Ezekiel 24:18

In Ezekiel 24 God pronounces final judgment on Jerusalem, who was not even ashamed of her sins. On 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. Her death is a picture: he is told to hold his heart in check before the judgment of Jehovah. Once that judgment had been carried out, the prophet's mouth would be opened, and the word of Jehovah would go out openly to the remnant, so that they would know Jehovah.

He clearly had the sympathies and affections of a human heart. You can see it in the beautiful touch of tenderness at the opening of the story. But he puts himself completely under the will of Jehovah. He sinks the interests of his own life into the work of his prophetic office.

It is not that grief is forbidden, but the expression of it. In this grief that he may not show, he is to be a sign to the people. He must sigh in silence, make no mourning for the dead, keep his turban on his head and his sandals on his feet, not cover his beard, and not eat the bread of men.

At a death like this people normally wailed loudly, and even hired mourners to do it. Ezekiel's behaviour was so different that it called for an explanation.

Death had dissolved the marriage union and taken the beloved wife from the prophet. In the same way, the bond between Jehovah and Jerusalem was now to be cut off completely.

The loss of their sons and daughters, hard as it was, cannot match this breaking of a marriage tie 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 the others.

Someone will say that all this was only "a sign" to Israel. True. But it proves that in prophetic testimony, and in priestly worship too, we must rise above every claim and influence of nature and of earth. Aaron's sons and Ezekiel's wife were struck down in a moment. Yet neither the priest nor the prophet was to uncover his head or shed a tear.

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… Nearness to God as priests gives the soul such insight into all His ways, and such a sense of the rightness of all His dealings, that one is able to worship in His presence. That holds even when the stroke of His hand has taken from us someone we tenderly loved.