Ezekiel 7:24

Wherefore I will bring the worst of the heathen, and they shall possess their houses: I will also make the pomp of the strong to cease; and their holy places shall be defiled.

The prophecies concern Judah, Jerusalem, and other kingdoms, and were delivered by Ezekiel among the captives in Babylonia after Nebuchadnezzar took King Jehoiachin and others there in 597 B.C. They were given while Jeremiah was prophesying in Jerusalem, and their visions show God's overruling providence and rule over the nations.

The judgment foretold on Judah is that God would bring a ruthless foreign nation to take possession of the people's houses, would end the pride and splendor of the powerful, and would allow their holy places to be defiled. That defiling would come because the Jews disregarded God's holy things, so the nations coming against them would defile what they regarded as holy and profane what they held sacred. The holy things so defiled included the temple and, more broadly, places and things dedicated to God.

The prediction was given in 594 B.C. that because of bloodshed and violence God would withdraw instruction from Israel, so that the people would seek a vision from the prophet without finding it, with teaching lost from the priest and counsel lost from the elders. It means a time of mourning when divine guidance is withheld, in contrast to times of obedience when God is near and ready to instruct. It was fulfilled a few years later in 588 B.C., when Israel in captivity had no law and her prophets received no vision from the Lord.

The chapter's prophecy reaches down to the present day. It is a prophecy of the coming time of unparalleled trouble, which precedes Christ's glorious appearing and is just ahead. It shows the character that should pertain to the people of God in the last days, a character of mourning and weeping instead of joking and jesting, a standard from which many fall very far and which all must heed.

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