OUR LORD WHO KNOWS OUR FRAME

Ezekiel chapter 4 verses 13 -14 is a excerpt from a conversation between Ezekiel the prophet and the Lord in which the Lord is instructing Ezekiel to lie down for 390 days  in the sight of the people Jerusalem and eat food cooked over human excrement. This action is to be a prophecy of the defiled food the people of Israel will eat when they are sent into exile.  The passage goes like this;

The Lord said, “In this way the people of Israel will eat defiled food among the nations where I will drive them.”

Then I said, “Not so, Sovereign Lord! I have never defiled myself. From my youth until now I have never eaten anything found dead or torn by wild animals. No impure meat has ever entered my mouth.”

Ezekiel responds to the Lord by objecting to eating food cooked over human excrement. He mentions to the Lord that he has never defiled himself by eating animals found dead or those torn apart  by wild animals and that he has never eaten impure meat.

Ezekiel equates eating bread cooked over human excrement with eating defiled meat which  means that the exposing bread to burning human excrement defiles it in the same way that the meat of animals torn apart by wild animals is defiled or how the meat of animals that die of natural or unknown causes is defiled.

The Lord gives Ezekiel a reprieve by allowing him to use cow dung instead of human waste to cook his bread which transmits the same prophetic message  to the observers but without bringing  defilement to Ezekiel. 

Let us bless the Lord who remembers that we are but dust and who lightens our burdens that he  gives us so that we can bear them. 

Amen.