And you shall eat it as a barley cake, baking it in their sight on human dung.”
This vision properly belongs to the ten tribes, and, for this reason, I have said that God’s vengeance is not to be considered as to the siege of the city alone, but to be extended longer. After the Prophet had spoken of the siege of Jerusalem, he adds, that their reward was prepared for the children of Israel, because a just God was the avenger of each people.
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
And thou shalt eat it as barley cakes,.... That is, the bread made of wheat, barley, beans, lentiles, millet, and fitches, was to be made in the form of barley cakes, and to be baked as they; not in an oven, but under ashes; and these ashes not of wood, or straw, or turf, but as follows: and thou shalt bake it with dung that...