Was Born around the time of king Josiah’s wonderful passover festival in Jerusalem, described in II Chronicles 35. Ezekiel’s father Buzi, who would have been a priest in active service at the time, may have been among the throngs of Levites whom Josiah appointed to their duties and encouraged in the service of the LORD’S temple. Ezekiel grew up during those happy years when the entire service of the LORD was carried out as He had intended and all Jerusalem rejoiced.
Then came tragedy. Josiah was killed in a foolish war with Egypt. With his inspired leadership gone, and with Jehoiakim, a detestable man utterly unworthy of his noble father, now disgracing the throne, Ezekiel’s life would have become ever more difficult.
Jeremiah’s prophecy–
Ezekiel was nineteen when a sensational event took place at the temple. Perhaps he heard about it from his father, who may well have been there. The prophet Jeremiah, then a mature priest in his thirties, read the words of the Lord from a big scroll. The king and some of his courtiers were furious and burned the scroll, while Jeremiah and his friend Baruch had to hide.
Worse was soon to come.
Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon invaded the land, and Jehoiakim became his vassal for three years. But then he changed his mind and rebelled against Nebuchadnezzar The LORD sent raiders against him. He sent them to destroy Judah.
It was just about that time that Ezekiel married his beloved, a virgin from his own people.
A few years later, the world fell apart for Ezekiel, his wife and at least one infant. Ezekiel was twenty-five, his wife perhaps a few years younger. Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon advanced on Jerusalem and laid siege to it. He took [the teenage king] Jehoachin prisoner. He carried into exile all Jerusalem: all the officers and fighting men, and all the craftsmen and artisans, a total of ten thousand. Only the poorest people of the land were left.
Ezekiel and his wife never saw their beloved Jerusalem again.
I like to think that Ezekiel composed Psalm 137. Verses 1 and 6 certainly seem very appropriate.
By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept… may my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you, Jerusalem, my highest joy.
In his prophecy, Jerusalem is mentioned by name or as the city seventy-three times! Along with a growing family of sons and daughters, for the next eleven years they shared exile together in Babylon, today’s Iraq, living and weeping by the Khebar River, quite close to the present city of Baghdad. It would not be easy.
Ezekiel and his wife, people of sign
God deliberately chose Ezekiel and his wife to be signs or visible examples to His covenant people, both to the faithful and to the wayward and rebellious. So a careful reading reveals a great deal about this loving couple and their godly married life. This is what we find: Ezekiel’s wife was a tower of strength; someone he took pride in; the delight of his eyes; the object of his affection; the mother of his sons and daughters; his joy and glory; his heart’s desire. Spiritual love at its best? Yes, indeed. But she was also the delight of her man’s eyes as well as his heart’s desire. The same word delight (NI V) only becomes lust when it is wrongly directed at an immoral woman, Solomon tells us. So Ezekiel and his wife must have had a very passionate and — in the true sense — romantic relationship throughout their all too-brief eleven years of married bliss. Nowadays you would say they were just crazy about each other, head over heels in love. And you would be right.
Just think what they had to go through, this young priest and his beloved wife. For six years he was dumb, only speaking on the rare occasions when he was under direct inspiration as a prophet. For more than a year, every day he had to be tied to his bed or couch with ropes, and lie on his side. His wife had to provide a diet carefully measured out which was not very appetizing. Like many Indian women today, dried cow dung had to be used for baking. As it is recorded, they ate rationed food in anxiety, food and water was scarce, and they were appalled at the sight of each other as they wasted away. Through it all, Ezekiel was very evidently supported and strengthened by his wife. She was a tower of strength.
Most of us have no reason to complain, have we? Do you, sister in Christ, support your husband in the Lord’s work as Ezekiel’s wife did?
His delight taken away
Then came the shock. In fact, the sky fell. One morning, Ezekiel’s wife was taken very seriously ill. In the days of our mortality, we always have to be prepared for that. It comes sooner or later. In their case it came all too soon. As despised captives in the land of arrogant conquerors, she would be unlikely to qualify for the Babylonian national health service.
Then Ezekiel received a chilling message from his angel: your wife is not going to pull through this illness, Ezekiel. I am about to take away the delight of your eyes. What was her illness? I used to think that it was a stroke, for that is what the KJV translation calls it. But the same word in I Samuel 6 is clearly bubonic plague, and in Zechariah 14 it must refer to some sort of flesh-consuming viral disease like ebola. Whatever it was, that must have been a dreadful day in the Ezekiel household, and by nightfall, Ezekiel’s lovely wife was dead in her mid-thirties. He was left with sons and daughters ranging, it would seem, from a ten-year old to a baby in arms.
As a priest, Ezekiel was not allowed to be ritually defiled by touching, or otherwise dealing with, his wife’s corpse. That was bad enough, but he was forbidden by his angelic instructor to grieve or mourn publicly. That must have been a terrible burden. Don’t ever say being a prophet of God was easy.
God uses Ezekiel’s married life as a model and example for us. You will be a sign to them, and they will know that I am the LORD. As with so many other couples who follow the scriptural pattern, Ezekiel as “son of man” represents the Lord Jesus, and his wife wonderfully symbolises the church he loves so dearly and for whose life he died.
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One