In Ezekiel 4 God commands Ezekiel to act out and dramatize different things so as to transmit to Israel the seriousness of the imminent Babylonian siege of Jerusalem. Initially God tells Ezekiel to make a clay model or toy city of Jerusalem under siege, and then put an iron pan between himself and the model probably to represent the separation between Israel and God by their sin. The second stage of Ezekiel's dramatization involved him lying down on his left side tied up with ropes for 390 days representing 390 years of Israel's sin. Then he turned similarly on his left side for 40 days representing Judah's 40 years of sin. Then in the final part of the chapter to the imminent starvation and thirst situation in the siege of Jerusalem it was acted out with Ezekiel lying down and restricted to 220 grams of food per day which had to be cooked initially using human excrement, though this was later changed to cow dung! On top of this he could only drink 0.6 litres of water per day. There was going to be lots of starvation and thirst in Jerusalem!
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