Ezekiel 24:16

In Ezekiel 24 God pronounces final judgment on Jerusalem, who was not even ashamed of her sins. The day Nebuchadnezzar lays siege to the city, the prophet's wife dies. She was the dearest object of his affections, yet Ezekiel was not to mourn. Under the figure of his wife's death God tells him to hold his heart back before the judgment of the Lord.

The prophet is next called to feel a stroke from God of the most intimate kind, if by any means the captives at the Chebar could be forced to feel the seriousness of the crisis and of that rebellious denial of the true God which had brought judgment on the Jews.

It is not that grief is forbidden, but the expression of it. He is to be in this expressionless grief a sign to the people.

God informs the people that He would teach them of a trouble like no other, one that would leave no room for tears or ordinary mourning. The destruction now beginning was so sweeping that nothing would remain for them but pining away in their iniquities and groaning to one another. The Lord Himself profaned the sanctuary by judgment, as they had by their transgressions and abominations. What a picture of despair! The sorrow lies too deep for tears, and an overwhelming sense of guilt drives men to give up hope.

The loss of their sons and daughters, however severe, cannot match this breaking of a marriage bond that 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 hint is plain: the prophet's sorrow is the sorrow of God Himself. The affliction is on His part, not on man's side. Yet it is an affliction which can find no expression among a people as hard as these are... He who has inflicted it is He who feels what He has inflicted. It is the tearing apart of His own relationship with a people whom He had taken up to show His love to them.

He neither speaks nor acts like an ordinary man, but thinks and feels as a prophet... He puts himself completely under the will of the Lord, and sinks the interests of his own life into the work of his prophetic office.

Someone may ask: are we to be stoics? I ask, were Aaron and his sons stoics? No; they were priests. Did they not feel as men? Yes; but they worshipped as priests.