The word of the LORD came to me:
God warns Ezekiel in advance that He Himself will take his wife. The chapter opens on the day Nebuchadnezzar's army closed in on Jerusalem, so why does God choose the prophet's own home to make His point?
A blow at the closest point
Here the sign moves from what Ezekiel does to what he loses.
William KellyThe prophet himself is next called to fear a stroke from God of the most intimate kind. The hope was that this would force the captives at the Chebar to feel the seriousness of the crisis and of that rebellious denial of the true God which had brought judgment on the Jews.
The Chebar was a canal in Babylon where the exiles lived. Words had not moved them; a prophet burying his wife without a tear was harder to ignore.
"The desire of your eyes"
The people ask what the strange behaviour means. God answers by naming the temple as the desire of their eyes, and says He will profane it Himself.
William Kelly"Speak to the house of Israel … I will profane my sanctuary, the pride of your strength, the desire of your eyes, and the thing your soul pities; and your sons and your daughters whom you have left behind shall fall by the sword." … God would teach the people about a trouble with no equal. It would leave no room for tears or ordinary mourning.
The quotation above follows an older translation. What the wife was to Ezekiel, the sanctuary was to Israel: the loss would be as personal as a death in the family.
Grief permitted, mourning silenced
Ezekiel is not told to feel nothing. God bans only the outward signs of mourning.
Numerical Bible NotesIt is not grief that is forbidden, but the expression of it. In this expressionless grief he is to be a sign to the people.
What the death was saying
The plain meaning comes first: a bond broken by death cannot be repaired.
Arno Clemens GaebeleinWhile he faithfully delivered the message in the morning, even his wife was taken from his side. Death dissolved the marriage union and took the beloved wife from the prophet. In the same way, the tie between Jehovah and Jerusalem was now to be cut off completely.
Commentators also look deeper. The sanctuary carried a weight that no family loss could match.
Numerical Bible NotesThe loss of their sons and daughters, severe as it is, is not the equal of this breaking of a marriage-tie under which Ezekiel suffers. For that, we have to think of the sanctuary itself gone. The sanctuary was the pledge and seal of the tie. It spoke of the Lord's presence with them, and gave the people access to Himself. Once that tie was broken, it might well swallow up all others.
The man behind the prophet
The account of the command carries a note of tenderness. Ezekiel's obedience cost him something real.
W. T. P. WolstonThe wife of the prophet died on the day that Nebuchadnezzar began the siege. She was the one he loved most tenderly, yet he was not to mourn, and he did not. The beautiful touch of tenderness at the start of the account shows that he had the sympathies and affections of any human being. But he puts himself completely under the will of Jehovah, and sinks the interests of his own life in the work of his prophetic office.
The lesson carried forward
God had once made the same demand of Aaron the priest, when his sons were struck down. Writers set the two scenes side by side.
C. H. MackintoshSomeone will say that all this was "a sign" to Israel. True. But it proves that in prophetic testimony, as well as in priestly worship, we must rise above all the claims and influences of nature and of earth. A single stroke cut down Aaron's sons and Ezekiel's wife. Yet neither the priest nor the prophet was to uncover his head or shed a tear.
Summary
- Stroke. God takes Ezekiel's wife with a single blow — the most intimate loss He could ask a servant to bear.
- Sign. The wife is not the message; the silent grief is. God allows the sorrow but forbids every outward sign of it, until the people ask what it means.
- Sanctuary. God calls His own temple the desire of their eyes, and says He will profane it Himself.
- Severed. Death dissolved the marriage bond, and in the same way the tie between the Lord and Jerusalem would end — with the sanctuary gone, every lesser grief was swallowed up.
- Surrender. Ezekiel felt the loss and still obeyed, sinking his own life into his calling, as Aaron had to do before him.