8 In the morning the word of the Lord came to me: 9 “Son of man, has not the house of Israel, the rebellious house, said to you, ‘What are you doing?’10 Say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord God: This oracle concerns the prince in Jerusalem and all the house of Israel who are in it.’ 11 Say, ‘I am a sign for you: as I have done, so shall it be done to them. They shall go into exile, into captivity.’ 12 And the prince who is among them shall lift his baggage upon his shoulder at dusk, and shall go out. They shall dig through the wall to bring him out through it. He shall cover his face, that he may not see the land with his eyes. 13 And I will spread my net over him, and he shall be taken in my snare. And I will bring him to Babylon, the land of the Chaldeans, yet he shall not see it, and he shall die there. 14 And I will scatter towards every wind all who are round him, his helpers and all his troops, and I will unsheathe the sword after them. 15 And they shall know that I am the Lord, when I disperse them among the nations and scatter them among the countries. 16 But I will let a few of them escape from the sword, from famine and pestilence, that they may declare all their abominations among the nations where they go, and may know that I am the Lord.”
The explanation of the symbolic actions is now given in these verses. The reference to 'the prince' in 10ff is interesting. Who is this prince, and what do the words at the end of 13 mean, 'yet shall he not see it though he shall die there'? We need to bear in mind the situation in Jerusalem at this time. After Jehoiakim had been taken into captivity with the first batch of exiles, Nebuchadnezzar placed a puppet king upon the throne, Zedekiah, and it is he that is referred to here as the prince. A glance at 2 Kings 25 will show exactly what happened; and it is all the more dramatic when we see how literally this prophecy of Ezekiel's was fulfilled within a matter of two or three years. For the city was besieged and brought to surrender, and all the men of war fled by night by the way of the gate between two walls, just in the way that Ezekiel prophesied. And the army of the Chaldeans pursued after the fleeing king, overtaking him in the plains of Jericho, and brought him to the king of Babylon, in Riblah, and they gave judgment upon him, slaying his sons before his eyes, and then putting out his eyes and, binding him with fetters of brass, carried him to Babylon, just as Ezekiel had prophesied. Thus, though he was brought to Babylon and died there, he did not see the place of his captivity. Such, then, is the first enacted parable, and it came so grimly to pass, within three short years. This short space of time is important, since later on in the chapter (22ff) the people were saying, 'The days are prolonged and every vision faileth', as if to say 'We have heard all that before. You keep on uttering doom, you prophets, but it has never happened'. In three years, this one was fulfilled to the letter.