Ezekiel 4:9 Bread

Ezekiel 4:9 Bread is a commercial product “inspired by” its namesake Bible verse, which says, “Take thou also unto thee wheat, and barley, and beans, and lentiles, and millet, and fitches, and put them in one vessel, and make thee bread thereof, according to the number of the days that thou shalt lie upon thy side, three hundred and ninety days shalt thou eat thereof.” The producer of the bread states, “We discovered when these six grains and legumes are sprouted and combined, an amazing thing happens. A complete protein is created that closely parallels the protein found in milk and eggs.” I don’t have any reason to doubt that Ezekiel 4:9 Bread is healthy. It is rich in proteins, vitamins, minerals, natural fiber, and has no added sugar or fat. The problem is its claim to have a biblical basis. The diet that God commanded Ezekiel to eat was not for health; it was a siege diet. Consider the context: “And thy meat which thou shalt eat shall be by weight, twenty shekels a day: from time to time shalt thou eat it. Thou shalt drink also water by measure, the sixth part of an hin: from time to time shalt thou drink. And thou shalt eat it as barley cakes, and thou shalt bake it with dung that cometh out of man, in their sight. … I will break the staff of bread in Jerusalem: and they shall eat bread by weight, and with care; and they shall drink water by measure, and with astonishment: That they may want bread and water, and be astonied one with another, and consume away for their iniquity” (Ezekiel 4:10-12, 16-17). Ezekiel was to use various kinds of grain and lentils to make his bread, because in the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem the people had to scrape together whatever was available. It was a famine diet. Twenty shekels of bread was about eight ounces, and a sixth of a hin of water was about two-thirds of a quart. Jeremiah, an eyewitness, described the horror of the famine during the year and a half siege. Elderly people died of starvation (Lamentations 1:19). The people gave their most valuable things for food (Lamentations 1:11). Children fainted in the streets (Lamentations 2:11-12). The wealthy dug through dunghills and trash heaps in search of food (Lamentations 4:5). The people were reduced to skin and bones (Lamentations 4:8). The pain of hunger was so great that death was to be preferred (Lamentations 4:9). Some ate their own children (Lamentations 4:10). For Ezekiel 4:9 Bread to be a “biblical food,” it should be eaten at a rate of no more than eight ounces a day and be cooked with human dung fuel! Many quack diets claim to be based on the Bible. There is the God Diet, the Maker’s Diet, the Genesis Diet, the Daniel Diet, the Edenic Diet, the Hallelujah Diet, the Seventh-Day Adventist diet, and others, but in truth there is no such thing as a Bible diet beyond some basic principles that can be gathered from various passages, which we have set out extensively in the new book The Bible, Diet, and Alternative Health Care. But if we are going to aim for a Bible diet, why not the milk and honey diet? Forty-eight times the land of Israel is called a land “flowing with milk and honey.” That sounds like vanilla ice cream to me! (It’s a joke, folks!)

Friday Church News Notes, August 17, 2018, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143

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