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Ezekiel 4

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1 `And thou, son of man, take to thee a brick, and thou hast put it before thee, and hast graven on it a city -- Jerusalem,

2 and hast placed against it a siege, and builded against it a fortification, and poured out against it a mount, and placed against it camps, yea, set thou against it battering-rams round about.

3 And thou, take to thee an iron pan, and thou hast made it a wall of iron between thee and the city; and thou hast prepared thy face against it, and it hath been in a siege, yea, thou hast laid siege against it. A sign it [is] to the house of Israel.

4 `And thou, lie on thy left side, and thou hast placed the iniquity of the house of Israel on it; the number of the days that thou liest on it, thou bearest their iniquity.

5 And I -- I have laid on thee the years of their iniquity, the number of days, three hundred and ninety days; and thou hast borne the iniquity of the house of Israel.

6 And thou hast completed these, and hast lain on thy right side, a second time, and hast borne the iniquity of the house of Judah forty days -- a day for a year -- a day for a year I have appointed to thee.

7 `And unto the siege of Jerusalem thou dost prepare thy face, and thine arm [is] uncovered, and thou hast prophesied concerning it.

8 And lo, I have put on thee thick bands, and thou dost not turn from side to side till thy completing the days of thy siege.

9 `And thou, take to thee wheat, and barley, and beans, and lentiles, and millet, and spelt, and thou hast put them in one vessel, and made them to thee for bread; the number of the days that thou art lying on thy side -- three hundred and ninety days -- thou dost eat it.

10 And thy food that thou dost eat [is] by weight, twenty shekels daily; from time to time thou dost eat it.

11 `And water by measure thou dost drink, a sixth part of the hin; from time to time thou dost drink [it].

12 A barley-cake thou dost eat it, and it with dung -- the filth of man -- thou dost bake before their eyes.

13 And Jehovah saith, `Thus do the sons of Israel eat their defiled bread among the nations whither I drive them.'

14 And I say, `Ah, Lord Jehovah, lo, my soul is not defiled, and carcase, and torn thing, I have not eaten from my youth, even till now; nor come into my mouth hath abominable flesh.'

15 And He saith unto me, `See, I have given to thee bullock's dung instead of man's dung, and thou hast made thy bread by it.'

16 And He saith unto me, `Son of man, lo, I am breaking the staff of bread in Jerusalem, and they have eaten bread by weight and with fear; and water by measure and with astonishment, they do drink;

17 so that they lack bread and water, and have been astonished one with another, and been consumed in their iniquity.

   

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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)