CHAPTER 4 Sep. 8 
The Siege of Jerusalem
You also, son of man, take a tile, and lay it before yourself, and portray on it the city - Jerusalem. 2Lay siege against it, and build forts against it, and cast up a mound against it; set camps also against it, and plant battering rams against it all around. 3Take for yourself an iron pan and set it for a wall of iron between yourself and the city: and set your face toward it, and it shall be besieged, and you shall lay siege against it. This shall be a sign to the house of Israel. 4Moreover lie on your left side, and lay the iniquity of the house of Israel on it; according to the number of the days that you shall lie on it, you shall bear their iniquity. 5For I have appointed the years of their iniquity to be to you a number of days, even three hundred and ninety days. So you shall bear the iniquity of the house of Israel. 6Again, when you have accomplished these, you shall lie on your right side, and shall bear the iniquity of the house of Judah: forty days, each day for a year, have I appointed it to you. 7You shall set your face toward the siege of Jerusalem with your arm uncovered; and you shall prophesy against it. 8Behold, I lay shackles on you, and you shall not turn yourself from one side to the other, until you have accomplished the days of your siege. 9Take for yourself also wheat, barley, beans, lentils, millet and spelt, and put them in one vessel and make bread of it; according to the number of the days that you shall lie on your side, even three hundred and ninety days, you shall eat of it. 10Your food which you shall eat shall be by weight, twenty shekels a day: from time to time you shall eat it. 11You shall drink water by measure, the sixth part of a hin: from time to time you shall drink. 12You shall eat it as barley cakes, and you shall bake it in their sight with dung that comes out of man. 13Yahweh said, Even thus shall the children of Israel eat their bread unclean among the nations where I will drive them. 14Then I said, Ah Lord Yahweh! Behold, my soul has not been polluted; for from my youth up even until now have I not eaten of that which dies of itself, or is torn of animals; neither came there abominable flesh into my mouth. 15Then He said to me, Behold, I have given you cow’s dung for man’s dung, and you shall prepare your bread thereon. 16Moreover He said to me, Son of man, behold, I will break the staff of bread in Jerusalem. They shall eat bread by weight, and with fearfulness; and they shall drink water by measure, and in dismay: 17that they may want bread and water, and be dismayed one with another, and pine away in their iniquity.

Commentary

4:1-5 Preaching through these acted parables would’ve led to people thinking Ezekiel was mad or at least, very ‘odd’; just as they may consider us when we share God’s word with them as He asks.
4:14 This is very similar to the situation when Christ asked Peter to kill and eat unclean animals (Acts 10:14). Peter saw the similarity, taking (as we should) guidance and encouragement from a Biblical example of a person who was in his situation. Peter therefore replied by quoting from Ez. 4:14, where Ezekiel refuses to eat similar food when asked to by the Angel. Perhaps Peter saw himself as Ezekiel's antitype in his witnessing against Israel's rejection of the word of God in Christ (note how 4:16 is a prophecy of Jerusalem's destruction in AD70). 'In the same way as God made a concession to Ezekiel about this command to eat unclean food', Peter reasoned, 'so perhaps my Lord will do for me'. But the Lord was to teach him even greater things than Ezekiel.  
4:15 God is open to dialogue with His children, and is willing to make concessions to human weakness and foibles; just as we should be to others.