Ezekiel 24:24

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.

The day Nebuchadnezzar lays siege to Jerusalem, the prophet's wife dies. She was the one he loved most, yet Ezekiel was not to mourn. Through the figure of his wife's death, God tells him to hold back his heart before the judgment of Jehovah.

The people learn that God would teach them about a trouble like no other. It would leave no room for tears or ordinary mourning. The destruction begun was so sweeping that nothing would remain for them but pining away in their iniquities and groaning to one another. Jehovah Himself was profaning the sanctuary by judgment, as they had profaned it by their transgressions and abominations. What a picture of despair, when the sorrow lies too deep for tears, and an overwhelming sense of guilt makes men abandon hope!

Notice that the stroke falls not on the people, but on the prophet. And for him it is not a judgment... So the passage hints plainly enough that 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 stubborn as these are.

God will not let it all end in judgment only. If we have heart for it, He brings us to His side in this matter and shows us how unchanged His heart remains... Nothing can divorce His heart from those He loves. If He has to act in a way that looks like the opposite, faith can still see through the disguise and recognise the love that never changes.

It will be through judgment that all the nations shall know that Jehovah is God... We may see the two means of making Jehovah known in the case of Israel (Ezek. 24:24-27; 28:26; 34:27; 36:11). In the other cases it is by judgment.

God carries these judgments out to make them all know Jehovah. In Israel's case there is something more: the understanding and the special verification of prophecy.

The last act of the judgment now about to fall must wait for the message that announces its full completion. The siege lasted nearly a year and a half, and then came the message that the city had fallen. In that day, when at last all was over and no one could keep up a false hope any longer, God would open the prophet's mouth... not in judgment once more, but announcing blessing to come.

This silence does not mean he said nothing at all, for he prophesied what we read in chapters 25-32. He was to be silent about Israel.

Someone will say that all this was "a sign" to Israel. True; but it proves that in prophetic testimony, and in worship as a priest too, we must rise above all the claims and influences of nature and of earth.