Texts in Conversation
Ezekiel depicts the details of the exile through the image of bread baked over human excrement, showing that food outside the land would be ritually impure. Hosea makes the same point, declaring that in exile in Assyria the people will be cut off from the land and their bread will also be unclean.
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Hosea 9:3
Hebrew Bible
1 O Israel, do not rejoice jubilantly like the nations, for you are unfaithful to your God. You love to receive a prostitute’s wages on all the floors where you thresh your grain. 2 Threshing floors and wine vats will not feed the people, and new wine only deceives them. 3 They will not remain in the Lord’s land. Ephraim will return to Egypt; they will eat ritually unclean food in Assyria. 4 They will not pour out drink offerings of wine to the Lord; they will not please him with their sacrifices. Their sacrifices will be like bread eaten while in mourning; all those who eat them will make themselves ritually unclean. For their bread will be only to satisfy their appetite; it will not come into the temple of the Lord. 5 So what will you do on the festival day, on the festival days of the Lord?
Date: 6th Century B.C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
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Ezekiel 4:13
Hebrew Bible
11 And you must drink water by measure, a pint and a half; you must drink it at fixed times. 12 And you must eat the food as you would a barley cake. You must bake it in front of them over a fire made with dried human excrement.” 13 And the Lord said, “This is how the people of Israel will eat their unclean food among the nations where I will banish them.” 14 And I said, “Ah, Sovereign Lord, I have never been ceremonially defiled before. I have never eaten a carcass or an animal torn by wild beasts; from my youth up, unclean meat has never entered my mouth.” 15 So he said to me, “All right then, I will substitute cow’s manure instead of human excrement. You will cook your food over it.”
Date: 6th Century B.C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... the use of human excrement is irregular and defiling: compare Deuteronomy 23:15 on the desecration of the army camp by unsanitary conditions. 'In their sight': The people must see how it is baked on excrement to realize that it is unclean ... 'unclean': Lands outside the land of Israel were 'unclean' (compare Joshua 22:19; Amos 7:17), probably on account of the idolatrous practices that went on in them (compare Ezekiel 36:18). Exiles were therefore necessarily in a state of uncleanness, and the food they prepared and ate, unclean comparable to 'the bread of mourners' (Hosea 9:3; compare Deuteronomy 26:14) ..."
Greenberg, Moshe
Ezekiel 1-20: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary
(p. 107) Doubleday, 1983
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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