EZEKIEL 4:4-8

 Q: What time period does this strange acted-out prophecy refer to?

You are not alone in being confused. I will answer this question in an indirect way by examining a chain of reasoning popular in some dispensational circles, which says that the prophecy actually foretold to the exact year (some even say to the exact day) the establishment of the modern state of Israel.

Step 1: The main prophecy comes from Ezekiel 4:4-8 with Ezekiel being told to lie 390 days on one side and 40 on the other, standing for the number of years of punishment. Add both numbers.

A. The first fact to note is that the textual evidence is evenly divided between 190 and 390 in verse 5. The New Bible Commentary, for example, says that 190 is probably the correct number (p. 668). The New English Bible and The Jerusalem Bible use this number for their translations. It is possible to reach a good understanding of the text using the number 190 (without resorting to convoluted mathematics) as indicated in some of the approaches in D below.

B. Next is the common understanding among most commentators that the 40 years in verse 6 is another way of stating a complete generation in the Exodus story, and is not to be taken literally.

C. Even if the two numbers are taken literally, there is a difference of opinion as to whether they should be added up, or occur simultaneously.

D. The next, and most important, point to notice is that there is no hint here that this applies to a future (secular) state such as modern Israel. A universally accepted principle of hermeneutics is that the nearest date of fulfillment is to be preferred. Therefore it is not unexpected that the vast majority of commentators apply this prediction to events related to the return from Babylonian exile. Many of these approaches are summarized by Block (The Book of Ezekiel, pp. 174-178). Using 190 days as the original text and subtracting 40 years, the calculated time of exile for the Northern Kingdom becomes 150 years, which is almost exactly the time between its fall and the fall of Jerusalem. Using 390 + 40 years, the time period approximates the duration of the First Temple. Thus, when the combined time of punishment equals the time of Solomon's temple, then the temple may be rebuilt. Other calculations point to the rise of the Hasidim or the Macabees as the endpoint of the prophecy.

Even Robert Chisholm, a Dallas Theological Seminar professor, concurs with Block on the difficulty of determining which time period is being referred to, but he does agree that it occurred during OT times. (see Handbook on the Prophets, p. 236)

Step 2: In Jeremiah 25:11, the period of Babylonian exile is predicted to be 70 years. Subtract this from the previous number for the remaining time in exile.

A. Some commentators assume that 70 is simply another way of stating the average lifetime of a person, or another way of saying “many”.

B. This is variously understood, even by other Biblical authors as applying (approximately) to the time between the destruction of the Temple in 587 and its rebuilding in 520-525 (Zechariah 1:12), the period between 587 and Cyrus' edict in 538 (II Chronicles 36:20-23), or to events during the days of Antiochus Epiphanes (Book of Daniel). This time period also approximates the time between the fall of Nineveh in 612 and the fall of Babylon in 539, and may refer to that period. (Thompson, The Book of Jeremiah, pp. 513-514). NRSV notes that it refers from the time of the original prophecy to Jeremiah (605 BC) to the defeat of Babylon by Cyrus in 539 (total of 66 years)

Step 3: The years of punishment must next be multiplied by 7 according to Leviticus 26:18-33.

A. Nowhere in this chapter does it say that Israel's time of punishment will be multiplied by seven. The descriptions instead show the wide variety or number of punishments that will be visited on them.

B. Seven is a round number often appied to repeated (not extended) punishments in the Bible (see references in Wenham, The Book of Leviticus, p. 331).

C. Seven times: It is apparently the intensity rather than the duration that is referred to. (New Bible Commentary: Revised, p. 167.

D. Payne (Encyclopedia of Biblical Prophecy, p. 199) applies this particular curse specifically to the time of the Divided Kingdom and the Babylonian Exile, having nothing to do with any other time period. Allen Ross (Holiness to the Lord, pp. 476-481) similarly notes that there are five stages to the punishments outlined in Lev. 26, ending (not beginning) with the exile.

Step 4: The starting date to be used is Israel's loss of independence as a vassal state under Nebuchnezzar in 606.

A. The actual fall of Jerusalem in 586 would be a much more expected and logical date to start with.

B. Loss of independence actually began in 608 with a puppet state set up under Eliakim by the Egyptians. (Lasor et al, Old Testament Survey, p. 218)

C. The date 606 (or 607) was first proposed by the Jehovah Witnesses for the fall of Jerusalem, in spite of all archeological evidence to the contrary. Dispensationalists then took the same date, but applied it to a different event to get the math to work out properly. 

Step 5: The ending date is when a proposal for establishing State of Israel was given to the UN. However, it wasn't until the following year that the state was actually established.

Step 6: All calculations must be based on the 360-day lunar year Hebrew calendar. Convert the number of years arrived at above.

A. In the first place, a Hebrew year has 365 1/4 days in it just as our modern calendar. But even if you want to ignore all the added days needed to make up a true year (by all cultures' standards), the Hebrew lunar calendar has only 354 days in it, with the deficit being made up by occasional additions of days or even whole months (randomly decided by the priests each year). Because of this variation, no exact date in Old Testament times can be correlated with any modern date, whether using a common calendar or the Gregorian one. (see detailed Wikipedia article on the Hebrew calendar)

B. As best as I can tell, the existence of a 360-day calendar was first proposed by the Jehovah Witnesses in the 1800's to justify their various predicted dates for the Second Coming (all of which failed and were subsequently revised) using the same sort of calculations employed later by the Dispensationalists.

Some general references that might be useful if you are interested in this sort of prophetic argument which is doomed to failure since it relies on a chain of reasoning:

A. Davis' Biblical Numerology is very useful in highlighting the various ways Biblical authors used numbers, some of which are quite different from our modern, scientific usage.

B. Carl Armerding and Ward Gasque's book A Handbook on Biblical Prophecy on how to truly understand Biblical prophecy is probably the best one on the subject. The chapters are written by a variety of authors with somewhat different points of view, but all agree that a strictly literal reading of most prophecies is not justified by the evidence.