The Desire of His Eyes
15 Also Yahweh’s word came to me, saying, 16 “Son of man, behold, I will take away from you the desire of your eyes with one stroke; yet you shall neither mourn nor weep, neither shall your tears run down. 17 Sigh, but not aloud. Make no mourning for the dead. Bind your headdress on you, and put your sandals on your feet. Don’t cover your lips, and don’t eat mourner’s bread.” 18 So I spoke to the people in the morning, and at evening my wife died. So I did in the morning as I was commanded. 19 The people asked me, “Won’t you tell us what these things mean to us, that you act like this?” 20 Then I said to them, “Yahweh’s word came to me, saying, 21 ‘Speak to the house of Israel, “The Lord Yahweh says: ‘Behold, I will profane my sanctuary, the pride of your power, the desire of your eyes, and that which your soul pities; and your sons and your daughters whom you have left behind will fall by the sword. 22 You will do as I have done. You won’t cover your lips or eat mourner’s bread. 23 Your turbans will be on your heads, and your sandals on your feet. You won’t mourn or weep; but you will pine away in your iniquities, and moan one toward another. 24 Thus Ezekiel will be a sign to you; according to all that he has done, you will do. When this comes, then you will know that I am the Lord Yahweh.’”’” 25 “You, son of man, shouldn’t it be in the day when I take from them their strength, the joy of their glory, the desire of their eyes, and that whereupon they set their heart—their sons and their daughters— 26 that in that day he who escapes will come to you, to cause you to hear it with your ears? 27 In that day your mouth will be opened to him who has escaped, and you will speak and be no more mute. So you will be a sign to them. Then they will know that I am Yahweh.”
Ezekiel's wife dies in the evening, he is forbidden to mourn her, and the next morning he explains that the exiles will do the same over the temple.
The word comes in the morning and it is not softened. I will take away from you the desire of your eyes with one stroke; yet you shall neither mourn nor weep. The phrase is a term of affection and the book uses it without further comment. Then the funeral customs are forbidden one by one — no wailing, no bared head, no bare feet, no covered lip, no mourner's bread brought by neighbors. Each item is a public act. What is prohibited is not grief but its expression, and the single permitted response is to sigh, but not aloud.
What follows is one verse long and is the hardest sentence in the book to read: So I spoke to the people in the morning, and at evening my wife died. So I did in the morning as I was commanded. He preached that day. His wife died that night. He obeyed the next morning. There is no lament recorded, no protest of the kind he made in chapters 9 and 11, and no description of what the obedience cost. The book that preserves his other objections preserves his silence here.
The silence works exactly as the signs are designed to. The people ask — Won't you tell us what these things mean to us, that you act like this? — and the question opens the message, as it did with the baggage and the wall. The answer is that God will profane his sanctuary, the pride of your power, the desire of your eyes, and that which your soul pities, and the same phrase used of a man's wife is used of the temple.
And the instruction given to them is the one he has just carried out. When it happens they will not mourn or weep. They will keep their turbans on and their sandals on and pine away in their iniquities, moaning to one another. Public mourning presumes a shared world in which loss can be named and neighbors can bring bread, and the passage says there will be none. What it does not say is that they should feel nothing. Ezekiel's own case is the interpretation: the grief is real, and it goes unexpressed. The chapter closes by naming the day the muteness will lift — when a fugitive arrives with the news — and the first half of the book ends there.
settled What this mark means