Ezechiel 4:15
And he said to me: Behold I have given thee neat's dung for man's dung, and thou shalt make thy bread therewith.
Open Ezechiel 4:15 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Et dixit ad me : Ecce dedi tibi fimum boum pro stercoribus humanis, et facies panem tuum in eo.
- Septuagint (Swete)
- καὶ εἶπεν πρὸς μέ Ἰδοὺ δέδωκά σοι βόλβιτα βοῶν ἀντὶ τῶν βολβίτων τῶν ἀνθρωπίνων, καὶ ποιήσεις τοὺς ἄρτους σου ἐπ᾽ αὐτῶν.
- Hebrew (WLC)
- וַיֹּ֣אמֶר אֵלַ֔י רְאֵ֗ה נָתַ֤תִּֽי לְךָ֙ אֶת צפועי הַבָּקָ֔ר תַּ֖חַת גֶּלְלֵ֣י הָֽאָדָ֑ם וְעָשִׂ֥יתָ אֶֽת לַחְמְךָ֖ עֲלֵיהֶֽם
Haydock's commentary
Neats, or "oxen;" boum. Protestants, "cow's dung." (Haydock)
God allows him to bake his bread under such ashes. (Calmet)
So great is his condescension towards his friends! (Calmet)
From Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859, in the transcription made by Todd Easton and kept online by John Paul Wohlschied at johnblood.gitlab.io/haydock.
The Fathers on this verse
St Jerome The Letters of St. Jerome, To Marcella
1. The medical men called surgeons pass for being cruel, but really deserve pity. For is it not pitiful to cut away the dead flesh of another man with merciless knives without being moved by his pangs? Is it not pitiful that the man who is curing the patient is callous to his sufferings, and has to appear as his enemy? Yet such is the order of nature. While truth is always bitter, pleasantness waits upon evil-doing. Isaiah goes naked without blushing as a type of captivity to come. Jeremiah is sent from Jerusalem to the Euphrates (a river in Mesopotamia), and leaves his girdle to be marred in the Chaldæan camp, among the Assyrians hostile to his people. Ezekiel is told to eat bread made of mingled seeds and sprinkled with the dung of men and cattle. He has to see his wife die without shedding a tear. Amos is driven from Samaria. …