A day for a year

The next notable example of a day being appointed to represent a year, is in Ezek. 4:4. In this place he states that he was commanded to lie upon his left side 390 days, during which he would be considered as bearing the past iniquity of the house of Israel. After these were expired, he was to lie upon his right side 40 days, to bear the iniquity of the house of Judah, making in all 430 days for the iniquity of the whole twelve tribes. All these were sign-days, for the Spirit said, "I have appointed thee each day for a year." They were memorial of the past, and prophetic or significant of the future. They memorialized the iniquity of the nation, from their revolt against the house of David, in the fourth year of the reign of Rehoboam, to the nineteenth of Nebuchadnezzar, B.C. 589, when the temple was burned, an interval of 390 years; and the iniquity of Judah from the fourth of Solomon, when the foundation of the temple was laid, to the fourth of Rehoboam, when his dominion was restricted to Judah and Benjamin. The whole 430 years marks the existence of the temple built by Solomon, a period of national transgression coextensive with the interval between the typical Confirmation of the Land-Covenant with Abraham (Gen. 15:7-21), and the end of the sojourning in Canaan and in Egypt (Exod. 12:40). This text is obscure as it stands in the English Version and the Hebrew, unless we read "who dwelt in Egypt" as a parenthesis, thus, "Now the sojourning of the children of Israel (who dwelt in Egypt) was 430 years." That is, "their sojourning was 430 years," partly in Canaan and partly in Egypt, and is so expressed in the Septuagint, which, after Egypt, adds the words kai en ge chanaan, and in the land of Canaan.

But the 430 days of Ezekiel became typical of 430 years, during which the children of Israel "should eat their defiled bread among the Gentiles, whither I will drive them," saith the Spirit (verse 13). That is, as Ezekiel ate defiled bread for the 430 days he typically bore their iniquity, so the people scattered by Nebuchadnezzar should eat their defiled bread 430 years. History shows this to have been literally fulfilled in the condition of the nation from the burning of the temple to the recovery of independence under the Maccabees, B.C. 169. Thus, 430 years of transgression were visited with 430 years of national humiliation, the former memorialized by 430 sign-days, and the latter typified by the same.