Ezekiel 24:1-27

24:1-2 | Almost two and a half years after Ezekiel’s last series of prophetic warnings, Nebuchadnezzar laid siege against Jerusalem (December, 589 BC, or January, 588 BC). The people had not heeded his warnings, and now there was nothing left but divine judgment (2 Chron. 36:15-16).

24:3-8 | Ezekiel pictures Jerusalem as a cooking pot and its inhabitants as choice pieces of meat thrown into the pot, then boiled in the white-hot wrath of God. That bones are used to stoke the fire only adds gravity and horror to the picture.

24:9-14 | Ezekiel interprets his parable of the cooking pot by saying that God centered all of His activities in judgment on cleansing the filthiness of His people. After the inhabitants of Jerusalem had been “boiled” in the pot, God would empty it – a reference to the exile – and destroy the city. God had cleansed the city before (in the deportations of 605 and 597 BC), but because Jerusalem’s remaining residents continued to rebel, God would make the cleansing total.

24:15-24 | A prophet’s life was never easy. God told Ezekiel that He was about to take away the life of his own beloved wife – but the prophet was not to mourn her loss or show his deep sorrow in any way. When his astonished friends would ask him to explain his bizarre behavior, he was to tell them that after God had finished pouring out His wrath on the nation, the survivors would be so drained by the catastrophe that they would not be able to express any emotion.

24:25-27 | God had made Ezekiel mute for a time as a sign. On the day the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem, a refugee would escape from the carnage and make his way to Ezekiel to report the city’s fall. When he heard it, about three months after Jerusalem’s destruction, God would loosen the prophet’s tongue and he would begin to encourage the remnant with a message of hope for the future.