24:15-27 Though mourning for the dead is a duty, yet it must be kept under by religion and right reason: we must not sorrow as men that have no hope. Believers must not copy the language and expressions of those who know not God. The people asked the meaning of the sign. God takes from them all that was dearest to them. And as Ezekiel wept not for his affliction, so neither should they weep for theirs. Blessed be God, we need not pine away under our afflictions; for should all comforts fail, and all sorrows be united, yet the broken heart and the mourner's prayer are always acceptable before God.Also, thou son of man, shall it not be in the day,.... This question is to be answered in the affirmative:

when I take from them their strength; their king and kingdom, their princes and nobles, their soldiers and men of might and war, their wealth and substance, their city and the inhabitants of it; or rather their temple, in which they placed their strong confidence: so the Targum,

"in the day when I shall take from them the house of their sanctuary;''

and which is called "the joy of their glory"; what they rejoiced and gloried in:

the desire of their eyes, and that whereupon they set their mind, their sons and their daughters; for to these may those phrases be applied; as well as to the temple; they being desirable to them, to be spared and continued, and on whom the affections of their hearts were set, and for whose welfare they were very solicitous. So some render it "the burden or care of their souls" (p); though the Targum applies this, as the other to the temple, paraphrasing it,

"and the delight of their eyes shall be taken from them, and the beloved of their souls, which is better to them than their sons and their daughters.''

(p) "onus animae eoram", Munster; "curam, vel solicitudinem"; so some in Vatablus.