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.
Three hundred and ninety days. The 390 years of punishment appointed for Israel, and forty for Judah, cannot refer to the siege of Jerusalem. That siege is referred to (Ezekiel 4:1-3), not in a sense restricted to the literal siege, but comprehending the whole train of punishment to be inflicted for their sin; therefore we read here merely of its sore pressure, not of its result. The sum of 390 and 40 years is 430-a period famous in the history of the covenant people, being that of their sojourn in Egypt (Exodus 12:40-41; Galatians 3:17). The 40 alludes to the 40 years in the wilderness. Elsewhere (Deuteronomy 28:68; Hosea 9:3) God threatened to bring them back to Egypt, which must mean, not Egypt literally, but a bondage as bad as that one in Egypt. So now God will reduce them to a kind of new Egyptian bondage to the world: Israel, the greater transgressor, for a longer period than Judah (cf. Ezekiel 20:35-38).
Not the whole of the 430 years of the Egypt-state is appointed to Israel; but this shortened by the forty years of the wilderness sojourn, to imply that a way is open to their return to life by their having the Egypt-state merged into that of the wilderness - i:e., by ceasing from idolatry, and seeking, in their sifting and sore troubles, through God's covenant, a restoration to righteousness and peace (Fairbairn). The 390, in reference to the sin of Israel, was also literally true, being the years from the setting up of the calves by Jeroboam (1 Kings 12:20-33) - i:e., from 975 to 585 B.C. about the year of the Babylonian captivity; and perhaps the 40 of Judah refers to that part of Manasseh's 55 years' reign in which he had not repented, and which, we are expressly told, was the cause of, God's removal of Judah, notwithstanding Josiah's reformation (1 Kings 21:10-16; 23:26-27).