Ezekiel 24:23

23 1Your turbans shall be on your heads and your shoes on your feet; you shall not mourn or weep, but 2you shall rot away in your iniquities and groan to one another.

Ezekiel 24:23 Meaning and Commentary

Ezekiel 24:23

And your tires shall be upon your heads, and your shoes upon
your feet.
&c.] As will be necessary while travelling, and when carrying captive to a foreign country, as now will be their case: ye shall not mourn nor weep;
shall not dare to do it, because of their enemies; and, moreover, so great should be their miseries and calamities, that they should be struck dumb, and quite astonished and stupefied with them; that they should not be able to vent their sorrow by an outward act of mourning: but ye shall pine away for your iniquities;
without any true sense of them, or godly sorrow for them, but in wretched hardness of heart, and black despair: and mourn one towards another;
not to God, confessing their sins, being contrite and penitent; but to one another, fretting, murmuring, and complaining at the hand of God upon them: this seems to denote the private way of mourning they should use for fear of the enemy, when they could get together by themselves, as well as their disregard to God, against whom they had sinned.

Ezekiel 24:23 In-Context

21 'Say to the house of Israel, Thus says the Lord GOD: Behold, I will profane my sanctuary, the pride of your power, the delight of your eyes, and the yearning of your soul, and your sons and your daughters whom you left behind shall fall by the sword.
22 And you shall do as I have done; you shall not cover your lips, nor eat the bread of men.
23 Your turbans shall be on your heads and your shoes on your feet; you shall not mourn or weep, but you shall rot away in your iniquities and groan to one another.
24 Thus shall Ezekiel be to you a sign; according to all that he has done you shall do. When this comes, then you will know that I am the Lord GOD.'
25 "As for you, son of man, surely on the day when I take from them their stronghold, their joy and glory, the delight of their eyes and their soul's desire, and also their sons and daughters,

Cross References 2

  • 1. [See ver. 22 above]
  • 2. See Ezekiel 4:17
The English Standard Version is published with the permission of Good News Publishers.