After that, turn over and lie on your right side for 40 days—one day for each year of Judah’s sin.
Parallel translations
- WEB “Again, when you have accomplished these, you shall lie on your right side, and shall bear the iniquity of the house of Judah. I have appointed forty days, each day for a year, to you.
- KJV And when thou hast accomplished them, lie again on thy right side, and thou shalt bear the iniquity of the house of Judah forty days: I have appointed thee each day for a year.
- BSB When you have completed these days, lie down again, but on your right side, and bear the iniquity of the house of Judah. I have assigned to you 40 days, a day for each year.
- NKJV And when you have completed them, lie again on your right side; then you shall bear the iniquity of the house of Judah forty days. I have laid on you a day for each year.
- NASB When you have completed these days, you shall lie down a second time, but on your right side, and bear the wrongdoing of the house of Judah; I have assigned it to you for forty days, a day for each year.
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
After lying on his left side for Israel, Ezekiel must lie on his right side forty days to bear Judah's guilt, one day per year. It dramatizes the long span of the nation's sin and coming judgment.
Overview
God assigns Ezekiel a second symbolic posture, bearing the iniquity of the southern kingdom of Judah for forty days, each day representing a year. The acted prophecy makes vivid that judgment is measured, deliberate, and tied to the nation's accumulated guilt. Ezekiel's bearing of iniquity in symbol points forward to the One who would truly bear His people's iniquity, the suffering Servant of Isaiah 53.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 7
- Num 14:34After the number of the days in which you spied out the land, even forty days, for every day a year, you will bear your iniquities, even forty years, and you will know my alienation.’
- Dan 12:11–12From the time that the continual burnt offering shall be taken away, and the abomination that makes desolate set up, there shall be one thousand two hundred ninety days.
- Dan 9:24–26Seventy weeks are decreed on your people and on your holy city, to finish disobedience, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most holy.
- Rev 11:2–3Leave out the court which is outside of the temple, and don’t measure it, for it has been given to the nations. They will tread the holy city under foot for forty-two months.
- Rev 13:5A mouth speaking great things and blasphemy was given to him. Authority to make war for forty-two months was given to him.
- Rev 9:15The four angels were freed who had been prepared for that hour and day and month and year, so that they might kill one third of mankind.
- Rev 12:14Two wings of the great eagle were given to the woman, that she might fly into the wilderness to her place, so that she might be nourished for a time, and times, and half a time, from the face of the serpent.
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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 4:6 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
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