“Look,” He replied, “I will let you use cow dung instead of human excrement, and you may bake your bread over that.”
The best exposition of this part of Ezekiel's prediction of Jerusalem's desolation is Jeremiah's lamentation of it, Lam 4:3, Lam 4:4, etc., and Lam 4:10, where he pathetically describes the terrible famine that was in Jerusalem during the siege and the sad effects of it. I.
Commenting on Ezekiel 4:9-17
Then he said to me,.... The Lord hearkened to the prophet's prayer and argument, and makes some abatement and alteration in the charge he gave him: lo, I have given thee cow's dung for man's dung: that is, allowed him to make use of the one instead of the other, in baking his mingled bread: thou shalt prepare thy bread therewith; having gathered cow's dung...
cow's dung--a mitigation of the former order (Eze 4:12); no longer "the dung of man"; still the bread so baked is "defiled," to imply that, whatever partial abatement there might be for the prophet's sake, the main decree of God, as to the pollution of Israel by exile among Gentiles, is unalterable.