Jerusalem is to be represented on a brick, and the brick itself is to be placed before the prophet, so that when it looks like Jerusalem in the dust, it can portray the whole blockade against it.
(Chapter 4, Verses 1-2.) And you, son of man, take a brick for yourself and set it before you, and portray on it the city of Jerusalem. Build siege works against it, build a siege mound against it, raise a ramp against it, set up camps against it, and place battering rams against it all around. As we have said before, go inside and enclose it in the midst of your house; and behold, ropes will be put on you, and you will be bound, and you shall not go out. This is a symbolic representation of the prophet's future siege of the city of Jerusalem. Now he is commanded to use geometric art to depict it on a brick, and to place that brick in front of the prophet. After he has portrayed Jerusalem with dust, he is to depict the entire siege against it, representing the fortifications, the raised mound, the encircling army, and the battering rams, all of which are typical in capturing cities. Fortifications are called the things by which a city is enclosed, so that none of the besieged can escape: mounds are brought together by which ramparts and ditches are filled; camps are the guards of soldiers in a circuit; battering rams are those by which the foundations of walls are shaken, and the joining of stones is dissolved. However, this is said in order to signify the neighboring captivity of the city of Jerusalem under Zedekiah: in the eleventh year of which both the king and the city were captured. On the side, which is called in Greek the feminine gender ἡ πλίνθος, Symmachus has more clearly interpreted it as πλίνθιον, which we can call a brick and a tile. In whose dust geometers are accustomed to draw lines, that is, lines and rays. From which some wish, not unreasonably, also to have knowledge of this doctrine (replicating those examples, that Joshua son of Nun sent explorers, who described the land (Joshua 2), which is properly called Geometry: and the Angel in Zechariah had a Geometric cord to measure Jerusalem (Zechariah 2). And what the Prophet now commands to describe in the dust (which is properly called scenography) we can take as a brick and as a stroke of the Israelites, which served Pharaoh in mud and clay (Exodus 1). Or suppose that the city, which they thought was strong and impregnable, is compared to a very fragile wall, which immediately dissolves upon contact with water, as was previously stated: is the hardest rock or a deserted mountain turned into a brick, which is corrupted by the Babylonian flood; according to what is written: Therefore, the Lord will bring upon you many and strong waters, the king of Assyria.
Some things, however, ought to be reproved strongly, so that when a fault is not recognized by the one who has committed it, he may be made aware of its gravity by verbal reproof, or when anyone glosses over an evil that he has perpetrated, he may be led by the harshness of his censure to entertain grave fears of its effects on him. For indeed it is the duty of a ruler to show by the voice of preaching the glory of our heavenly country, to disclose what great temptations of the old enemy are lurking in this life’s journey, and to correct with zealous harshness such evils among those who are under his sway that should not be gently borne with, lest, in being too little incensed against such faults, he himself be held guilty of all faults.
When we know that one thing is accomplished according to history and we recognize that another lacks any reason according to history, we are to hold both in holy Scripture, since we are to believe that the siege of Jerusalem, which according to the meaning of the words happened later, is prefigured in the words and deeds of the prophet, and yet another siege, an inward one, is meant by it.
A teacher ought to come to know which temptations beset the progressing soul in order that he may be able to prepare it to be on its guard against the traps of the evil spirit.
[AD 420] Jerome on Ezekiel 4:1-2