“Look, It Is Coming!”

13. Why did Jehovah tell Ezekiel to lie on his left side and then on his right side?

¹³ Besides foretelling how Jerusalem would be destroyed, Ezekiel also acted out when that would happen. Ezekiel was told by Jehovah to lie on his left side for 390 days and on his right side for 40 days. Each day represented a year. (Read Ezekiel 4:4-6; Num. 14:34) That enactment, which Ezekiel must have performed for only a part of each day, pointed to the exact year of Jerusalem’s destruction. The 390 years of Israel’s error evidently began in 997 B.C.E., the year that the 12-tribe kingdom was divided into two parts. (1 Ki. 12:12-20) The 40 years of Judah’s sin likely began in 647 B.C.E., which was the year that Jeremiah was commissioned as a prophet to warn the kingdom of Judah, in clear-cut terms, about its coming destruction. (Jer. 1:1, 2, 17-19; 19:3, 4) Thus, both time periods would end in 607 B.C.E., the exact year in which Jerusalem fell and was destroyed, just as Jehovah had foretold.b

14. (a) How did Ezekiel show his confidence in Jehovah as an exact timekeeper? (b) What would precede Jerusalem’s destruction?

¹⁴ At the time that Ezekiel received the prophecy of the 390 days and the 40 days, he may not have discerned the exact year of Jerusalem’s end. Nevertheless, in the years leading up to its destruction, he repeatedly warned the Jews that Jehovah’s judgment was coming. “The end is now upon you,” he proclaimed. (Read Ezekiel 7:3, 5-10.) Ezekiel had no doubt that Jehovah would prove to be an exact timekeeper. (Isa. 46:10) The prophet also foretold what events would precede the destruction of Jerusalem: “There will come disaster upon disaster.” Those events, in turn, would lead up to the breakdown of social, religious, and governmental structures.​—Ezek. 7:11-13, 25-27.

15. What parts of Ezekiel’s prophecy began to be fulfilled from 609 B.C.E. onward?

¹⁵ A few years after Ezekiel proclaimed Jerusalem’s fall, the prophecy began to be fulfilled. In 609 B.C.E., Ezekiel learned that the attack against Jerusalem had begun. At that time, the sound of the trumpet summoned the inhabitants to defend their city, but as Ezekiel had foretold, “no one” was “going to the battle.” (Ezek. 7:14) Jerusalem’s inhabitants did not rally to the city’s defense to fight the Babylonian invaders. Some Jews may have thought that Jehovah would come to their rescue. He had done so before when the Assyrians had threatened to take Jerusalem and an angel of Jehovah had destroyed most of their army. (2 Ki. 19:32) But no angelic help arrived this time. Before long, the besieged city resembled a “cooking pot” that was put “on the fire,” and its inhabitants were caught like “pieces of meat” inside the pot. (Ezek. 24:1-10) After an agonizing siege that lasted 18 months, Jerusalem was destroyed.