THE PROPHETS WHO PAID · Part 3 of 4 · Ezekiel · CFM-09
His Wife Died at Evening. In the Morning, Ezekiel Did as He Was Commanded. Ezekiel: the captive priest who rationed his bread, was loved like a song, and was obeyed by no one
Jeremiah suffered in Jerusalem. His younger contemporary Ezekiel suffered in Babylon, among the captives.
“as I was among the captives by the river of Chebar… the heavens were opened, and I saw visions of God” (Ezekiel 1:1)
He was “Ezekiel the priest” (1:3), carried off with King Jehoiachin (1:2). A priest with no temple to serve in. And then the Lord made Ezekiel’s own body the message. He was bound, struck dumb, laid on his side, put on siege rations, and told not to weep for his wife. He obeyed every time.
Sent among scorpions
“be not afraid of them, neither be afraid of their words, though briers and thorns be with thee, and thou dost dwell among scorpions” (2:6)
“But the house of Israel will not hearken unto thee; for they will not hearken unto me” (3:7)
The Lord told him the result before he started: they won’t listen. Then He gave him what he’d need:
“As an adamant harder than flint have I made thy forehead: fear them not” (3:9)
He went “in bitterness, in the heat of my spirit,” and then “I sat where they sat, and remained there astonished among them seven days” (3:14–15). Before he said a word, he sat in the dust with the captives for a week.
Bound and silenced
“They shall put bands upon thee, and shall bind thee with them… And I will make thy tongue cleave to the roof of thy mouth, that thou shalt be dumb” (3:25–26)
A prophet who couldn’t speak, except when the Lord opened his mouth (3:27). The silence held from his call in the fifth year of the captivity (1:2) until the evening before word came that Jerusalem had fallen, in the twelfth:
“The city is smitten… and my mouth was opened, and I was no more dumb” (33:21–22)
About seven years held silent, and his voice came back with the news that his warnings had come true.
Over a year on his side
“Take thee a tile, and lay it before thee, and pourtray upon it the city, even Jerusalem” (4:1)
He built a little Jerusalem on a clay tile, set siege works around it, and stood an iron pan between himself and the city like a wall (4:2–3). Then:
“Lie thou also upon thy left side… three hundred and ninety days” (4:4–5)
“lie again on thy right side, and thou shalt bear the iniquity of the house of Judah forty days: I have appointed thee each day for a year” (4:6)
“I will lay bands upon thee, and thou shalt not turn thee from one side to another” (4:8)
More than a year lying in front of a clay city, tied so he couldn’t roll over, where everyone could see.
And while he lay there, he ate by the scale:
“thy meat which thou shalt eat shall be by weight, twenty shekels a day… Thou shalt drink also water by measure” (4:10–11)
That’s roughly half a pound of bread a day. Then came the hardest part: bake it over human dung, because “thus shall the children of Israel eat their defiled bread among the Gentiles” (4:12–13). He pleaded:
“Ah Lord GOD! behold, my soul hath not been polluted” (4:14)
“Lo, I have given thee cow’s dung for man’s dung” (4:15)
Even under that command, the Lord listened to His servant.
Then a sharp knife and a barber’s razor across his own head and beard. A third of the hair burned, a third struck with the knife, a third thrown to the wind (5:1–2), and a few hairs bound in the hem of his robe (5:3). The Lord explained it: pestilence, sword and scattering (5:12). His own hair became Jerusalem’s future, with a small remnant kept.
“The desire of thine eyes”
In the ninth year of the captivity (24:1), the Lord told him:
“Son of man, behold, I take away from thee the desire of thine eyes with a stroke: yet neither shalt thou mourn nor weep, neither shall thy tears run down.” (24:16)
“So I spake unto the people in the morning: and at even my wife died; and I did in the morning as I was commanded.” (24:18)
He preached in the morning. His wife died that evening. The next morning he got up and obeyed. He bound his turban, put his shoes on, and went out without mourning (24:17).
The people asked what it meant (24:19). The Lord answered:
“Behold, I will profane my sanctuary, the excellency of your strength, the desire of your eyes” (24:21)
“Thus Ezekiel is unto you a sign” (24:24)
The temple was about to fall, and the people would be told what he was told: “ye shall not mourn nor weep” (24:22–23). His dry-eyed grief was the sign. And the Lord’s own words tell us what she was to him: the desire of his eyes.
Loved and ignored
“Lo, thou art unto them as a very lovely song of one that hath a pleasant voice, and can play well on an instrument: for they hear thy words, but they do them not” (33:32)
They came. They sat. “With their mouth they shew much love, but their heart goeth after their covetousness” (33:31). Jeremiah was hated. Ezekiel was enjoyed. Neither one was obeyed.
And the Lord’s last word on it:
“And when this cometh to pass, (lo, it will come,) then shall they know that a prophet hath been among them” (33:33)
The same hands, in every book
Ezekiel’s people admired him and did nothing. Jesus named the same habit in the scribes and Pharisees of His day:
“ye build the tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous, And say, If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.” (Matthew 23:29–30)
Samuel the Lamanite heard the same words on the other side of the world:
“ye say: If our days had been in the days of our fathers of old, we would not have slain the prophets” (Helaman 13:25)
Two witnesses, two continents, the same sentence. People honor the dead prophets and ignore the living one. The admired prophet and the hated prophet end up in the same place.
The watchman
“Son of man, I have made thee a watchman unto the house of Israel” (3:17; 33:7)
“if thou warn the wicked of his way to turn from it; if he do not turn from his way, he shall die in his iniquity; but thou hast delivered thy soul” (33:9)
His job wasn’t to be believed. His job was to warn. That’s why he kept going.
And at the end he saw what Jeremiah longed for. Dry bones that “stood up upon their feet, an exceeding great army” (37:10). The stick of Judah and the stick of Joseph “one in thine hand” (37:16–17). Water running out from the temple down to the Dead Sea until “the waters shall be healed” (47:8). And a city whose name is “The LORD is there” (48:35).
“A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.” (36:26)
A man who lost his wife and his voice was the one who got to promise Israel a new heart.
For us today
“But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves” (James 1:22)
Ezekiel’s people loved listening to him and did nothing (33:32). That’s our danger too. We can love a great talk, a good lesson or a moving video, and walk away the same.
“it becometh every man who hath been warned to warn his neighbor” (D&C 88:81)
And we’re watchmen too. Ezekiel did it tied up, silenced, grieving and ignored. We get to do it with a voice.
Crystal and Ken Krogue team-teach a Sunday School class of 14-year-olds. They write with two AI research partners, Orson (Claude) and Nathan (ChatGPT), and approve every word.
Series illustrations are artistic interpretations of the scriptural accounts and their present-day applications.
