Ezekiel's Prophecy of the Siege of Jerusalem

by John P. Pratt
15 Aug 2018, 1 Resurrection (M, UM)

©2018 by John P. Pratt. All rights Reserved.

Index, Home

Contents
1. Ezekiel's Ordeal
1.1 Wheel Within a Wheel
1.2 The Prophecy
1.3 The Venus Calendar
2. The Fulfillment
3. Judah Start Date
4. Israel Start Date
5. Conclusion
Notes
Ezekiel prophesied of a siege to begin 40 years after Judah and 430 years after Israel last chose to follow God. It was fulfilled to the very day!

The Lord commanded the Old Testament prophet Ezekiel to make a very graphic and enigmatic prophecy about the coming siege of Jerusalem by King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon.[1] It was preceded by a vision of winged creatures and a wheel within a wheel. This article proposes a precise interpretation of the prophecy by recognizing that it referred to the Venus Calendar. Let's begin by looking at the prophecy which was actually an ordeal for the new prophet, then its fulfillment, and finally unraveling the enigmatic parts to see that it was all a very strong witness of the foreknowledge of God.

1. Ezekiel's Ordeal

The prophet Ezekiel, who wrote the Old Testament book of that name, spoke many prophecies in the name of the Lord. He was contemporary with Jeremiah, but he was taken into captivity to Babylon while Jeremiah remained in Jerusalem to prophesy to King Zedekiah whom King Nebuchadnezzar installed to reign over the poor in Judah after all of the upper and middle class had been deported to Babylon (2 Kings 24:14,17). While Jeremiah was thrown into a slime pit to suffer in Jerusalem, Ezekiel was assigned his own special prophetic ordeal to suffer in Babylon.

Fig. 1. This tablet has the exact beginning date ot Ezekiel's dating of years.
As far as my work is concerned, one great thing about Ezekiel is that he gave the exact date of when he was given each revelation and when they were fulfilled. He is one of the very few prophets who did that. Dates were given using the calendar which had been revealed to Moses which is very similar to the modern traditional Hebrew Calendar. The years were reckoned from the captivity of Jeconiah, also called Jehoiachin, King of Judah. The day of his captivity is one of the very best established dates in Bible history because the exact day was recorded both in the Bible as having been on the first day of the year (2 Chron. 36:10) as well as in Babylonian Chronicles (see Figure 1). His captivity began on the day that would be called Sat 10 Mar 597 BC on our (Gregorian) calendar.[2] In other words, that day was the first day of the first month of the first year of the captivity. Before considering Ezekiel's ordeal, let us look at a preparatory vision he was given.

1.1 Wheel Within a Wheel

Fig. 2. Ezekiel's wheel within a wheel?
Why was Ezekiel so concerned about dates? The answer may lie in the first vision he had. He saw several winged beings who showed him "a wheel in the middle of a wheel" (Ezek. 1:16). This vision was almost certainly relevant to the prophecy being discussed in this article because it was given just one week prior (Ezek. 3:16).

So what was the work that he describes as a wheel within a wheel? Could it have anything to do with his meticulous keeping of exact dates? As discussed below, the fulfillment of the prophecy has everything to do with the cycles of the planets Venus and Mercury. Both are used by the Lord in sacred calendars. The nominal length of a Mercury Cycle (from rising as a morning star to the next such rising) is 117 days. The corresponding length of a Venus Cycle (also from Morning Star to Morning Star) is 585 days, which is exactly 5 Mercury Cycles (5 x 117 = 585). This relationship can be illustrated as a wheel rolling around within another wheel (see Figure 2). It is here suggested that the two wheels seen by Ezekiel may in fact have been related to the cycles of Venus and Mercury because those would be the calendars on which his prophecy of the following week would be fulfilled.

1.2 The Prophecy

So what was the prophecy? Let's read it:

1 Thou also, son of man, take thee a tile, and lay it before thee, and portray upon it the city, even Jerusalem:

2 And lay siege against it, and build a fort against it, and cast a mount against it; set the camp also against it, and set battering rams against it round about.

3 Moreover take thou unto thee an iron pan, and set it for a wall of iron between thee and the city: and set thy face against it, and it shall be besieged, and thou shalt lay siege against it. This shall be a sign to the house of Israel.

4 Lie thou also upon thy left side, and lay the iniquity of the house of Israel upon it: according to the number of the days that thou shalt lie upon it thou shalt bear their iniquity.

5 For I have laid upon thee the years of their iniquity, according to the number of the days, three hundred and ninety days: so shalt thou bear the iniquity of the house of Israel.

6 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.

7 Therefore thou shalt set thy face toward the siege of Jerusalem, and thine arm shall be uncovered, and thou shalt prophesy against it.

8 And, behold, I will lay bands upon thee, and thou shalt not turn thee from one side to another, till thou hast ended the days of thy siege. — Ezek. 4:1-8

Fig. 3. Ezekiel prophesying laying down as commanded.
So this prophecy was to be an ordeal for Ezekiel. After setting up a likeness of Babylon laying siege to Jerusalem, he was to be strapped down to lay on his left side for 390 days, such that he could not roll over! That's more than year! Does that make you wish you were a prophet? Even as Christ suffered for our sins when he had been blameless, so also was Ezekiel to suffer for over a year for the sins of Israel. To top it off, after that he was then strapped down to lay on his right side 40 more days for the sins of Judah (see Figure 3). Remember, they had split into two different nations, with Israel's capital of the ten tribes in Samaria and Judah's two tribes in Jerusalem. Ezekiel had to suffer for both. So, like the Savior, in a way Ezekiel took upon himself their sins and suffered for them.

Even his diet was prescribed. The recipe for bread was given, which is now sold in health stores as "Ezekiel Bread". That is the good news, but the bad news is that it was to be baked over a dung fire, which apparently represented how the two nations had polluted the bread of heaven which had been given them by Moses. Do you still want to be a prophet?

Getting back to the prophecy itself, we are told the first 390 days represented 390 years of Israel having sinned against God, and the last 40 representing the last forty years when Judah had last begun to truly serve God. Because the two intervals were successive, we can conclude that the siege would begin 430 years (390 + 40) after Israel last chose to follow God. Apparently this emphasis on how long they had been sinning is to show that the Lord had been very patient in having given them time to repent, but now time had run out.

In my work it was discovered early on that both 40 years and 430 years are cycles when the Venus Calendar approximately realigns with the year, so that appeared to be a good clue to follow.

1.3 Venus Calendar

The planets Venus and Mercury both have their own sacred calendar which keeps track of where they are in the heavens as seen from the earth. Our Gregorian Calendar keeps track of the sun's seasons so that we know when to plant our garden. The Hebrew Calendar keeps track of both sun and moon so that each month starts near a new moon and each year starts near the first day of spring. Similarly, the Venus and Mercury calendars keep track of when each rises as an evening star (birth), sets as evening star (death) and then rises as a morning star (resurrection). Each has nine such phases that are all multiples of thirteen days. Each thirteen day period is represented as a tooth on the gears in Figure 2.

The cycle times of Mercury and Venus are not exactly 117 and 585 days. It turns out that 5 Venus cycles are very close to 8 years, so that 25 cycles are nearly 40 years. The thing that makes 40 years special is that in that time there is exactly one extra Mercury cycle. Thus, instead of 125 Mercury cycles in 40 years, as would be expected being a five-to-one ratio with Venus, there are actually nearly exactly 126 Mercury cycles.

The Lord employs this forty year Venus-Mercury cycle several times in scripture, such as the length of time that Israel wandered in the wilderness after the Exodus (which was also represented by one day per year, see Num. 14:34) and the length of the 40-year reign of King David (1 Kings 2:11).

Now that we have the clue about the starting points of the prophetic counting, let us proceed the easy way and reckon backwards from when the prophecy was fulilled. After all, prophecy is not given to satisfy men's curiosity about the future but usually to encourage repentance by fear of coming punishment. Then, after it is fulfilled, it is a witness that God knew the future, sometimes right to the very day as in this case. Thus, after being fulfilled it becomes a witness of the foreknowledge of God.

2. The Fulfillment

The precise date of the fulfillment was so important to be known afterward that it is recorded three times in the Bible (Ezek. 24:1-2, Jer. 52:4, 2 Kings 25:1). In fact, the Lord explicitly commanded Ezekiel, who was not in Jerusalem and wouldn't have otherwise known with certainty, to write down the date:

1 Again in the ninth year, in the tenth month, in the tenth day of the month, the word of the Lord came unto me, saying,

2 Son of man, write thee the name of the day, even of this same day: the king of Babylon set himself against Jerusalem this same day. — Ezek. 24:1-2

Fig. 4. The siege of Jerusalem.
The day of the start of the siege, 10 Tebeth, became a special holy annual fast day just to commemorate the event. Thus, the question arises, besides the beginning of the siege occurring at that time, was there anything intrinsically unusual about that date?

The day 10 Tebeth in the ninth year of the reign of Zedekiah was Fri 11 Dec 589 BC. That day was 1 Resurrection on both the Venus and Mercury calendars! That is nominally the day when both planets would first rise before the sun together in the east after having "died" at their setting in the western sky as evening stars.

Thus, the anticipation of a connection to the Venus and Mercury calendars based solely on the periods of 40 and 430 years is now seen to come to fruition on a rare date when both risings at resurrection coincide. The day of the resurrection of Venus only occurs on one day in 1.6 years, and that can occur on any of the 9 phases of Mercury. Thus, both risings occur on the same day only on one day in 9 x 1.6 = 14.4 years! For that day to be the precise day recorded three times in the Bible makes it clear that we are supposed to recognize that and understand the importance.

One obvious implication is that because of how the wheel within a wheel works, we can now calculate the exact days of the starting points of the prophecy both for Judah and for Israel.

3. Judah Start Date

Fig. 5. Josiah's purge of idols.
Counting back one 40-year realignment cycle for Venus and Mercury brings us to the date Mon 21 Dec 629 BC. Did anything special happen on that date which could be representative of the last time that Judah truly committed to follow God?

That date falls into the 12th year of the reign of Josiah, King of Judah. That happens to be the year in which he began the great purge of all idols from the nation (2 Chron. 34:3)! That is perfect for the symbolism implied and hence can be identified as the indicated date (see Figure 5). Was that date just a random date on the Hebrew Calendar or was it a date King Josiah might have chosen as a good start date? It turns out the date was the holy day 1 Tebeth. That day is the first day of winter and represents the winter equinox on the Hebrew Calendar, even though it can vary by about two weeks around the true equinox. But in that year, being on 21 Dec, it indeed fell at the time of the true equinox.

Moreover, besides being 1 Resurrection on both the Venus and Mercury calendars, it was also a holy day on several other sacred calendars. It was 1 Light on the Sacred Round, the first day of the 260-day cycle, representing the beginning of a new time period. It was also 1 Resurrection on the Uniform Mercury Calendar. That alignment would only occur on one day in 9 x 14.4 years = 130 years! Similarly, the date of the publication of this article also coincides with a period when the Mercury and Uniform Mercury align and is also on a day when both are on 1 Resurrection.

Fig. 6. Apparent retrograde motion of Mars against the star background as Earth passes it.
The date the purge began was also 1 Rebirth on the Mars Calendar which is especially significant because that is the one day in the 2-year Mars Cycle on which Mars repents of its evil backsliding in retrograde motion and is reborn by repenting (turning around) to return to its forward motion (see Point 6 in Figure 6). For that to occur on the very day on which both Venus and Mercury are resurrection on three calendars is rare indeed, only occurring about once in all of history.[3] It was also the day 1 Translation on the Uniform Mars Calendar, which makes it even more rare! Thus, it was an extremely rare holy day indeed with perfect symbolism for the beginning of Josiah's reform! That precious witness of the amazing meaning of Ezekiel's prophecy would likely only have been discovered because of following up on its details (Prov. 25:2).

4. Israel Start Date

Fig. 7. As King of Israel, David brings the ark to Jerusalem.
What about the start date of the last time that Israel chose to follow God? Remember that the ten tribes constituting the northern kingdom of Israel had been taken into captivity in Assyria about 723 BC, over a century before Ezekiel' prophecy. The fact that the last time was 430 years before the siege indicates that they had not repented since that time.

So what happened 430 years before the siege? We merely need to seek the date of 1 Resurrection (Venus) at that time because it is the Venus Calendar which seems to be governing this prophecy. Doing that leads to the date Sat 16 Nov 1019 BC, being 1 Resurrection (Venus). Moreover, it was also 1 Light (Sacred Round) even as was Josiah's Purge. That combination only occurs once in 32 years. It was also the major holy day 1 Lord (Mars) and a holy day on several other sacred calendars.

So what could have happened on that day which would mark the last time that Israel had chosen the Lord? It occurred when King David had reigned for seven and a half years over the kingdom of Judah. That is right when Israel chose David to reign over them too (2 Sam. 5:5). Indeed that looks like a perfect match for being the last time that Israel chose to follow God's servant (see Figure 7).

As two more witnesses that this is the correct interpretation, on both the Mars and Uniform Mercury calendars the day was 1 Lord, which is as close in meaning to "1 King" as any holy day, because Lord refers to one who rules over a domain. Thus, it truly appears that the crowning of David to reign over Israel was indeed the event referred to in the prophecy as the beginning date.

5. Conclusion

Fig. 8. Ezekiel's prophecy fulfilled.
Ezekiel's prophecy of the coming siege of Jerusalem was analyzed in the light of recognizing both of the periods of 40 years and 430 are known to realign the Venus Cycle with the year. Those were the intervals back to when Judah and Israel last chose to follow God. After reviewing the prophecy, the date of the fulfillment of the beginning of siege was identified because the very day is recorded in scripture. Sure enough, it turns out to be a major holy day (Resurrection) on the Venus Calendar (see Figure 8). Then it was shown that counting back forty years leads to the twelfth year of Josiah when he purged idolatry from Judah and instituted religious reforms to return to Jehovah worship. Counting back 430 resulted in the very month when Israel chose King David to reign over them as he had been doing for Judah. Looking at those two dates on other sacred calendars showed that both were 1 Light on the Sacred Round, and the date of Josiah's reform was also the day of the Rebirth of Mars when it ceases its retrograde motion, turns around (repents), and begins moving forward again. Similarly, the date for Israel was 1 Lord (Mars) which fits well with becoming king. Thus, it is concluded that these are the correct dates implied by the prophecy, and that all were accurate to the very day, being a strong witness of the foreknowledge of God.

Notes

  1. This article is an update to a previous article which contains much of the same material, but this new one includes results from the updated Mars Calendar. See my "The Timing of David and Solomon's Reigns" Meridian Magazine (12 Nov 2003) Section 3: Ezekiel's Witness.
  2. The quote from 2 Chronicles says only that it was when the "year expired" but the Babylonians Chronicles date is explicit. The date of 2 Adar of Nebuchadnezzar's seventh year corresponds to Sat 10 Mar 597 BC, which in turn was New Year's Day, 1 Nisan. See my "Venus and the Beginning of Mortality" Meridian Magazine (9 July 2003) Section 2.1: Capture of Jeconiah. Section 2.2 discusses the siege date.
  3. This can be seen because of how the Mars Calendar works. It has "ages" during which the holy days always fall on the same days of the Sacred Round, such as 1 Light in this case, but then there is no other time in history when they fall on those days. King Josiah lived in the age of King David which lasted about 720 years, so it is only during that period in which 1 Rebirth (Mars) can fall on 1 Light, but during that period it always does. See my "Updated Mars Calendars Testify of Sacred Dates" (7 Jul 2018) Section 3: Mars Ages. The day 1 Light (SR) would only coincide with the double resurrection date once in 20 x 14.4 years, meaning once in 283 years and 1 Light would only be 1 Rebirth (Mars) one time in three of those times. Thus, this alignment would only be expected once in the Age of David, and hence, only once in all of history, and that calculation did not include the added alignment with the Uniform Mercury Calendar!