IN THE NINTH YEAR, in the tenth month on the tenth day, the word of the LORD came to me: 2“Son of man, record this date, this very date, because the king of Babylon has laid siege to Jerusalem this very day. 3Tell this rebellious house a parable and say to them: ‘This is what the Sovereign LORD says:
“ ‘Put on the cooking pot; put it on
and pour water into it.
4Put into it the pieces of meat,
all the choice pieces—the leg and the shoulder.
Fill it with the best of these bones;
5take the pick of the flock.
Pile wood beneath it for the bones;
bring it to a boil
and cook the bones in it.
6“ ‘For this is what the Sovereign LORD says:
“ ‘Woe to the city of bloodshed,
to the pot now encrusted,
whose deposit will not go away!
Empty it piece by piece
without casting lots for them.
7“ ‘For the blood she shed is in her midst:
She poured it on the bare rock;
she did not pour it on the ground,
where the dust would cover it.
8To stir up wrath and take revenge
I put her blood on the bare rock,
so that it would not be covered.
9“ ‘Therefore this is what the Sovereign LORD says:
“ ‘Woe to the city of bloodshed!
I, too, will pile the wood high.
10So heap on the wood
and kindle the fire.
Cook the meat well,
mixing in the spices;
and let the bones be charred.
11Then set the empty pot on the coals
till it becomes hot and its copper glows
so its impurities may be melted
and its deposit burned away.
12It has frustrated all efforts;
its heavy deposit has not been removed,
not even by fire.
13“ ‘Now your impurity is lewdness. Because I tried to cleanse you but you would not be cleansed from your impurity, you will not be clean again until my wrath against you has subsided.
14“ ‘I the LORD have spoken. The time has come for me to act. I will not hold back; I will not have pity, nor will I relent. You will be judged according to your conduct and your actions, declares the Sovereign LORD.’ ”
15The word of the LORD came to me: 16“Son of man, with one blow I am about to take away from you the delight of your eyes. Yet do not lament or weep or shed any tears. 17Groan quietly; do not mourn for the dead. Keep your turban fastened and your sandals on your feet; do not cover the lower part of your face or eat the customary food └of mourners┘.”
18So I spoke to the people in the morning, and in the evening my wife died. The next morning I did as I had been commanded.
19Then the people asked me, “Won’t you tell us what these things have to do with us?”
20So I said to them, “The word of the LORD came to me: 21Say to the house of Israel, ‘This is what the Sovereign LORD says: I am about to desecrate my sanctuary—the stronghold in which you take pride, the delight of your eyes, the object of your affection. The sons and daughters you left behind will fall by the sword. 22And you will do as I have done. You will not cover the lower part of your face or eat the customary food └of mourners┘. 23You will keep your turbans on your heads and your sandals on your feet. You will not mourn or weep but will waste away because of your sins and groan among yourselves. 24Ezekiel will be a sign to you; you will do just as he has done. When this happens, you will know that I am the Sovereign LORD.’
25“And you, son of man, on the day I take away their stronghold, their joy and glory, the delight of their eyes, their heart’s desire, and their sons and daughters as well—26on that day a fugitive will come to tell you the news. 27At that time your mouth will be opened; you will speak with him and will no longer be silent. So you will be a sign to them, and they will know that I am the LORD.”
Original Meaning
FOR TWENTY-THREE CHAPTERS now, Ezekiel has been proclaiming the wrath to come on Jerusalem. Finally, in Ezekiel 24, the sword of judgment descends on the city. Verses 1–14 are an oracle delivered to the prophet by God on the very day when Nebuchadnezzar’s assault on the city began. The message is received by the prophet on the tenth of the tenth month, and the prophet is to make note of this date, which on our reckoning is January 15, 587 B.C., because this is the day on which the king of Babylon laid siege to Jerusalem (24:2).1 This date is to be noted because it will subsequently provide further “objective” evidence of the prophet’s veracity.
The Day of Reckoning for Jerusalem (24:1–14)
FOLLOWING THE HEBREW more literally, this is the day when Nebuchadnezzar “leaned on” (sāmak) Jerusalem, a word with overtones of the sacrificial system. A worshiper approaching the sanctuary designated the animal to be sacrificed as his through a ritual “leaning on of hands” (Lev. 1:4; 3:2).2 By Ezekiel’s use of this terminology, Nebuchadnezzar is depicted as designating Jerusalem as the sacrificial lamb—though hardly one without spot or blemish, as the law required—ready to be dismembered for the glory of God.
This sacrificial language leads into a parable to be delivered to3 the “rebellious house” (bêt hammerî, 24:3). This is a favorite expression for Judah in Ezekiel,4 one that indicates that their rebellion against Nebuchadnezzar is not a glorious (if doomed) fight for freedom and self-determination but rather an expression of their basic rebellious nature—a rebellion fundamentally directed against God. In the parable, Jerusalem is compared to a cooking pot (sîr) in which abundant meat has been placed to be cooked (24:3), an image familiar already from 11:7–12. The sacrificial animal has been cut up and all of its pieces “gathered”5 to be boiled, presumably as a fellowship offering. The wood6 has been piled up under the pot and the pot has been brought to a nice simmer.7
Thus far the expectations of the audience have been moved in a positive direction. But in a classic twist, typical of the genre of parable, what ought to be a tasty sacred meal is, in fact, a foul, profane mess. The “choice pieces” and “the best of these bones” from the “pick of the flock” (24:4–5) turn out to be nothing but defiled filth (ḥelʾātâ, 24:6).8 This filth that is inside her will not “come out” (yāṣāʾ; 24:6; NIV, “go away”), a phrase that has a double meaning. In terms of the imagery of the pot, the filth that will not come out reflects the frustration of a burned-on mess that cannot be removed. On the level of the metaphorical meaning, “come out” is precisely what Jerusalem’s inhabitants hope to do at the end of the siege.
As in chapter 11, however, the pot will not protect them; they have defiled the city by their evil and so they (the filth) will not come out from her safely. Their only exit from the pot will be when they are “brought out” (Hiphil of yāṣāʾ ) for judgment (24:6; cf. 11:9). Nor will this judgment be partial, with some selected to die and some to live, as when the lot was cast over the two goats on the Day of Atonement, with one chosen for the altar and the other to be driven off into the desert (Lev. 16:8). No lots will be cast over the pot, for all the meat is destined for the same end, reprobation (Ezek. 24:6). There will be no escape.
The blood Jerusalem has shed in her midst is left uncovered, poured out on a bare rock rather than on the ground (24:7). Covering the blood with earth (Lev. 17:13) was required for the blood of all animals slaughtered for meat in Deuteronomy 12:16, 24. Blood left exposed would provoke the wrath of God, so their action was nothing less than a deliberate act of sacrilege. Like the blood of Abel, the blood of the innocent victims of the bloody city cries out for justice, and in consequence Jerusalem’s blood will also be poured out uncovered (Ezek. 24:8).
Returning to the imagery of the pot, the Lord declares: “Heap on the wood and kindle the fire. Cook the meat well, removing the broth;9 and let the bones be charred” (24:10). The empty pot is now transformed into a kind of refiner’s furnace in a final attempt to try to melt away the impurities (24:11), as in 22:20–22. But once again, all efforts to remove the defilement have proved ineffective. God’s wrath must be satisfied on Jerusalem if she is ever to be clean again (24:13), and it is time for that definitive final action to begin. The time for words has ended; now it is time for deeds (24:14).
The Death of Ezekiel’s Wife (24:15–27)
THE SECOND HALF of the chapter shows that the oracle of painful destruction is not delivered from the safety of an armchair in distant Babylon. The sword that is going to strike Jerusalem first strikes the prophet himself in the most painful and personal of his prophetic sign-acts. His own wife, the delight of his eyes, is suddenly taken from him (24:16). This is no random turn of fate, but a sudden stroke directly from God. Yet Ezekiel is not permitted to mourn publicly in the traditional ways, by lamentation and tears, disheveled clothing, and special food (24:17). All he can do is “groan quietly,” that is, mourn in privacy and isolation without the usual rites invoking social solidarity and sympathy.10 Outwardly, he is to behave as if nothing has happened.
This strange behavior is to be a sign to the people of the significance of what is to come (24:24). The temple in Jerusalem was their pride and joy; it had become as precious to the Jerusalemites as the closest of relations (24:21). This building, the delight of their eyes, will be desecrated by God. It will be destroyed along with the sons and daughters whom the exiles had left behind. Yet the people will not weep or wail or mourn publicly for the temple (24:22). This is not because of any absence of grief on their part, but because in the face of such a devastating, all-encompassing judgment, the usual social structures of mourning rites will be overwhelmed. The normal channels of community support will be gone in the face of such universal loss; only inward grief will be possible (24:23).
But in the deepest depths of the gloom comes hope of a turning point in Judah’s fortunes. On the very day when the blow falls on Ezekiel’s compatriots, when the news of the fall of Jerusalem is confirmed by a fugitive, Ezekiel’s lips will be opened and he will be dumb no more (24:27). This dumbness was imposed on him at the outset of his ministry (see 3:26). He was thereby unable to intercede for the people, indeed, unable to speak anything at all except words of judgment. But a time is coming when his dumbness will be removed. With the destruction of Jerusalem, his words of judgment for the city will come to an end; their time will be complete.
Here ends the first lesson, we might say—the lesson of inevitable and incredible judgment poured out on sinners. The prophet’s dumbness will be ended, and God’s favor will once again be extended toward his people. This promise marks a shift in the nature of Ezekiel’s proclamation. In the chapters that follow, it will be time for the prophet to speak words of judgment on the surrounding nations, Israel’s enemies (chs. 25–32), and then, when the promise of the removal of dumbness is fulfilled (ch. 33), words of hope to God’s chosen people (chs. 34–48).
Bridging Contexts
MEAT AND BLOOD. Filthy pots encrusted with burnt food are familiar to all places and times. Even modern technology has produced little answer to the basic problem; in my experience, the “potscrubber” cycle on the average dishwasher is a hopelessly over-optimistic designation. Old-fashioned elbow grease is required to try and shift the carbonated remains of serious culinary disasters, and even then sometimes all efforts are in vain.
But the moral and cultic dimensions of the intended meal of Ezekiel 24 may easily be lost on us. We are used to eating meat as a daily experience, unless we are vegetarian. In an ancient culture, however, unless you were exceptionally wealthy, eating meat was a rare experience, usually associated with a sacrifice.11 On this occasion, Jerusalem’s inhabitants are themselves the sacrifice, but the end result is unfit for consumption because of the city’s defilement. All that is produced at the end of the fiery trial is a defiled pot, filled with a blackened mess, which even the most extreme measures cannot cleanse.
The concern to handle blood appropriately is also rather distant from us. Blood was regarded as a peculiarly sacred liquid in Israel. It contained the life of the creature (Lev. 17:11) and in consequence had to be disposed of properly. If it was the blood of a clean animal, slaughtered as a sacrifice, it was poured out beside the altar (Deut. 12:27). If it was the blood of a profane animal, slaughtered for meat, it was to be poured out on the ground (12:16, 24) and covered with earth (Lev. 17:13). In this way, proper respect was shown for the agent of animate life.
In its original intention, blood was a taboo that emphasized Israel’s calling to be “pro-life” in the fullest sense. But Jerusalem had proved careless about bloodshed, even the shedding of human blood. It was a place where life was cheap. Her inhabitants had neglected their responsibility to take seriously the requirement of Genesis 9:6, that human bloodshed be regarded as a crime of utmost seriousness, because of the nature of human beings as created in the image of God. In consequence, her blood also would be shed by God without pity and her life held to be cheap.
The hidden wisdom of God’s set purposes. Much more problematic for the contemporary reader is the death of Ezekiel’s wife and his prohibition from mourning. On the one hand, the conception is prevalent among Christians that “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.” Even though we may steer clear of its excesses, the health and wealth gospel (“God loves you and wants to give you a Cadillac and a mansion by the Country Club”) still influences our thinking. We tend to believe that God’s loving plan for our lives must surely include reasonable health, a job, a spouse, and a decent standard of living. If any of these things are absent from our lives, we tend to place the responsibility not on God but on the forces of evil in the world. God wants us to have these things, we theorize, but we are caught in the crossfire of the cosmic battle.
Nowhere in his Word does God promise us such an easy ride through life. Nor does he pass off responsibility on others. He is the sovereign Lord, which means that even on the battleground, the buck stops with him. Ezekiel’s wife dies not because God is powerless to prevent such a thing happening, but because God has a significant purpose to accomplish through that “evil” also. It is a painful providence for the prophet to bear, but nonetheless he must receive this bitter cup too from the hand of his loving Father. As Job, another Old Testament figure equally tormented by God, put it so succinctly: “Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?” (Job 2:10).
That God takes such dramatic action to highlight the situation is a measure of the seriousness of Judah’s sin and the pain level of the coming judgment—both for Judah and for Judah’s God. But what God asks his people to undergo for his sake is no more than what he himself is willing to go through for their sake. His beloved Son, Jesus, is nailed to the cross, the ultimate act of wicked men in consort together, but this itself is nothing other than God’s “set purpose” (Acts 2:23). God has the right to do with his creatures as he sees fit. It may not have been the course of events we would have chosen, but that is hardly the point. The point is that God’s purposes are determined with a wisdom that is above our wisdom, on the basis of thoughts that are above our thoughts. Submitting to the will of such a good God, who did not spare his own Son but freely gave him up for us, is no stoic fatalism but the freeing dependence of a trusting child.
Ancient mourning patterns. But how could God ask Ezekiel not to mourn for his wife? Isn’t this an inhuman demand? Again, our unfamiliarity with the ancient culture leads us to undue psychologizing. In fact, what God asks of Ezekiel is hardly a unique occurrence. As a priest, Ezekiel would have been familiar with the restrictions on public mourning for priests in active service prescribed in Leviticus 21. A priest was not permitted to make himself ritually unclean—as formal mourning would require—for any except the closest of his relatives (21:1–4), while the high priest was not even permitted to mourn for his father or mother (21:11). Similarly, after the deaths of Nadab and Abihu in Leviticus 10, their father Aaron and their brothers Eleazar and Ithamar were forbidden to mourn for them, even though the rest of Israel could (10:6).
That does not mean that they could not feel the pain of the loss in their hearts—undoubtedly they would have—but public mourning was not permitted for the sacred person. Thus what the Lord asks of Ezekiel is not an unfeeling psychological imposition (“your wife whom you love will die and you must pretend nothing has happened”) but simply a refraining from the normal social customs. His behavior was certainly regarded as odd, so that the people ask him why he is acting in this way (24:19), but it was not inhuman.
Contemporary Significance
THE CERTAINTY OF God’s just judgment. When judgment comes it will always be unexpected, no matter how clearly and often God’s messengers have warned of its coming. So it was in the case of Jerusalem. Ezekiel had warned repeatedly of its certain doom, and now he speaks for the final time before that doom was realized. The fire was now kindled, ready to consume the contaminated mess that filled Jerusalem. This fire would not purify the inhabitants of the city, for they were beyond such help. It was designed simply to destroy.
What has this ancient history to do with us? The fall of Jerusalem in 586 B.C. acts as a picture of the ultimate destruction of the world. Though the scoffers may doubt that such a day of the Lord will ever happen, seeing the delay on God’s part as evidence that judgment will never come (2 Peter 3:3–4), God’s wrath will be poured out on the world in due season. It will come like a thief in the night (3:10), and the visible universe will disappear. God’s patience, long-suffering though it is, will ultimately be exhausted, and the fire of his wrath will be poured out on the world.
Why? It is because there is no other suitable means for dealing with recalcitrant, impenitent sinners. Justice must ultimately be done, and it will be. As Abraham put it in Genesis 18:25, “Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?” Indeed he will, and the end result will be destruction for the world, as it was for Sodom and Gomorrah. The purpose of this fiery conflagration is not the purification of the wicked. Having refused to be cleansed (Ezek. 24:13), now God’s people have nothing to expect but payment in full for what their actions deserve, which is God’s wrath poured out without pity or holding back (24:14).
Living in the light of God’s judgment. Is this just an “Old Testament” perspective on God that is out of step with the fullness of “New Testament” revelation of God’s love? Not at all. The writer to the Hebrews warns of the fearful fate that awaits anyone who turns his or her back on the revelation of God in Christ:
If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God. Anyone who rejected the law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much more severely do you think a man deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God under foot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified him, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace? For we know him who said, “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” and again, “The Lord will judge his people.” It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. (Heb. 10:26–31)
In the face of this fearful prospect, how should we then live? Unquestionably, the passing away of this present age should be the dominant reality in our thinking. As Paul tells the Corinthians, this knowledge should affect our attitudes to all our relationships, our emotions, and our possessions.
What I mean, brothers, is that the time is short. From now on those who have wives should live as if they had none; those who mourn, as if they did not; those who are happy, as if they were not; those who buy something, as if it were not theirs to keep; those who use the things of the world, as if not engrossed in them. For this world in its present form is passing away. (1 Cor. 7:29–31)
There will come a day for all of us as individuals and for this world as a whole when “time” will be called on mercy and God’s wrath will be let loose. In the meantime we live as Ezekiel did, as men and women under orders. We have been commissioned for the battle, and even the most precious things we possess here on earth we have merely as stewards. We do not own our children, or our wives, or even our own bodies. Bearing God’s message to the world can be a costly business for us, just as it was for Ezekiel. This level of commitment is something that the world finds hard to understand.
The fact that Hollywood fails to grasp this level of self-giving was graphically demonstrated to me by a scene in the film At Play in the Fields of the Lord. In this scene, a missionary to South America was depicted burying his only child, who had died of blackwater fever. As the rain came pouring down, he cried out to the heavens, “I didn’t give my permission!” Though there may be those whose faith has been shaken to the core by the costly nature of missionary service, the history of centuries of Christian martyr-witnesses12 is that over and over again Christians have given God “permission”—as if such permission were required! As Martin Luther put it in his great hymn:
And though they take my life, goods, honor, children, wife,
Yet is their profit small: these things shall vanish all
The city of God remaineth.
Nor is it simply missionaries who are mere stewards of the things of this world. The same is true for all of us who name the name of Christ. God has the right at any moment to take from any of us the things that we hold dearest of all in this world. After all, he created both them and us. But more profoundly still, God has the right because he was willing to give up into the hands of sinful people the delight of his eyes, his only Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. He “gave his permission” for Jesus to be beaten and tortured and mocked. What is more, as Jesus hung on that cross, God himself did not show him mercy but instead poured out the full weight of his wrath over our sins on him. The consuming fire of God’s wrath against sin was kindled on Jesus, without pity or holding back.
God and the cross of his Son. Yet just as the deepest night for Jerusalem is the beginning of the end of God’s wrath on his people and the turning point to hope in Ezekiel’s message, so also the death of Jesus Christ on the cross is the turning point in the history of redemption. The blackness of Good Friday causes the light of Easter Sunday to break out with fresh power for Christ’s disciples. The taking away of their Lord, the delight of their eyes, to lay him in a tomb, paradoxically, is the means by which they may be enabled to enjoy him forever.
Since God did not spare his own Son, surely he has the right to ask us not to spare even the delight of our eyes, whatever that is. We should be willing to give it up freely for the sake of spreading the good news and for the sake of the glory of this great God. Nor is it enough merely to be willing; sometimes, God actually takes from us that which is most precious to us. In those moments, as we are enabled by his grace to say, “Not my will, but yours be done, Lord,” we become living signs to the world around us of God’s grace and glory. We become living demonstrations of the fact that we do not regard God as our accomplice, whose job is to ensure that we live comfortable and fulfilling lives. Rather, he is our Lord, who has bought us with a price and owns us and everything we have. Moreover, we do not mourn as the world mourns, for in the midst of our sadness and real sense of painful loss, we know the assurance that just as our Lord has risen, so also will all his people.
But the cross also reminds us of the certainty of judgment on all who refuse its offer of life. It is this reality that lends urgency to our proclamation of the gospel. For us there is still time. The end of the world has not yet been pronounced. Our tongues have not been silenced. Far from it, we have been given a gospel to share with every creature under heaven that there is one name given to people by which they may yet be saved, the name of Jesus Christ. We have been commanded to preach the good news to all freely, that many may come to Christ and experience his forgiveness and mercy. However, we must never forget that the time we have been given is not unlimited, and the final judgment announced repeatedly in the Scriptures will one day become a reality—a joyful reality for all who are in Christ, but a fearful reality for those who remain outside.