Ezekiel 4:16-17
“Then he said to me, ‘Son of man, I’m going to cut off all food from Jerusalem. The people will live on starvation rations, worrying where the next meal’s coming from, scrounging for the next drink of water. Famine conditions. People will look at one another, see nothing but skin and bones, and shake their heads. This is what sin does.’”
“Then he told me, ‘Son of man, I will make food very scarce in Jerusalem. It will be weighted out with great care and eaten fearfully. The water will be rationed out drop by drop, and the people will drink it with dismay. Lacking food and water, people will look at one another in terror, and they will waste away under their punishment.’”
The first part of the chapter describes another visual lesson Ezekiel is to undertake at God’s direction. He must draw a picture of Jerusalem on a brick and build model siege works against it. He must lie alongside it, tied with ropes holding an iron skillet representing Israel and Judah’s sin. He is to lie there for 430 days, the same as the combined years of their sin. God gives the exact amount of grain he is to make into flatbread for rations and tells him to eat it on a schedule. He is to use human excrement for fuel.
God noted his people’s sin, 430 years of it. It was not an amorphous cloud floating at some distance. Rather, it was present in every particulate and known to God Almighty. God directs Ezekiel to make a specific mixture of grains and legumes into flatbread as sustenance. It is easy to think of God as infinitely big. Here we see he is infinitely small too. He knew exactly what Ezekiel’s body needed to survive this display and prescribed accordingly. God knows everything, large and small.
Today’s verses describe what famine will do to people’s bodies, becoming nothing but skin and bones. Their collective appearance will dismay and dishearten one another. I love the Message’s last sentence, “This is what sin does.” It emaciates physical bodies, and souls too. It is why God hates it so.
Lord, in this country we have no inkling of this kind of famine. But all around I see souls of skin and bones. Give me wisdom to pray and serve when I meet one of these in my coming and going. Give me your heart of love for them and may it radiate from my words and countenance. Make me a person of hope and light in this famine filled world.