THE DEATH OF EZEKIEL'S WIFE.

"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. Forbear to cry, make no mourning for the dead, bind the tire of thine head upon thee, and put thy shoes upon thy feet, and cover not thy lips, and eat not the bread of men. 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*." The prophet here

describes how, during the prophetic afflatus, it had been revealed to him that his wife should shortly die. This mournful event took place in the evening, and on the following morning Ezekiel declared to the people the injunctions which the Almighty had laid upon him not to mourn for the deceased by shaving his head and putting on sackcloth, as was the usual custom; thereby signifying that the calamities about to fall upon the Jews should be so astonishing as to be beyond all expressions of sorrow. In the former part of the chapter, Ezekiel symbolises the destruction of Jerusalem and its inhabitants by the figure of a boiling pot in which the scum has been suffered to remain; and in order to give a more solemn aspect to the prophecy, which the Jews did not appear to regard, he mentions his own severe domestic affliction, and the command which the Deity had laid upon him not to mourn for his wife, when he would so soon have much more serious cause for lamentation. He tells his infatuated countrymen that such will be their grief upon the coming visitation, that, like him," they shall neither mourn nor weep," for the divine judgments will strike them with such astonishment, and overwhelm them with such terrors, that they shall neither be able to express it by words nor actions, which eventually came to pass. The print represents Ezekiel standing by the couch of his deceased wife, and relating to some of the most influential persons among his countrymen the prohibition which he had received from God, and what it portended.