 12 Holy Bible
And thou shalt eat it as barley cakes, and thou shalt bake it in their sight with dung that cometh out of man.
read chapter 4 in ASV
And let your food be barley cakes, cooking it before their eyes with the waste which comes out of a man.
read chapter 4 in BBE
And thou shalt eat it [as] barley-cake, and thou shalt bake it in their sight with dung that cometh out of man.
read chapter 4 in DARBY
And thou shalt eat it as barley cakes, and thou shalt bake it with dung that cometh out of man, in their sight.
read chapter 4 in KJV
read chapter 4 in WBT
You shall eat it as barley cakes, and you shall bake it in their sight with dung that comes out of man.
read chapter 4 in WEB
A barley-cake thou dost eat it, and it with dung -- the filth of man -- thou dost bake before their eyes.
read chapter 4 in YLT
Pulpit Commentary
Pulpit CommentaryVerse 12. - Thou shall bake it with dung, etc. The process of baking in ashes was as old as the time of Abraham (Genesis 18:6), and continues in Arabia and Syria to the present day. The kneaded dough was rolled into thin flat cakes, and they were placed upon, or hung over, the hot wood embers of the hearth or oven. But in a besieged city the supply of wood for fuel soon fails. The first resource is found, as still often happens in the East, in using the dried dung of camels or of cattle. Before Ezekiel's mind there came the vision of a yet more terrible necessity. That supply also might tail, and then men would be forced to use the dried contents of the "draught houses" or cesspools of Jerusalem. They would be compelled almost literally to fulfil the taunt of Rabshakeh (Isaiah 36:12). That thought, as bringing with it the ceremonial pollution of Leviticus 5:3: 7:21, was as revolting to Ezekiel as it is to us; but like Dante, in a like revolting symbolism ('Inf.,' 18:114), he does not shrink from naming it. It came to him, as with the authority of a Divine command, that he was even to do this, to represent the extreme horrors of the siege. And all this was to be done visibly, before the eyes of his neighbours at Tel-Abib.
Ellicott's Commentary
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(12) As barley cakes.--These were commonly cooked in the hot ashes, hence the especial defilement caused by the fuel required to be used. Against this the prophet pleads, not merely as revolting in itself, but as ceremonially polluting (Ezekiel 4:14; see Leviticus 5:3; Leviticus 7:21), and a mitigation of the requirement is granted to him (Ezekiel 4:15).In their sight--This is still a part of the vision. The words have been thought to determine that the whole transaction was an actual symbolic act and not a vision; but this does not follow. It need only have been a part of the vision that what was done was done publicly.
