The Terrible Sign of Unmourned Love Text: Ezekiel 24:15-27
Introduction: When God Makes a Man a Message
We live in a soft and sentimental age. Our therapeutic culture has taught us to prize our feelings above all else, to treat our emotional responses as the truest thing about us. Grief is to be processed, trauma is to be centered, and personal expression is the highest good. Into this world, the book of Ezekiel crashes like a chariot of fire. The prophetic ministry was not a safe space. To be a prophet of God was to be conscripted into a war, and sometimes the battlefield was your own life, your own body, your own home.
God did not just give his prophets messages to speak; He often made the prophets themselves the message. He told Isaiah to walk around stripped and barefoot for three years as a sign against Egypt. He commanded Hosea to marry a prostitute to embody the spiritual adultery of Israel. And here, in our text today, God demands something of Ezekiel that strikes us as almost unbearably cruel. He is going to take from him the love of his life, "the desire of his eyes," and He commands the prophet not to cry. He is to perform his grief in silence, suppressing every customary, public sign of mourning.
This is a hard word. This is one of those passages that modern sensibilities want to skip over, or explain away. But we must not. For in this terrible sign, this severe mercy, God is teaching us something absolutely foundational about His own character, about the nature of sin, and about the cost of judgment. This is not a story about a cruel God who is indifferent to human love and loss. It is a story about a holy God who uses the most profound human love to illustrate the horror of spurning the most ultimate divine love. Ezekiel's personal tragedy was to become a public sign. His silent, stoic grief was to be a living parable of the stupefied, speechless shock that would fall upon the house of Israel when God finally took from them the desire of their eyes, the pride of their strength: the temple in Jerusalem.
This passage forces us to confront the absolute sovereignty of God. God is God. He does what He pleases, and He has the right to do what He pleases. Our lives, our loves, our deepest joys, and our sharpest sorrows all belong to Him. And when He chooses to use them for His purposes, our only proper response is to obey, to trust, and to know that the Judge of all the earth will do right. Ezekiel's obedience in his darkest hour is a staggering display of faith, and it is a faith that we are called to emulate. We are to learn that our personal sorrows, however deep, are not the ultimate reality. The ultimate reality is the glory of God and the outworking of His perfect will.
The Text
And the word of Yahweh came to me saying, "Son of man, behold, I am about to take from you the desire of your eyes with a blow; but you shall not mourn, and you shall not weep, and your tears shall not come. Groan silently; make no mourning for the dead. Bind on your headdress and put your shoes on yourfeet and do not cover your mustache and do not eat the bread of men." So I spoke to the people in the morning, and in the evening my wife died. And in the morning I did as I was commanded. The people said to me, "Will you not tell us what these things that you are doing mean for us?" Then I said to them, "The word of Yahweh came to me saying, 'Say to the house of Israel, "Thus says Lord Yahweh, 'Behold, I am about to profane My sanctuary, the pride of your strength, the desire of your eyes, and the delight of your soul; and your sons and your daughters whom you have left behind will fall by the sword. And you will do as I have done; you will not cover your mustache, and you will not eat the bread of men. And your headdresses will be on your heads and your shoes on your feet. You will not mourn, and you will not weep, but you will rot away in your iniquities, and you will groan to one another. Thus Ezekiel will be a wondrous sign to you; according to all that he has done you will do; when it comes, then you will know that I am Lord Yahweh.' "
'Now as for you, son of man, will it not be on the day when I take from them their strong defense, the joy of their beauty, the desire of their eyes, and what lifts up their soul, their sons and their daughters, that on that day he who escapes will come to you with a report for your ears? On that day your mouth will be opened to him who escaped, and you will speak and be mute no longer. Thus you will be a wondrous sign to them, and they will know that I am Yahweh.' "
(Ezekiel 24:15-27 LSB)
The Terrible Command (vv. 15-18)
The passage begins with a direct and devastating word from God to his prophet.
"Son of man, behold, I am about to take from you the desire of your eyes with a blow; but you shall not mourn, and you shall not weep, and your tears shall not come. Groan silently; make no mourning for the dead. Bind on your headdress and put your shoes on your feet and do not cover your mustache and do not eat the bread of men." (Ezekiel 24:16-17)
God announces His intention plainly. He is going to take Ezekiel's wife. The language is tender and poignant: "the desire of your eyes." This was not a loveless marriage. This was his delight, his joy, the one his eyes sought out. And God says He will take her "with a blow," suddenly and shockingly. But the command that follows is even more shocking. Ezekiel is forbidden from engaging in any of the normal, culturally expected rites of mourning. He is not to lament aloud, not to weep, not to let tears flow. He is to groan, but silently. Internally. He is to bind on his turban instead of letting his hair down in grief. He is to keep his shoes on instead of going barefoot. He is not to cover his lower face, a sign of deep sorrow. He is not to eat the "bread of men," the customary food brought by comforters to the bereaved.
In short, he is to act as though nothing has happened. He is to go about his day, dressed normally, conducting himself with a stoic reserve that would have been utterly scandalous to his neighbors. This is not God forbidding grief itself; He says, "Groan silently." The heart-pain is assumed. What is forbidden is the public expression of that grief. Why? Because Ezekiel's personal life has been requisitioned for a divine purpose. His grief is no longer his own. It is a sign.
And notice Ezekiel's breathtaking obedience. Verse 18 is one of the most starkly faithful verses in all of Scripture. "So I spoke to the people in the morning, and in the evening my wife died. And in the morning I did as I was commanded." There is no record of argument, no pleading, no "why me?" He receives the word, he preaches to the people, his wife dies that evening, and the next morning, he gets up and does exactly what God told him to do. This is the obedience of a man who knows, deep in his bones, that God is sovereign and God is good, even when His providences are shattering. He understood that his life was not his own. He was a man under authority, and his personal feelings were subordinate to his prophetic commission.
The Sign Explained (vv. 19-24)
Ezekiel's bizarre behavior, as intended, provokes a question from the people. They see a man whose wife has just died, and he is acting like it's just another Tuesday. They know something is up.
"The people said to me, 'Will you not tell us what these things that you are doing mean for us?'" (Ezekiel 24:19)
The sign has worked. It has created a hook upon which God can hang His message. And now Ezekiel, the living sermon, explains the text of his own life. The explanation is that God is about to do to all of Israel what He has just done to Ezekiel. Ezekiel's private loss is a microcosm of their coming public loss.
"Behold, I am about to profane My sanctuary, the pride of your strength, the desire of your eyes, and the delight of your soul" (v. 21). Notice the parallel language. Ezekiel's wife was the "desire of his eyes." The Temple, God's sanctuary, was the "desire of their eyes." For generations, Israel had treated the temple not as a place to meet with a holy God, but as a lucky charm, a talisman. They believed that as long as the temple stood, they were safe, regardless of how wickedly they lived. It had become their idol, the "pride of their strength." And God says, "I am about to profane it." I am going to treat it as common, as unclean. I am going to let pagan armies overrun it and burn it to the ground. And your sons and daughters will fall by the sword.
And then comes the application of the sign: "And you will do as I have done" (v. 22). When this happens, you will not mourn either. Not because you are stoic or faithful, but because you will be utterly stunned into silence. The calamity will be so great, so total, so beyond the scope of normal grief that the ordinary rituals will seem pointless. You will be too shocked to weep. The disaster will be so profound that you will simply "rot away in your iniquities, and you will groan to one another" (v. 23). Your grief will be the silent, internal, festering grief of judgment, not the clean, public grief of loss. It will be the groan of those who know they have gotten exactly what they deserved. Ezekiel's silent grief was an act of obedient faith; their silent grief would be an act of horrified, guilty despair.
Ezekiel is to be a "wondrous sign" to them. When the judgment finally falls, they will remember the strange prophet whose wife died, and they will understand. They will do as he did, and in that day, "then you will know that I am Lord Yahweh" (v. 24). The purpose of this whole terrible affair, both for Ezekiel and for Israel, is the revelation of God's character. He is the sovereign Lord, the one who judges sin, the one whose word always comes to pass.
The Prophet's Vindication (vv. 25-27)
The final verses look ahead to the day when the news of Jerusalem's fall finally reaches the exiles in Babylon. For some time, Ezekiel had been struck mute by God, only speaking when God gave him a direct prophecy.
"'Now as for you, son of man, will it not be on the day when I take from them their strong defense... that on that day he who escapes will come to you with a report for your ears? On that day your mouth will be opened... and you will speak and be mute no longer.'" (Ezekiel 24:25-27)
When the news arrives, when the thing he has been warning them about for years finally happens, Ezekiel's ministry will be vindicated. The arrival of the refugee from Jerusalem will be the signal for his silence to be broken. He will be free to speak again, to interpret the events, to preach to a people who are finally ready to listen because everything he said has come true. His authority as a prophet will be undeniably established.
And the purpose is reiterated one last time: "Thus you will be a wondrous sign to them, and they will know that I am Yahweh." God's signs are never pointless. His judgments are never arbitrary. His strange and difficult commands to His servants are never without a glorious purpose. And that purpose is always that He might be known. He will be known as the sovereign Lord of history, the one who holds life and death, love and loss, in His hands, and who weaves it all together for His glory.
The Sign of the Son
This is a hard passage. But it is not a passage without profound gospel comfort. For in Ezekiel, the prophet who lost the desire of his eyes, we see a faint shadow of the God who gave up the desire of His own heart.
The Father had one only begotten Son, the delight of His soul from all eternity. And in the fullness of time, the Father sent that Son and delivered Him over to a blow. Not a sudden illness, but the deliberate, brutal blow of the cross. God the Father gave up the desire of His eyes for the sake of profaning the sanctuary of our sin. He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.
And when Jesus died, the temple in Jerusalem, that object of Israel's idolatrous pride, was torn in two from top to bottom. The sign was fulfilled. The old sanctuary was profaned and made obsolete, because the true sanctuary, the body of Jesus Christ, had been struck down. And in three days, it was raised up again.
Our sin brings a judgment so severe, so shocking, that it ought to strike us dumb with horror. We should rot in our iniquities and groan to one another. That is the grief of the law, the sorrow of the world that leads to death. But God does not leave us there. He gives us another kind of grief, a godly sorrow that leads to repentance. He commands us to look upon the one who was struck down for us.
Ezekiel was commanded not to mourn, as a sign of judgment. But we are commanded to mourn our sin, and in that mourning, to find our comfort. "Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted" (Matthew 5:4). We are to look at the cross, where the desire of the Father's eyes was taken with a blow, and we are to weep. But our tears are not the tears of hopeless despair. They are the tears of repentance and gratitude. For in that terrible sign, we see not just the severity of God's judgment, but the unfathomable depth of His love. He gives His own Son, so that we might know that He is the Lord, our Savior, our Redeemer, and our God.