Ration this out to yourself, eight ounces of food for each day, and eat it at set times.
Parallel translations
- WEB Your food which you shall eat shall be by weight, twenty shekels a day. From time to time you shall eat it.
- KJV And thy meat which thou shalt eat shall be by weight, twenty shekels a day: from time to time shalt thou eat it.
- BSB You are to weigh out twenty shekels of food to eat each day, and you are to eat it at set times.
- NKJV And your food which you eat shall be by weight, twenty shekels a day; from time to time you shall eat it.
- NASB Your food which you eat shall be twenty shekels a day by weight; you shall eat it from time to time.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
Ezekiel's daily food is rationed by weight to about twenty shekels. It portrays the strict, anxious scarcity of life under siege.
Overview
The prophet must weigh out his small daily portion, eating it at intervals rather than freely. Measured food signals that bread will be carefully hoarded because supplies are nearly gone. This deprivation is the bitter fruit of covenant unfaithfulness, a reversal of the abundance God had promised an obedient people.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 6
- Lev 26:26When I break your staff of bread, ten women shall bake your bread in one oven, and they shall deliver your bread again by weight. You shall eat, and not be satisfied.
- Deut 28:51–68and they will eat the fruit of your livestock, and the fruit of your ground, until you are destroyed. They also won’t leave you grain, new wine, or oil, the increase of your livestock, or the young of your flock, until they have caused you to perish.
- Isa 3:1For, behold, the Lord, Yahweh of Armies, takes away from Jerusalem and from Judah supply and support, the whole supply of bread, and the whole supply of water;
- Ezek 14:13“Son of man, when a land sins against me by committing a trespass, and I stretch out my hand on it, and break the staff of its bread, and send famine on it, and cut off from it man and animal;
- Ezek 45:12The shekel shall be twenty gerahs. Twenty shekels plus twenty-five shekels plus fifteen shekels shall be your mina.
- Ezek 4:16Moreover he said to me, “Son of man, behold, I will break the staff of bread in Jerusalem. They will eat bread by weight, and with fearfulness; and they shall drink water by measure, and in dismay;
Themes, concepts, people & topics
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Christ at the center
The promise of one Shepherd-King David, a new heart and new Spirit, and the river of life flowing from the temple all stream toward Christ, the good Shepherd who gives the Spirit.
How Ezekiel 4:10 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
Each word below is tagged with its Strong’s number — tap one to see the underlying Hebrew word, its meaning, and every verse that uses it.