Bible Strands
Ezekiel 4:10
You are to weigh out twenty shekels of food to eat each day, and you are to eat it at set times.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — God commands Ezekiel during a prophetic sign act to simulate a prolonged siege by strictly rationing his daily provisions. This instruction follows the directive to bake bread from a single mixed-grain container for 390 days.
The words — בְּמִשְׁקוֹל (be./mish.Kol) translates literally as "by weight," underscoring precise measurement over estimation. עֶשְׂרִים שְׁקָלִים ('es.Rim She.kel) specifies "twenty shekels" as the exact daily food allotment.
The thread — This measured rationing appears in Leviticus 26:26, where bread is doled out by weight during judgment, and in Deuteronomy 28:51 and Isaiah 3:1, which describe the systematic removal of food supply as covenant consequence. Ezekiel’s enacted prophecy directly echoes these covenant curse patterns.
Why it lands — The text demands a literal, weighed daily portion to physically demonstrate impending scarcity. It requires the reader to acknowledge that divine judgment executes limitation with exactness, leaving no room for evasion or exaggeration.
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
And thy meat which thou shalt eat shall be by weight, twenty shekels a day: from time to time shalt thou eat it.
Cross-references
- 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.
- Deuteronomy 28:51 They will eat the offspring of your livestock and the produce of your land until you are destroyed. They will leave you no grain or new wine or oil, no calves of your herds or lambs of your flocks, until they have caused you to perish.
- Isaiah 3:1 For behold, the Lord GOD of Hosts is about to remove from Jerusalem and Judah both supply and support: the whole supply of food and water,
- 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.
- Ezekiel 14:13 “Son of man, if a land sins against Me by acting unfaithfully, and I stretch out My hand against it to cut off its supply of food, to send famine upon it, and to cut off from it both man and beast,
- Ezekiel 45:12 The shekel will consist of twenty gerahs. Twenty shekels plus twenty-five shekels plus fifteen shekels will equal one mina.