The Pulpit Commentary on Ezekiel 4:13

The Pulpit Commentary · Joseph S. Exell and contributors · Public domain

Even thus shall the children of Israel, etc. The strange command takes a wider range. It symbolizes, not the literal horrors of the siege, but the "defiled bread" which even the exiles would be reduced to eat.

So taken, the words remind us of the risk of eating unclean, food, which almost inevitably attended the position of the exiles (Hosea 9:3; Daniel 1:8), and which, it may be, Ezekiel had already tell keenly.

There is obviously something more than can be explained by a reference to "the bitter bread of banishment," or to Dante's "Come sa di sale … " ('Par.,' 17.58).

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