Today's Bible Reading: EZEKIEL 24:15-25:17, 29:1-16, 30:20-31:18; JEREMIAH 21:1-14, 34:1-22
Ezekiel 24:18
So I spoke to the people in the morning, and at evening my wife died. And on the next morning I did as I was commanded.
Sometimes it’s hard to understand God’s timing and purpose. The path he sets before is often difficult and demanding. We don’t see with His eyes. We don’t always comprehend His plan. We may have difficulty understand His purpose, especially when it affects us personally. But it is not ours to see or understand His plan, but to faithfully walk in His revealed way.
Ezekiel was a man who was devoted to Lord. His passion was to faithfully serve the one who called him. He had always sought to be obedient to His master. But now what God communicated was difficult. His wife would die. He would loss his partner, “the desire of his eyes”, and the love of His live. The very day that God told him of her pending death, she would be taken.
We are not really informed of the circumstances sounding her death. We don’t know if she had experienced a debilitating disease, or if she was the picture of health. We are told that she died in the evening after Ezekiel had spoken to the people regarding the siege of Jerusalem, the destruction of the temple and the death of their loved ones that would occur that very day. We are told that her death was according to the plan and purpose of God, that He had taken her away. We are also told that her death would be “with one stroke”, or suddenly. We are not told that her death was so that God could teach an object lesson or it was some vengeful act directed at God’s prophet or his people. We are just told she would die
What is to be understood about her death is that God is the author of all things including life and death. He gives everyone life and takes them away in death at their appointed times. This was her eternally appointed time to die and the Lord merely made know to the prophet prior to her death that this was the assigned day of her death. The correlation is that this also was the exact day (Ezek 24:1) of the devastation and destruction occurring in Jerusalem. Thus, the day of her death and Ezekiel’s response would forever be etched into the memories of the people as the day their beloved temple “the desire of their eyes” was demolished.
God directs Ezekiel on how to respond at his wife’s death. Typically, an Israelite who had lost a close relative would mourn and weep with bitter tears for a prolong period of time. They would express additional external signs of grief by removing their head covering, walking around barefoot, covering their face in anguish, and eating the specially prepared “bread of sorrow’ that would be brought to them by others. Ezekiel was instructed by God to do none of these external expressions of his grief, but to “sigh in silence”. So, He did.
His actions caused the captive Israelites to ask why. The answer was profound. The response of Ezekiel in the death of “the desire of His eyes”, his wife, was to be the response of God’s people to the destruction of the “the desire of their eyes”, the temple. They were to grieve the loss of the temple as they would mourn the loss of their beloved. With one exception, the people were to be engulfed in and overcome with grief or ‘pine away” because of their iniquities. It was their faithlessness that led to the fall of the temple. It was their degradation that initiated the demise of the loved ones they left behind. Their response in hearing of the devastation and destruction in their homeland was to be an expression of bereavement and brokenness that should have caused them to repent and return to God. It’s not what you do the night of a tragedy, but what you do the next morning that displays your trust in the Lord.
The lesson for us is that we should never slight our sinful behavior. We can’t go on accommodating our transgressions. We must face up and fess up to our faithlessness. We must grieve that we have grieved God. We must repent and remove all those things in us that lead us away from the Lord.
Today let your cry be that of David in Psalms 139:23-24, “Search me, O God and know me heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me the way everlasting!” Like Ezekiel, whatever happens the evening before, the next morning we need to do as He commands.
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