Bible Strands
Ezekiel 12:18
“Son of man, eat your bread with trembling, and drink your water with quivering and anxiety.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — The Lord addresses Ezekiel directly, commanding the prophet to perform a symbolic act of fearful consumption before the exiled community. This oracle precedes the explanation that Jerusalem and Israel will face resource depletion due to widespread violence.
The words — The text employs בְּרַעַשׁ (be·ra‘aš, quaking) and בְּרָגְזָה (be·rāgezâ, trembling) to modify the acts of eating bread and drinking water. These terms describe a physical shaking that accompanies the basic necessities of life.
The thread — The pattern of sustenance consumed under threat appears in Leviticus 26:26, where bread is baked in a single oven and measured by weight, and Lamentations 5:9, which records bread being obtained at the risk of one’s life.
Why it lands — The passage requires the prophet to physically enact the coming scarcity so the audience grasps the severity of the judgment. It forces readers to confront the reality that survival itself becomes a source of dread when a land is stripped of its provisions.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
Son of man, eat thy bread with quaking, and drink thy water with trembling and with carefulness;
Cross-references
- Lamentations 5:9 We get our bread at the risk of our lives because of the sword in the wilderness.
- Leviticus 26:26 When I cut off your supply of bread, ten women will bake your bread in a single oven and dole out your bread by weight, so that you will eat but not be satisfied.
- Leviticus 26:36 As for those of you who survive, I will send a faintness into their hearts in the lands of their enemies, so that even the sound of a windblown leaf will put them to flight. And they will flee as one flees the sword, and fall when no one pursues them.
- Deuteronomy 28:48 you will serve your enemies the LORD will send against you in famine, thirst, nakedness, and destitution. He will place an iron yoke on your neck until He has destroyed you.
- Deuteronomy 28:65 Among those nations you will find no repose, not even a resting place for the sole of your foot. There the LORD will give you a trembling heart, failing eyes, and a despairing soul.
- Job 3:24 I sigh when food is put before me, and my groans pour out like water.
- Psalms 60:2 You have shaken the land and torn it open. Heal its fractures, for it is quaking.
- Psalms 80:5 You fed them with the bread of tears and made them drink the full measure of their tears.
- Psalms 102:4 My heart is afflicted, and withered like grass; I even forget to eat my bread.
- Ezekiel 4:16 Then He told me, “Son of man, I am going to cut off the supply of food in Jerusalem. They will anxiously eat bread rationed by weight, and in despair they will drink water by measure.