Ezekiel 4:4-8 – God will never condone sin.

Ezekiel’s prophetic message to the house of Israel in chapter 4 was not given in verbal presentation but in dramatization. He was to build a model representing the siege of Jerusalem. Having built the model of the city of Jerusalem under siege, the prophet was asked to place a metal grill between the model and himself. In that act, Ezekiel was playing the role of God, judging His people. The grill was to indicate a barrier between them and God preventing their call for intervention from reaching Him.

In Ezekiel 4:4-8, the prophet was instructed to lie for a total of about 430 days as a period they had to bear the punishment for their sin. Of the total number of days, he was to lie on his left for 390 days, and on his right, for 40 days. It is difficult to interpret these symbolic acts exactly. One thing is clear, each day is taken to represent a year. It was thought that the 390 days referred to God’s dealing with the Northern Kingdom of Israel and the 40 days His dealing with Judah the southern Kingdom. This view considers the division of Israel into two kingdoms - the Northern Kingdom of Israel and the Southern Kingdom of Judah. While it is tempting to see the see house of Israel as referring to the northern Kingdom and the house of Judah as the Southern Kingdom, Ezekiel in this book refers to these terms interchangeably. He was looking at God’s dealing with the nation of Israel as a whole.  

Interestingly, in God’s early dealing with His people, Exodus 12:40-41 said that it took 430 years before God brought the people out of Egypt. In other words, they were in Egypt for 43o years till God took them out. Now in the book of Ezekiel, it is not wrong to say that 430 years would be the duration of God’s dealing with the whole nation. The 390 years would represent the time from the building of the first temple in Jerusalem to its destruction in 586 BC. That duration of 390 years of punishment was an indictment of the nation’s worship of other gods alongside the worship of the Lord in the temple. They had a long history of idolatry and God was judging them for this.  

There’s another interesting fact as we consider the duration of 40 days representing 40 years that Ezekiel laid on his right. God took 40 years to deal with the children of Israel in the wilderness before taking them into the promised land. It would not be overstretching to say that God was signaling through Ezekiel’s 40 days that He would be taking 40 years to deal with the people of Israel to purify and get them ready to return to the promised land.

From these five verses, we learn that God knows His people and their sins. For every sin committed, He will bring them into judgment. The cords that were placed around Ezekiel show that there will be no escaping the judgment of God for any unrepented sin. God’s judgement of sin is inevitable for He does not condone a sin. Judgment will come as long as the sinner refuses to repent and change. But God is gracious, His dealings are given opportunities to repent, change, and be restored.