15 The word of the Lord came to me: 16 “Son of man, behold, I am about to take the delight of your eyes away from you at a stroke; yet you shall not mourn or weep, nor shall your tears run down. 17 Sigh, but not aloud; make no mourning for the dead. Bind on your turban, and put your shoes on your feet; do not cover your lips, nor eat the bread of men.” 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.
19 And the people said to me, “Will you not tell us what these things mean for us, that you are acting thus?” 20 Then I said to them, “The word of the Lord came to me: 21 ‘Say to the house of Israel, Thus says the Lord God: Behold, I will profane my sanctuary, the pride of your power, the delight of your eyes, and the yearning of your soul, and your sons and your daughters whom you left behind shall fall by the sword. 22 And you shall do as I have done; you shall not cover your lips, nor eat the bread of men. 23 Your turbans shall be on your heads and your shoes on your feet; you shall not mourn or weep, but you shall rot away in your iniquities and groan to one another.24 Thus shall Ezekiel be to you a sign; according to all that he has done you shall do. When this comes, then you will know that I am the Lord God.’
25 “As for you, son of man, surely on the day when I take from them their stronghold, their joy and glory, the delight of their eyes and their soul's desire, and also their sons and daughters, 26 on that day a fugitive will come to you to report to you the news. 27 On that day your mouth will be opened to the fugitive, and you shall speak and be no longer mute. So you will be a sign to them, and they will know that I am the Lord.”
The final lesson of the chapter is a stark, even frightening, one. Ezekiel suffers a deep bereavement, and his wife, the dear companion of his lonely and costly testimony, is taken away at a stroke. But he is commanded not to mourn her, but to go on as if nothing had happened. Next morning he did as he was commanded. Word got round that Ezekiel's wife was dead, and that the prophet did not fulfil the ritual of mourning, the normal and natural thing for him to have done. It was so striking a thing that people said to one another, 'There must be something that God is saying to us in this, let us ask him about it'. And Ezekiel gave answer, in 21ff: his bereavement was a 'sign' to Judah. Just as he had lost the desire of his eyes at a stroke, so they were to lose Jerusalem. Our reaction is that this was surely a hard and severe way of dealing with Ezekiel. Yes, but it is not without precedent, for one thinks of Hosea's experience, and how God ordained his family tragedy, and brought forth from the heartbreak that he suffered, through the unfaithfulness of his wife, the message of divine heartbreak about the sin of the people. And just as Hosea's grief became his gospel, so here Ezekiel's sorrow became the vehicle of the divine word to his sinning people. A hard and terrible experience, to be sure, but it is significant that Ezekiel obeyed the Lord's command without demur: if there were no other way for the Lord's message to get home to the people except in such costly fashion, Ezekiel was prepared even for this.