The Symbolic Actions and the Judgment of Jerusalem

Ezekiel prophesies from Babylon, where he was deported in 597 before Christ; Jerusalem, for its part, still stands. It is its coming ruin that he announces, ten years before it befalls. Before speaking, he acts. God commands him a series of gestures that figure, in his body and before the eyes of the people, the fate of Jerusalem. He takes a brick, draws the city on it and mimes its siege: “Take a brick, set it before you, and draw on it a city, Jerusalem.” Ezekiel 4:1 He lies many days on his side, bearing the weight of Israel’s years of fault. He shaves his hair and his beard, divides them in three and gives them to the fire, the sword and the wind, to declare the three fates awaiting the inhabitants: a third will die of plague and famine, a third will fall by the sword, a third will be scattered to every wind, driven among the nations: “Take a sharp blade for a razor, and pass it over your head and your beard.” Ezekiel 5:1 Finally he breaks through the wall of his house and carries out his baggage on his shoulder, in the dark, his face veiled, to mime the departure of the exiles: “I have set you as a sign for the house of Israel.” Ezekiel 12:6 The prophet becomes the word himself: his body bears the announcement before his mouth.

The abominations of the Temple

In a vision, God carries Ezekiel to Jerusalem and shows him what hides within the Temple. On the walls of the sanctuary are carved figures of unclean animals, before which the elders of Israel burn incense; women weep for the god Tammuz; and twenty-five men, their backs to the sanctuary, bow before the rising sun: “Do you see the great abominations that the house of Israel commits here, that I should withdraw from my sanctuary?” Ezekiel 8:6 The evil is not outside but at the very heart of the holy place: the people have brought idols into the house of God. This profanation calls for judgment, for God cannot remain where other gods are worshipped in his place.

The departure of the glory

The glory of the Lord, that presence which the first vision showed upon its chariot, rises from the sanctuary and departs. It leaves first the threshold of the Temple, then halts at the eastern gate, then rises above the city and withdraws toward the mountain to the east, the Mount of Olives: “The glory of the Lord rose from the midst of the city and halted on the mountain to the east.” Ezekiel 11:23 This departure is made by stages, and this slowness tells the patience of God: he withdraws reluctantly, marking one pause after another, leaving the door open to return until the end. The glory gone, the city is given over to ruin, for Jerusalem that God abandons loses its only defence. The Temple is holy only by the presence that dwells in it; that presence borne away, it is no more than a building that the armies of Babylon can burn.

The Church reads this departure in the light of the return. The glory went away toward the east by the eastern gate; it is by the east, on this same Mount of Olives, that Christ will enter Jerusalem, and it is from there that he will ascend to heaven after his resurrection. The presence that the glory bore away in leaving, Christ brings back in coming: God returns to dwell among men.

The death without mourning

The judgment reaches the prophet himself. God announces that he will take from him at a single blow what he holds most dear, his wife, and forbids him to weep for her: “I am about to take from you at a sudden blow the delight of your eyes; you shall not lament, you shall not weep.” Ezekiel 24:16 In the evening his wife dies; in the morning he does as he was commanded, without a sign of mourning. This trial is a sign: the beloved wife figures the Temple, “the delight of your eyes” Ezekiel 24:21, which God is about to give over to profanation by withdrawing; and the forbidding of mourning announces that the people, before the ruin of the sanctuary, will stay silent, the grief surpassing tears.