And when you have completed these, that is, at the end of the 390 days that Ezekiel lay on his side. Parole de Vie says simply “At the end of this time.”
You shall lie down a second time, but on your right side …: After lying on his left side for 390 days, God tells Ezekiel to lie down again, but this time on his other side. He must lie on his right side for forty days. During this time he must bear the punishment of the house of Judah, that is, he must suffer just as his people suffer. The house of Judah refers to the people who lived in the southern kingdom of Judah in and around Jerusalem. It is unclear why the people of Judah are specified in this verse after all the Israelites were mentioned in the previous verses, since Ezekiel usually refers to them as the sons of Israel or the house of Israel. Presumably it was because the southern kingdom of Judah was the only part of the Israelite nation that still existed.
Forty days I assign you, a day for each year: God punishes Ezekiel a day for each year he punishes the people of Judah. Many languages will have to make explicit the connection between the days that Ezekiel suffers and the years that the people suffer.
It is not clear what the 40 years refer to. There is no evidence that Ezekiel saw the 40 year period just before his call in 593 B.C., or any other 40 year period of Judah’s history, as a time of especially great sin. However, 40 years makes perfectly good sense if Ezekiel is looking forward to a period of punishment for the people of Judah. Many of his fellow Jews had already been taken into Babylonia, Jerusalem would soon be destroyed, and Ezekiel foresaw a time of exile for his people; these disasters were due to their rebelliousness and wickedness. Thus it is best to understand the 40 years of punishment of the house of Judah as referring to a time of punishment that had just started or was about to start. This punishment was the Babylonian exile. 40 years then may be a general expression for a generation, in which case it is probably a prediction of approximately how long the exile in Babylonia would last, namely, about one generation.
This interpretation of the 40 years depends on a different meaning for the Hebrew word ʿawon rendered punishment than its meaning in verse 5 in connection with the 390 years. There it refers to sin, and here to punishment. Such a play on words will probably not be possible in many languages. Translators in those languages will have to decide how to render the finely balanced, parallel structure of the Hebrew text of verses 4-6, despite the slightly different meaning in the two parts of it for the word ʿawon. We recommend that translators give priority to the meaning, even though it upsets the balanced structure of the original text.
A model for this verse is:
• After that, lie down [on the ground] on your right side. Stay like that for 40 days. Those people of Judah sinned and I will punish them for 40 years. You must take the punishment of the people of Judah on yourself for 40 days, one day for each year [that they will be punished].
Quoted with permission from Gross, Carl & Stine, Philip C. A Handbook on Ezekiel. (UBS Helps for Translators). Miami: UBS, 2016. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .