Ezekiel 24

If you refer to the suggested outline of the book of Ezekiel, you will see that these three chapters complete the second section of the book “The Fall of Jerusalem.” Ezekiel focuses on four final events: the end of the city (chap. 22), the end of the kingdom (chap. 23), the end of a delusion (24:1–14), and the end of a marriage (vv. 15–27). Chapter 24 records two heart-rending announcements from the Lord: the beginning of the siege of Jerusalem (vv. 1–2) and the death of the prophet’s wife (vv. 15–17). What a sobering way to climax Ezekiel’s many messages to the spiritually blind Jewish exiles in Babylon!

This chapter closes the section of the book that focuses on the destruction of Jerusalem (chap. 4—24) and it is divided into two parts: a parable about a boiling pot (24:1–14) and an “action sermon” involving the sudden death of the prophet’s wife (vv. 15–27). After that, Ezekiel deals with God’s judgment on the Gentile nations (chaps. 25—32) and His glorious promises for the people of Israel (chaps. 33—48).

God’s message came to Ezekiel on January 15, 588 BC, the date of the beginning of the siege of Jerusalem. So critical is this date that it’s mentioned in 2 Kings 25:1–3 as well as Jeremiah 39:1–3 and 52:4–6. During their years of exile, the Jews observed four annual fasts to remember the painful events of the destruction of Jerusalem (Zech. 7; 8:18–23). They marked when the siege began (tenth month), when the walls were breached (fourth month), when the temple was burned down (fifth month), and when Gedaliah the governor was assassinated (the seventh month, Jer. 41:1–2).

God called Judah a “rebellious house” not only because they broke His laws and violated His covenant, but also because Zedekiah had broken his treaty with Babylon and incited the displeasure of Nebuchadnezzar. The image of the cooking pot takes us back to Ezekiel 11:1–13, where the Jewish leaders boasted that the Jews left in Jerusalem were better than the Jews taken off to Babylon. The Jerusalem Jews were the best “cuts of meat,” while the Jews in Babylon were only the scraps! Of course, God contradicted that idea and made it clear that the exiles in Babylon would form a remnant with which He could rebuild the nation and the temple. Jeremiah had written to the exiles and instructed them to settle down, build houses, and raise families so that the remnant could continue the ministry for which the Lord had chosen Israel. God warned the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem that they weren’t the “meat”—they were the butchers! They were guilty of shedding innocent blood, and God would judge them for their sins. If they weren’t “cooked” in the cauldron of Jerusalem, they would eventually be slain by the swords of the Babylonian soldiers. Even if they escaped the city, they would be caught and killed.

In his parable about the cooking pot, Ezekiel used the image and vocabulary of the Jerusalem leaders. Yes, God would put “the best cuts of meat” into His pot (Jerusalem) and boil the meat and the bones (the Babylonian siege). He wouldn’t “cook” the flesh; He would consume it (Ezek. 10)! Then He would pour out the burned mess and burn the pot itself! Jerusalem was an evil city, filled with sin like a filthy pot encrusted with rust and scum. She had shed innocent blood and hadn’t even been decent enough to cover the blood (Gen. 4:10; Lev. 17:13; Deut. 12:16, 24; 15:23). The murderers left the evidence for everyone to see and didn’t worry about the consequences! But God would avenge the innocent victims and expose the blood of their murderers for all to see.

The Jerusalem leaders were confident of deliverance because they were depending on a lie: “Our God will never allow His chosen people to be killed, His Holy City and temple to be destroyed.” This was a delusion, and Ezekiel put an end to it. It was because the Jews were His chosen people that God was punishing them, and because Jerusalem was His Holy City that He couldn’t allow it to continue wallowing in wickedness. The only way to purge the city was to burn it and make it a great funeral pyre (Ezek. 24:9–10). He judged the people in the city (the “select pieces of meat in the pot”) and then burned the pot as well!

Both Jeremiah and Ezekiel had to deal with the false confidence of the people, a confidence based on a false interpretation of theology. Jeremiah warned Judah, “Do not trust in these lying words, saying, ‘The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord are these’” (Jer. 7: nkjv). The presence of the temple in Jerusalem wasn’t a guarantee that the city would be saved, especially when what was going on in the temple was contrary to the will of God. Any theology that makes sin easy and divine punishment unimportant is not biblical theology. God’s judgment begins with His own people (2 Peter 4:17), and Hebrews 10: warns us that “the Lord will judge His people” (nkjv).

Our world today lives on delusions and myths because, like the Jews in Ezekiel’s day, the world won’t accept the authority of the Word of God. People still believe that might makes right, that money is the measure of worth and success, that the aim of life is to have fun and do what you want to do. You can believe whatever you please about God, yourself, and others, and everything will turn out fine because there are no consequences. But one day God will expose the stupidity of these delusions and the world will discover too late that there are consequences to what we believe and how we behave.

It’s interesting to study what is said in Scripture about the wives of the prophets. Abraham was a prophet (Gen. 20:7) who twice lied about his wife and got into trouble. Moses was criticized for the wife he chose (Num. 12:1), and Isaiah’s wife was a prophetess (Isa. 8:3). She bore him at least two sons whose names were signs to the people of Judah. The prophet Jeremiah wasn’t allowed to have a wife (Jer. 16:1–4), and this was a sign to the Jews that judgment was coming and people would wish they had never married and brought children into the world. Hosea’s wife became a prostitute and he had to buy her out of the slave market (Hos. 1—3). What a trial that must have been!

But Ezekiel paid a greater price than all these prophets. In order to give his message, Ezekiel had to see his wife die suddenly, and he was not to show great grief because of it! God told him that she would suddenly die and that he was not to do what the Jews usually did in times of bereavement. He was allowed to groan quietly, but he was not permitted to weep or make the kind of lamentation that was typical of his people.

He gave his morning message to the elders, at evening his wife suddenly died, and the next morning he buried her. When the Jews came to console him, they were shocked to see that he wasn’t weeping aloud and displaying the usual signs of bereavement. Nor was he to eat the food that people would bring to help him in his sorrow. As they had done in the past, the people asked him for an explanation (Ezek. 12:9; 21:7), and the Lord gave him the message and opened his mouth so he could speak.

The prophet’s wife was the joy of his life and the desire of his eyes (24:16), but the Lord took her away. The temple in Jerusalem was the joy of the Jewish people, for no other nation had such a sanctuary, but now the Lord would take the temple away. On August 14, 586 BC, the Babylonians set fire to the temple in Jerusalem. Nothing is said about Ezekiel’s children and we don’t know that he had any, but God announced that, along with the destruction of the temple, the relatives of the exiles still living in Jerusalem would lose their lives. Once again, Ezekiel was a sign to the exiles