My husband, Ezekiel, is a wonderful, Godly man whom I admire hugely and who cares for me delightfully.  I have never had any doubts that he loves me or that I am “the delight of his eyes”, as he so frequently says – or writes, nowadays.

However, I am concerned about him.

Ten years ago, when we lived in Judah, there was no problem.  We were both young when we were married, and Ezekiel was only 25 years old when King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon took us, and thousands of others, into captivity, along with our king Jehoiachin.  King Jehoiachin was even younger than me – only 18 years old – and had been king for a mere 3 months and 10 days.

Once we got used to captivity, everything was fine.  But Ezekiel comes from a priestly family, and he would have become a priest when he turned 30 if we had been in Jerusalem.  Instead, by that time we had been in Babylon for five years.

Maybe it was missing the opportunity to follow his ancestral career that put him under stress.  Anyway, whatever it was, the year he turned 30 was the start of his strange behaviour.

In fact, I can even tie it down to one particular day: the fifth day of the fourth month in the fifth year of our captivity.  Until then, he was growing in godliness in an admirable way.  I have no doubt that he was coming closer and closer to Yahweh our God, but on that day, something happened.

Ezekiel has explained to me what happened from his point of view, but it seems utterly incredible.  Of course, I completely believed him when he told me that this was what he had seen, but I couldn’t help wondering whether it was more delusion than vision.  If only I could have seen it myself, there wouldn’t be any question: we could have shared the same weird experiences and our neighbours would be free to consider us both mad!

Anyway, he told me that he saw a stormy wind coming from the north with brightness and some strange living things with four faces and four wings and strange shapes, looking like burning coals and moving very quickly – almost looking like lightning in their speed.  Not only that, but each living creature had a very strange thing that Ezekiel said stayed right near it wherever it moved, something that looked to him like a wheel within a wheel, though I’m not really sure what that means.  When he told me, I’m afraid my first response was that it probably meant that he needed more sleep!

I really didn’t know what to think.  Ezekiel has always been very sensible and down-to-earth, and he still looked and sounded just the same as he described what he had seen.  He didn’t suddenly look wild-eyed or over-stressed.  He just looked like Ezekiel, but what he said didn’t fit with anything that happens in ordinary life.  He also told me that he saw a throne and something that looked quite human sitting on the throne – except that it looked like it was made of hot metal and glowed with light and fire.

If your husband or wife, or maybe your son or daughter, told you that they had seen something like that, wouldn’t you be doubtful?  Of course, my Ezekiel had always been steady and reliable, so naturally, I tried hard to believe him, but really, was it possible?

There was also more, much more, about how he knew that it was the glory of God and that something spoke to him and told him that he was being sent to the people of Israel as a prophet.  Well, I heard Jeremiah the prophet speaking in Jerusalem before we were brought into captivity, and he never spoke about strange creatures like lightning or wheels within wheels.  He just spoke simple messages and warnings from God – things that could be understood, and warnings about things that have happened, too.

If God had just given Ezekiel nice, straightforward messages, things like Jeremiah said, I would have been pleased, even proud of him.  But trying to cope with a husband who talks about cherubim and wheels and thrones in the sky has been very difficult.

Next, he was given a scroll to eat.  How was I meant to explain that to my family and our neighbours?

We talked about it and he explained to me that God had told him to speak to the people who are here in captivity with us.  The scroll had had all sorts of terrible woes written on it, and I gathered that my husband didn’t want to say them to the people.  He told me that God had warned him not to be stubborn like the rest of the people are, but after that episode he didn’t do anything for a week.  Every day, he just sat there and did nothing.  No speaking, no doing, nothing at all.  I sensed that he was angry, although he didn’t explain it to me.  Maybe he was upset that God had sent us all into captivity, but still planned to punish us more.  Maybe my husband didn’t think that was fair.  I really don’t know, and that’s part of the problem.  He didn’t tell me everything at the time; and now he can’t.

If God really was telling him to say something, this sitting around in silence was not the way to please God.

Maybe he would have obeyed God sooner if I had been a bit quicker to believe everything that he told me.  Whatever the reason, at the end of that week he stopped talking completely.  And in the years since then, he hasn’t said a word unless he had some specific message to deliver directly from God.

Now, once again I ask: if all this had happened to your husband or wife, what would you think?  Would you wonder whether he or she was going crazy?  Or would you rejoice that God was clearly speaking to them?

I’m so mixed up about it all.  I want to believe it, because Ezekiel has never lied to me or shown any signs of mental instability, but it is so different from anything I ever expected a prophet of God to do.  Having faith in things that are so far from our common experience is very hard.  I keep asking myself, “Why would God really do it this way?”, and I can’t find an answer I can be sure of.

Nevertheless, I still love and admire Ezekiel, so I do my best to believe him and support him.

But every time I think I can accept how things are, even stranger things happen.

When the next order came, Ezekiel wrote me a note to explain it all.  He was to make a model of Jerusalem on a brick and put it on the ground.  Then he had to lie down in front of it and act as if he was besieging the city.

A grown man!  Acting like a child playing games!  And not just for a short time either.  He wrote that God had said that he was to lie on his left side “pressing the siege” for 390 days.  Can you imagine the social shame of having a husband who lies on the ground in front of a brick for more than a year, shaking his fist at it and…oh, I can’t go on.  I just don’t want to remember it.  And as for the way he lost weight on the starvation rations God had allocated him, I can’t imagine any wife being happy with that!

All of my neighbours were telling me that he was mad, and I couldn’t even show my love for him by feeding him good, healthy meals.

And it has just kept on getting worse.  I have had more than four years now of struggling with my own attitudes, as everyone around me agrees that Ezekiel has lost his mind.

I have watched him cutting off his hair with a sword and then throwing the hair up in the air and rushing around waving his sword as it falls to the ground.

I have talked to him, begging for some explanation or proof, only to have him point to his mouth to remind me that he cannot speak.  Then God wants him to give a message to the people and suddenly he can speak clearly and loudly, and it’s just like the old Ezekiel again, the strong, kind voice I loved to listen to in the good old days.

Do I believe him about all that God has done with him?  Yes, I think I do.  I certainly try to, but as a result, everybody says that I must be mad too!

And right now I am very concerned because I have not been well for the last few weeks.  I don’t seem to be getting any better – in fact, I may even be getting worse.

I can’t look after him properly with the way I am, and today it has occurred to me for the first time to wonder: What will happen to him if I die?  Nobody else will look after him properly.  They all think he is mad.

A few times today, I have caught him looking at me in a way I can’t quite describe, almost as if something terrible is about to happen.

Oh, Ezekiel, may God care for you if I cannot.

Ezekiel’s wife died on the tenth day of the tenth month in the ninth year of their captivity.  On the morning of that day, God warned him what was about to happen, and in the evening, the “delight of his eyes” died.  However, God did care for him, and three years later he regained his voice (Ezekiel 33:21-22).  After that, his work as a prophet continued for many years.