By the same analogy as discussed under v. 5 the 40 years would represent the years of Judah’s sin. In contrast with Israel, Judah remained faithful to her appointed rulers of the house of David. Yet more and more the inhabitants of Judah, too, had become steeped in idolatry, and though there were several devout kings in the kingdom of Judah who sought to stem the rising tide of evil, the course of the nation was progressively downward. One of the last major opportunities for reform came under King Josiah, who, in the 8th year of his reign (2 Chron. 34:3), “began to seek after the God of David his father.” It was a noble attempt, but as far as the people were concerned, it was only a superficial work. They were later told that they had gone too far to turn back the threatened judgments (2 Chron. 34:23-25). If we regard Josiah’s 8th year, 633/632 B.C. as the beginning of Judah’s period of special guilt, then from that date to the first message to Ezekiel in 593/592 B.C. (see on Eze. 4:5) there are exactly 40 years.

 Among other attempts to apply these time periods may be mentioned that which adds 390 and 40 to yield 430 days, which is then compared with Ex. 12:40, where 430 years is given as the years of the sojourning of the children of Israel. But such a similarity seems to be entirely without point. An entirely fanciful variation connects the 390 days with the 40 stripes of Deut. 25:3, reduced by Jewish teachers to “forty stripes save one” (2 Cor. 11:24). Thus 39 were assigned to each of the 10 tribes, leaving 40 for Judah by itself.

 Literally, “a day for the year, a day for the year.” This expression may be compared with a similar statement in Num. 14:34, “After the number of the days in which ye searched the land, even forty days, each day for a year, shall ye bear your iniquities, even forty years.” In these statements are found the first intimations of the prophetic scale which later was to figure so largely in the interpretation of the great time prophecies, such as the “time and times and the dividing of time” (Dan. 7:25), and the “two thousand and three hundred days” (Dan. 8:14).