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Ezekiel 4

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1 And thou, O son of man, take thee a tile, and lay it before thee: and draw upon it the plan of the city of Jerusalem.

2 And lay siege against it, and build forts, and cast up a mount, and set a camp against it, and place battering rams round about it.

3 And take unto thee an iron pan, and set it for a wall of iron between thee and the city: and set thy face resolutely against it, and it shall be besieged, and thou shalt lay siege against it: it is a sign to the house of Israel.

4 And thou shalt sleep upon thy left side, and shalt lay the iniquities of the house of Israel upon it, according to the number of the days that thou shalt sleep upon it, and thou shalt take upon thee their iniquity.

5 And I have laid upon thee the years of their iniquity, according to the number of the days three hundred and ninety days: and thou shalt bear the iniquity of the house of Israel.

6 And when thou hast accomplished this, thou shalt sleep again upon thy right side, and thou shalt take upon thee the iniquity of the house of Juda forty days: a day for it year, yea, a day for a year I have appointed to thee.

7 And thou shalt turn thy face to the siege of Jerusalem, and thy arm shall be stretched out: and thou shalt prophesy against it.

8 Behold I have encompassed thee with bands: and thou shalt not turn thyself from one side to the other, till thou hast ended the days of thy siege.

9 And take to thee wheat and barley, and beans, and lentils, and millet, and fitches, and put them in one vessel, and make thee bread thereof according to the number of the days that thou shalt lie upon thy side: three hundred and ninety days shalt thou eat thereof.

10 And thy meat that thou shalt eat, shall be in weight twenty staters a day: from time to time thou shalt eat it.

11 And thou shalt drink water by measure, the sixth part of a hin: from time to time thou shalt drink it,

12 And thou shalt eat it as barley bread baked under the ashes: and thou shalt cover it, in their sight, with the dung that cometh out of a man.

13 And the Lord said: So shall the children of Israel eat their bread all filthy among the nations whither I will cast them out.

14 And I said: Ah, ah, ah, O Lord God, behold my soul hath not been defiled, and from my infancy even till now, I have not eaten any thing that died of itself, or was torn by beasts, and no unclean flesh hath entered into my mouth.

15 And he said to me: Behold I have given thee neat's dung for man's dung, and thou shalt make thy bread therewith.

16 And he said to me: Son of man: Behold, I will break in pieces the staff of bread in Jerusalem: and they shall eat bread by weight, and with care: and they shall drink water by measure, and in distress.

17 So that when bread and water fail, every man may fall against his brother, and they may pine away in their iniquities.

   

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Jacob or Israel (the man)

  

Jacob is told twice that his name will now be Israel. The first time is when he wrestles with an angel on his journey to meet Esau, and the angel tells him that his name will be changed. After he is reconciled with Esau, they go their separate ways. Jacob moves to Shechem and then on to Bethel, where he builds an altar to the Lord. The Lord appears to him there, renews the covenant He first made with Abraham and again tells him that his name will be Israel (Genesis 35). The story goes on to tell of Benjamin's birth and Rachel's death in bearing him, and then of Jacob's return to Isaac and Isaac's death and burial. But at that point the main thread of the story leaves Israel and turns to Joseph, and Israel is hardly mentioned until after Joseph has risen to power in Egypt, has revealed himself to his brothers and tells them to bring all of their father's household down to Egypt. There, before Israel dies, he blesses Joseph's sons, plus all his own sons. After his death he is returned to the land of Canaan for burial in Abraham's tomb. In the story of Jacob and Esau, Jacob represents truth, and Esau good. Jacob's stay in Padan-Aram, and the wealth he acquired there, represent learning the truths of scripture, just as we learn when we read the Ten Commandments or the Sermon on the Mount. The change of name from Jacob to Israel represents the realization that what we learn should not simply be knowledge, but should be the rules of our life, to be followed by action. This action is the good that Esau has represented in the story up to that time, but after the reconciliation between Jacob and Esau, Jacob as Israel now represents the truth and the good, together. It is interesting that even after his name change Jacob is rarely called Israel. Sometimes he is called one and sometimes the other, and sometimes he is called both Jacob and Israel in the same verse (Genesis 46:2, 5, & 8 also Psalm 14:7). This is because Jacob represents the external person and Israel the internal person, and even after the internal person comes into being, we spend much of our lives living on the external level.

(Odkazy: Arcana Coelestia 4274, 4292, 4570, 5595, 6225, 6256, Genesis 2:5, 46:8)