Bible Strands
Ezekiel 4:6
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.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — God instructs Ezekiel immediately after the first phase of a symbolic siege act. The prophet is commanded to shift positions and durations to represent a new period of judgment.
The words — וְ/כִלִּיתָ֣ (ve./khi.li.Ta) translates literally as "and you will complete," closing the prior timeframe. שֵנִ֔ית (she.Nit) means "a second time," directing the prophet to begin the next phase.
The thread — The day-for-year ratio appears in Numbers 14:34, where forty days of spying out the land correspond to forty years of guilt. Daniel 9:24 and Daniel 12:11 extend this proportional time framework to decreed weeks and extended prophetic periods.
Why it lands — The text demands recognition that prolonged disobedience accumulates a measurable, divinely assigned duration of consequence. It requires the reader to treat the symbolic period as a literal measure of coming judgment.
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 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.
Cross-references
- Numbers 14:34 In keeping with the forty days you spied out the land, you shall bear your guilt forty years—a year for each day—and you will experience My alienation.
- Daniel 9:24 Seventy weeks are decreed for your people and your holy city to stop their transgression, to put an end to sin, to make atonement for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy, and to anoint the Most Holy Place.
- Daniel 12:11 And from the time the daily sacrifice is abolished and the abomination of desolation set up, there will be 1,290 days.
- Revelation 11:2 But exclude the courtyard outside the temple. Do not measure it, because it has been given over to the nations, and they will trample the holy city for 42 months.
- Revelation 13:5 The beast was given a mouth to speak arrogant and blasphemous words, and authority to act for 42 months.
- Revelation 9:15 So the four angels who had been prepared for this hour and day and month and year were released to kill a third of mankind.
- Revelation 12:14 But the woman was given two wings of a great eagle to fly from the presence of the serpent to her place in the wilderness, where she was nourished for a time, and times, and half a time.