Daily Devotional • June 2
A Reading from Ezekiel 4:1-17
And you, O mortal, take a brick and set it before you. On it portray a city, Jerusalem; 2 and put siege-works against it, and build a siege-wall against it, and cast up a ramp against it; set camps also against it, and plant battering-rams against it all round. 3 Then take an iron plate and place it as an iron wall between you and the city; set your face towards it, and let it be in a state of siege, and press the siege against it. This is a sign for the house of Israel.
4 Then lie on your left side, and place the punishment of the house of Israel upon it; you shall bear their punishment for the number of the days that you lie there. 5 For I assign to you a number of days, three hundred and ninety days, equal to the number of the years of their punishment; and so you shall bear the punishment of the house of Israel. 6 When you have completed these, you shall lie down a second time, but on your right side, and bear the punishment of the house of Judah; forty days I assign you, one day for each year. 7 You shall set your face towards the siege of Jerusalem, and with your arm bared you shall prophesy against it. 8 See, I am putting cords on you so that you cannot turn from one side to the other until you have completed the days of your siege.
9 And you, take wheat and barley, beans and lentils, millet and spelt; put them into one vessel, and make bread for yourself. During the number of days that you lie on your side, three hundred and ninety days, you shall eat it. 10 The food that you eat shall be twenty shekels a day by weight; at fixed times you shall eat it. 11 And you shall drink water by measure, one-sixth of a hin; at fixed times you shall drink. 12 You shall eat it as a barley-cake, baking it in their sight on human dung. 13 The Lord said, ‘Thus shall the people of Israel eat their bread, unclean, among the nations to which I will drive them.’ 14 Then I said, ‘Ah Lord God! I have never defiled myself; from my youth up until now I have never eaten what died of itself or was torn by animals, nor has carrion flesh come into my mouth.’ 15 Then he said to me, ‘See, I will let you have cow’s dung instead of human dung, on which you may prepare your bread.’
16 Then he said to me, Mortal, I am going to break the staff of bread in Jerusalem; they shall eat bread by weight and with fearfulness; and they shall drink water by measure and in dismay. 17 Lacking bread and water, they will look at one another in dismay, and waste away under their punishment.
Meditation
Earlier in the text, Ezekiel is called to be a sentinel for God, a prophetic voice that stands against the violence of our world. In today’s reading, we are led to reflect upon precisely what that prophetic ministry looks like. For Ezekiel it is not simply a calling to preach or proclaim, as it had been for other prophets. Instead, God calls him to an extraordinary labor: he must lay on his sides, eating bread cooked over dung, proclaiming judgment against a clay tablet bearing an image of Jerusalem under siege on it.
Ezekiel’s sign-acts are not unique amid the prophets. Most dramatically, Jonah’s journey into the belly of the fish appears to be one of these, yet his prophetic ministry is uniquely full of them. As a sentinel, witnessing against the wickedness of his age, Ezekiel’s own body transforms into both the message and the medium for God’s declaration of judgment.
There are two key elements to prophetic ministry showcased here by Ezekiel: one, that those who wish to proclaim a prophetic word must put their bodies on the line. It is not a work that one can do from a safe, secure distance. In Ezekiel’s case, it demands eating unclean food and being bound to the ground on his side, and more as one continues reading! The second is that the prophetic word must be both visible and compelling. One can imagine those wandering the streets taking a moment to gawk at the bound prophet, his clay tablet, and his … unclean cooking apparatus. Perhaps this is the best way to fulfill the call of the sentinel: By capturing attention in a bizarre manner, Ezekiel is able to proclaim a word of warning that otherwise his audience would not have been able to hear.
Ian Edward Caveny serves as pastor at First Presbyterian Church of Alton in south-central Illinois and as an occasional lecturer for the John Martinson Honors Program at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville.
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Daily Devotional Cycle of Prayer
Today we pray for:
The Episcopal Diocese of Southeast Florida
The Diocese of Mount Kilimanjaro – The Anglican Church of Tanzania
