Grief, Interrupted: When a Prophet Can't Mourn
Today I read Ezekiel 23 and 24, and the part that lingered with me the most wasn’t the graphic allegory about Jerusalem and Samaria. It was something quieter and more personal: the moment when Ezekiel is told his wife will die, and he must not publicly mourn her.
The passage says: "Then this message came to me from the Lord: 'Son of man, I am going to take away your dearest treasure. Suddenly, she will die. Yet you must not show any sorrow at her death. Do not weep; let there be no tears. Groan silently, but let there be no wailing at her grave. Do not uncover your head or take off your sandals. Do not perform the usual rituals of mourning or accept any food brought to you by consoling friends'" (Ezekiel 24:15-17, NLT).
When Personal Pain Becomes Public Message
This is one of those moments in scripture that stops me. Ezekiel is told his wife—described as his "dearest treasure"—will die, and not only can he not grieve publicly, but the absence of his grief is supposed to be a message to the people. It’s deeply unsettling.
What does it mean to be used in this way? Ezekiel has already done a long list of dramatic symbolic acts, but this one feels different. This isn't just about putting on a yoke or lying on one side for days. This is personal. This is grief.
Silent Sorrow and Unspoken Questions
I don’t know how to make sense of a God figure who asks this of someone. Maybe it’s trying to express the scale of collective loss that’s coming, a loss so great that private mourning becomes irrelevant next to public catastrophe.
Still, I find myself wondering about Ezekiel as a person. Did he cry when no one was looking? Did he resent this command? Did he feel conflicted, or did he believe so strongly in his role that he didn’t question it? The text doesn’t say.
There's also a sharp contrast here between private pain and public performance. Ezekiel is asked to suppress his natural human response in service of a broader message. That tension feels familiar in a way—not to this extreme, of course, but in the way people sometimes have to hide personal grief to carry on with responsibilities or roles.
Mourning in Silence, Then and Now
It makes me think about how grief is expressed or silenced in different cultures, and what gets labeled as “appropriate” mourning. Who gets to grieve, and how, and when? Ezekiel's silence becomes a symbol, but it's also an act of erasure. Whether he agreed with it or not, his own sorrow is made invisible.
This part of the story is hard and sad and a little haunting.