[97] Jehoiakim’s accession and the 7800 day famine in Jerusalem of Ezekiel 4

9 And as for you, take for yourself wheat and barley and broad beans and lentils and millet and spelt, and you must put them in one utensil and make them into bread for you, for the number of the days that you are lying upon your side; 390 days you will eat it.
10 And your food that you will eat will be by weight—20 shekels a day. From time to time you will eat it (Ezekiel 4).

This means that Ezekiel ate 7800 shekels weight of this lovely bread. One wonders what a nutritional analysis would yield? We now employ the Numerical Principle and take a shekel for a day. This gives a duration of 21 years 8 months, for the famine. Incidentally all of the cereals to make one loaf of bread is symbolising famine. We then read:

11 And water you will drink merely by measure, the sixth part of a hin. From time to time you will drink (Ezekiel 4).

We have a repetition of the phrase: From time to time you will eat/drink. So it is a key symbolic meaning. The food represents a famine lasting 7800 days, and the drink is one sixth of a time or 60 days or 60 years. This scarcity of water represents a period of no baptism into the ICC through the law of Moses - see Intro28:

1 Now I do not want you to be ignorant, brothers, that our forefathers were all under the cloud
2 and all passed through the sea and all got baptized into Moses by means of the cloud and of the sea (1 Corinthians 10).

Actually because the sons of Israel were not under law for this period. One could be baptised into the ICC in other ways during this time, so there was some water baptism. We then read:

12 And as a round cake of barley you will eat it; and as for it, upon dung cakes of the excrement of mankind you will bake it before their eyes
13 And Jehovah went on to say: Just like this the sons of Israel will eat their bread unclean among the nations to which I shall disperse them (Ezekiel 4).

Where 'sons of Israel' is meant as opposed to sons of Judah, who were still in Jerusalem:

33 This is what Jehovah of armies has said: The sons of Israel and the sons of Judah are being oppressed together, and all those taking them captive have laid hold on them. They have refused to let them go (Jeremiah 50).

This scripture is included only to show that 'sons of Israel' can be meant in this way.

So it looks like this 7800 day famine relates to the house of Israel. But no, because actually Ezekiel did not bake it on the dung cakes of mankind, he baked it on the dung cakes of cattle, and then we read:

16 And he continued saying to me: Son of man, here I am breaking the rods around which ring-shaped loaves are suspended, in Jerusalem, and they will have to eat bread by weight and in anxious care, and it will be by measure and in horror that they will drink water itself (Ezekiel 4).

So the famine on Jerusalem has them eating bread by weight and water by measure. But this is precisely what Ezekiel was doing in his prophetic drama famine. So applying the No Coincidences Principle we deduce that the 7800 day famine is on Jerusalem. In fact the house of Judah is in less crap than the house of Israel, in the symbolism of this chapter (cattle vs human crap)!

Now even though Ezekiel ate the bread during the 390 day period which represents the siege of Jerusalem:

3 And as for you, take to yourself an iron griddle, and you must put it as an iron wall between you and the city, and you must fix your face against it, and it must get to be in a siege, and you must besiege it. It is a sign to the house of Israel.
4 And as for you, lie upon your left side, and you must lay the error of the house of Israel upon it. For the number of the days that you will lie upon it you will carry their error.
5 And I myself must give to you the years of their error to the number of three hundred and ninety days, and you must carry the error of the house of Israel (Ezekiel 4).

The 390 day period is mentioned twice in the account. So using the Repetition Principle of the code, we know that the second recital stands for an entirely different period in the symbolic meaning. This length of famine in Jerusalem did not occur whilst God was acting as King over his people, i.e. before Jehoiakim became king as vassal of Pharaoh. Because the house of Judah is not recorded as ever having a famine longer than three years (2 Samuel 21). And because with Jehovah as their God, whilst he was acting as their king (through a vassal) they only had to ask and he would end it:

5 Then Jehoshaphat stood up in the congregation of Judah and of Jerusalem in the house of Jehovah before the new courtyard, 
6 and he proceeded to say: Oh Jehovah the God of our forefathers, are you not God in the heavens, and are you not dominating over all the kingdoms of the nations, and are there not in your hand power and mightiness, with no one to hold his ground against you? 
7 Did not you yourself, Oh God of ours, drive away the inhabitants of this land from before your people Israel and then give it to the seed of Abraham, your lover, to time indefinite? 
8 And they took up dwelling in it, and they proceeded to build in it for you a sanctuary for your name, saying, 
9 'If there should come upon us calamity, sword, adverse judgment, or pestilence or famine, let us stand before this house and before you for your name is in this house, that we may call to you for aid out of our distress, and may you hear and save.'  (2 Chronicles 20).

But once Jehoiakim had acceded, who was a vassal king not of God but of Pharaoh, God would no longer offer this protection to people who were not his subjects. They could look to Pharaoh for all the good that would do them. And in fact Pharaoh taxed the people of the land:

35 And the silver and the gold Jehoiakim gave to Pharaoh. Only he taxed the land, to give the silver at the order of Pharaoh. According to each one's individual tax rate he exacted the silver and the gold from the people of the land, to give it to Pharaoh Nechoh (2 Kings 23).

This economic strain, would obviously cause shortages. And in an agricultural economy a shortage was a famine. So the 7800 day famine started at the accession of Jehoiakim and being on the inhabitants of Jerusalem lasted until they went into exile in the fifth month of 586 BC:

3 And it kept on occurring in the days of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah, the king of Judah, until the completion of the eleventh year of Zedekiah the son of Josiah, the king of Judah, until Jerusalem went into exile in the fifth month (Jeremiah 1).

In fact the temple was burnt on 586Ab10 BC (13th August 586 BC) and the exile started on that day:

12 And in the fifth month, on the tenth day of the month, that is, [in] the nineteenth year of King Nebuchadrezzar, the king of Babylon, Nebuzaradan the chief of the bodyguard, who was standing before the king of Babylon, came into Jerusalem.
13 And he proceeded to burn the house of Jehovah and the house of the king and all the houses of Jerusalem; and every great house he burned with fire.
14 And all the walls of Jerusalem, round about, all the military forces of the Chaldeans that were with the chief of the bodyguard pulled down.
15 And some of the lowly ones of the people and the rest of the people that were left remaining in the city and the deserters that had fallen away to the king of Babylon and the rest of the master workmen Nebuzaradan the chief of the bodyguard took into exile (Jeremiah 52).

This was obviously the end of the famine in Jerusalem, by virtue of it being the end both of Jerusalem and its inhabitation. So if we count 7800 BLC days backwards from here we end up on 608Chislev10 (13th November). This then must have been the accession day of Jehoiakim. This makes sense because Kings and Pharaoh’s sally forth in spring, in Nisan/Iyyar with their armies normally. So Necho would have reached Megiddo around Sivan/Tammuz say. Then Jehoahaz ruled for three months being appointed in Tammuz/Ab say until Tishri/Heshvan, with Jehoiakim acceding next month in Chislev. The BLC months go:

Nisan (March/April), Iyyar, Sivan, Tammuz, Ab, Elul, Tishri, Heshvan, Chislev, Tebbeth, Shebat, Adar (February/March).

The 60 year dry period

The 70 year exile for Judah ran from 586Tishri to 516Tishri, in agricultural years, see U122. This was a sabbath from the law of Moses, the administration of God. Zerubbabel’s temple was 'inaugurated without the law' in 516Veadar - see U122, before the Passover. But the law wasn’t actually entered into again by the nation until 455Tishri24, after the festival of Booths had been properly re instated by Ezra (Nehemiah 8,9,10). So there was a 60 year period from 515 to 455 when it was not possible to get baptised into Moses (it was possible to get baptised into Abraham). This is the period represented by one sixth of a time, by the Times Principle, symbolised by one sixth of a hin, by the Numerical Principle. This 60 year chronology is based on the 20th year of Artaxerxes I being 455 BC, see - The 20th year of Artaxerxes I was 455 BC.