Ezekiel 24:21

God lets the people know that He would teach them about a trouble so great that it would leave no room for tears or ordinary mourning. The destruction begun was so sweeping — Jehovah Himself profaning the sanctuary by judgment, just as they had profaned it by their transgressions and abominations. Nothing would be left for them but wasting away in their sins and groaning to one another. What a picture of despair, when the sorrow lies too deep for tears, and an overwhelming sense of guilt forces people to give up hope!

The city is gone, and the sanctuary with it — the sanctuary so necessary for the nation as a whole, where alone the blood of sacrifice could be offered to God. So the destruction of the sanctuary was the end of all relationship. What could remain between a holy God and a people whose sins could not be atoned for? For the people, this overwhelming disaster might well make every other loss seem small. The voice of lamentation itself was hushed in this silence of despair.

Yet after all, it is not they who can feel these things as God accounts them. They might be overwhelmed by the disaster, but they were to waste away in sins still unrepented of. This, it seems, is why the full meaning of what Ezekiel is called to do does not come out. The loss of their sons and daughters, severe as it is, cannot match the breaking of a marriage bond which Ezekiel suffers. For that, we have to think of the sanctuary itself gone. It was the pledge and seal of the bond. It spoke of the Lord's presence with them and gave the people access to Himself.

Notice that the stroke falls not on the people but on the prophet himself... We have to take the prophet here as really representing the One he stands for. So it is plainly implied that the prophet's sorrow is the sorrow of God Himself. The affliction is on His side, not on man's. Yet it is an affliction that can find no expression among a people as hardened as these... He who has inflicted it is the One who feels what He has inflicted. It is the tearing apart of His own relationship with a people He had taken up to show His love to them.

God pronounces definitive judgment against Jerusalem, who was not even ashamed of her sins... Jerusalem would be set as a cauldron on the fire, to melt and consume the whole. God had purged her, but she was not purged; and now He causes His fury to rest on her.

It is very sad when God's people put their trust in the symbols of God's presence rather than in God Himself... Here the people thought that because the ark was in the camp they were perfectly safe. Later they thought that because they had the temple in Jerusalem the enemy could not overthrow them. The prophet gave them the message of Jehovah: "Amend your ways and your deeds, and I will let you dwell in this place. Do not trust in these deceptive words: 'This is the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD'" (Jeremiah 7:3-4). The presence of the ark did not save Israel any more than the presence of the temple, and this because their ways did not please the God they claimed to serve.