Take thou also unto thee wheat, and barley, and beans, and lentiles, and millet, and fitches, and put them in one vessel, and make thee bread thereof, according to the number of the days that thou shalt lie upon thy side, three hundred and ninety days shalt thou eat thereof.
Take thou also unto thee wheat, and barley ... - instead of fine meal or simple flour used for delicate cakes (Genesis 18:6), the Jews should have a coarse mixture of six different kinds of grain, such as the poorest alone would eat.
Fitches - spelt or dhourra.
Three hundred and ninety days shalt thou eat thereof - the 40 days which complete the 430 (note, Ezekiel 4:5) are omitted, since these latter typify the wilderness period, when Israel stood separate from the Gentiles and their pollutions, though partially chastened by stint of bread and water (Ezekiel 4:16); whereas the eating of the polluted bread in the 390 days implies a forced residence "among the Gentiles," who were "defiled" with idolatry (Ezekiel 4:13). This last is said of "Israel" primarily, as being the most debased (Ezekiel 4:9-15): they had spiritually sunk to a level with the pagan, therefore God will make their condition outwardly to correspond. Judah and Jerusalem fare less hardly, being less guilty: they are to "eat bread by weight and with care" - i:e., have a stinted supply, and be chastened with the milder discipline of the wilderness-period of 40 years. But Judah also is secondarily referred to in the 390 days, as having fallen, like Israel, into Gentile defilements; if, then, the Jews are to escape from the exile among Gentiles, which is their just punishment, they must submit again to the wilderness-probation (Ezekiel 4:16).