1And the word of the LORD came to me, saying, 2“Man, speak to the sons of your people and say to them: When I bring the sword against a land, the people of the land take one man from their best and make him a lookout for them. 3And when he sees the sword coming against the land, he blows the ram’s horn and warns the people. 4And whoever hears the sound of the ram’s horn and does not heed the warning and the sword comes and takes him, his blood is on his own head. 5The sound of the ram’s horn he heard but he did not heed the warning, his blood is upon him. But he who heeds the warning shall save his life. 6And the lookout who sees the sword coming and does not blow the ram’s horn and the people is not warned, and the sword comes and takes lives from them, the person is taken in his crime, but his blood will I demand of the lookout. 7And you, man, I have made you a lookout for the house of Israel, and you shall hear a word from My mouth and warn them from Me. 8When I say to the wicked: Wicked man, you are doomed to die, and you have not spoken to warn the wicked man of his way, he, the wicked man, shall die for his crime, but his blood I will seek out from you. 9And you, when you warn the wicked man of his way to turn back from it, and he does not turn back from it, he shall die for his crime, but you shall save your life. 10And you, man, say to the house of Israel: Thus you have said, saying, ‘Why, our trespasses and our offenses are upon us, and we rot in them, and how shall we survive?’ 11Say to them: By My life, said the Master, the LORD, I do not desire the death of the wicked but rather the turning back of the wicked from his way, that he may live. Turn back, turn back from your evil ways, for why should you die, O house of Israel? 12And you, man, say to the sons of your people: The righteousness of the righteous shall not save him on the day of his trespass, and in the wickedness of the wicked he shall not stumble on the day he turns back from his wickedness. And the righteous cannot live by virtue of it on the day of his offense. 13When I say of the righteous, he shall surely live, and he trusts in his righteousness and does wrong, all his righteousness shall not be recalled, and for the wrong that he has done, he shall die. 14And when I say to the wicked, you are doomed to die, and he turns back from his offense and does justice and righteousness, 15if he gives back what is pledged, pays for what is robbed, goes by the statutes of life, not doing wrong, he shall surely live, he shall not die. 16All his offenses that he committed shall not be recalled for him. He has done justice and righteousness—he shall surely live. 17And should the sons of your people say, ‘The way of the Master does not measure up,’ it is they whose way does not measure up. 18When the righteous turns back from his righteousness and does wrong, he shall die for it. 19And when the wicked turns back from his wickedness and does justice and righteousness, for it he shall live. 20And you have said, ‘The way of the Master does not measure up.’ Each man of you will I judge for his ways, O house of Israel.”
21And it happened in the twelfth year of our exile in the eleventh month on the fifth of the month, a fugitive came to me from Jerusalem, saying, “The city has been struck down.” 22And the hand of the LORD was upon me in the evening before the fugitive came, and He opened my mouth, and I was no longer mute. 23And the word of the LORD came to me, saying, 24“Man, these dwellers among the ruins on the soil of Israel are saying, ‘Abraham was but one, and he took hold of the land, and we are many. To us has the land been given as an inheritance.’ 25Therefore, say to them, Thus said the Master, the LORD: Over blood you eat, and your eyes you lift up to your foul things, and you shed blood. And shall you take hold of the land? 26You took your stand with your sword. You performed abominations, and each man defiled his fellow man’s wife. And shall you take hold of the land? 27Thus shall you say to them, Thus said the Master, the LORD: Those who are among the ruins shall surely fall by the sword, and those on the surface of the field I will give to the beasts as food, and those in the fortresses and in the caves shall die by pestilence. 28And I will turn the land into a desolation and a devastation, and the pride of its strength shall come to an end, and the mountains of Israel shall be desolate with no passerby. 29And they shall know that I am the LORD when I turn the land into a desolation and a destruction for all their abominations that they did. 30And you, man, the sons of your people who speak to each other about you by the walls and at the entrances of the houses, and one speaks to another, a man to his kinsman, saying, ‘Come, pray, and hear what is the word coming forth from the LORD.’ 31They shall come to you as the people are wont to come, and My people shall sit before you and hear your words, but these they do not do, for in the lust in their mouths they act, after their gain their heart goes. 32And look, you are for them a song of lust, lovely in sound and deftly played. And they hear your words but do not act on them. 33And when it comes—look, it comes—they shall know that a prophet was in their midst.”
CHAPTER 33 NOTES
Click here to advance to the next section of the text.
2. a lookout. The same metaphor for the role of the prophet is used in 3:17. Although this term could also be rendered as “watchman,” the connotation is clearly military: he is the person posted in a tower or on a height to look out for and warn the people of approaching armies, as the prophet sees and warns of impending disaster.
3. when he sees the sword coming against the land. This passage makes effective use of synecdoche: “the sword” clearly refers to the military force wielding swords, but the concrete image of a destructive sword descending upon the city is palpable.
the ram’s horn. The ram’s horn, with its sharp, penetrating sound, was used both to muster troops and to warn of an attack.
6. the person is taken in his crime, but his blood will I demand of the lookout. The offending person (the Hebrew says merely “he”), not having been warned by the prophet, will be punished by death, but the prophet, because he has failed to fulfill his calling, will bear responsibility for that death, and retribution will be exacted from him. Verse 8 essentially repeats this idea in slightly different language, Ezekiel’s penchant for repetition again in view.
11. I do not desire the death of the wicked. More than any other prophet, Ezekiel is repeatedly concerned with questions of divine justice and penitence. This sentence, for understandable reasons, was later incorporated in the liturgy for the Day of Atonement.
12. And the righteous cannot live by virtue of it. The “it,” though a little distant from its antecedent, refers to “the righteousness of the righteous.”
16. All his offenses that he committed shall not be recalled for him. In Ezekiel’s vision of divine justice, a person lives in a condition of constant existential choice: the wicked man can reverse the dire consequences of all his previous trespasses by deciding to do what is right, and the righteous man can cancel all the good effects of his acts of justice by sliding into acts of wickedness. The next four verses, hewing to Ezekiel’s characteristic style, go on to repeat this idea.
21. a fugitive came to me from Jerusalem. Since the notation of date at the beginning of the verse places this prophecy in 585 B.C.E., this would be a year after the destruction of Jerusalem.
22. And the hand of the LORD was upon me . . . and He opened my mouth. As elsewhere, Ezekiel represents his prophetic experience as a kind of bodily seizure by God in which he is virtually a passive instrument. One suspects that, more than the other prophets, he underwent extreme ecstatic states. He seems to imply here that prior to the night before the arrival of the fugitive, he had been plunged in a condition of muteness. By his own account, he had certainly prophesied several times in the period before and after the final conquest of the kingdom of Judah. It may be the case that he alternated between times of ecstatic prophecy and times of total silence.
24. these dwellers among the ruins. This phrase suggests that Ezekiel had already heard of the destruction of Jerusalem.
25. Over blood you eat. Consuming blood, or eating “over” blood, is explicitly prohibited (see Leviticus 19:26). There could also be a reference here to some sort of magical rite, as the invocation of idolatry in the next phrase might suggest. But then the end of the verse mentions shedding blood, so the blood forbidden to be eaten perhaps puns on the idea of murder—you eat as you are immersed in bloodshed.
27. among the ruins . . . on the surface of the field . . . in the fortresses and in the caves. This constitutes a panorama of where the survivors of the destruction of Jerusalem are to be found: some remain among the ruins of the city; some have fled to the open field; some have taken refuge outside the city in fortresses (whether actual fortresses or simply mountain crags) and caves.
28. a desolation and a devastation. The wordplay in the Hebrew is shemamah umeshamah.
30. by the walls and at the entrances of the houses. This is a realistic picture of people congregating on the streets outside their homes to speak to one another.
one speaks to another, a man to his kinsman. Since both phrases mean the same thing, this is probably one of those instances in which scribal tradition has incorporated in the text two alternate versions of the same phrase.
Come, pray, and hear what is the word coming forth from the LORD. As elsewhere, the people, despite the tension between them and the prophet, are anxious to hear from him what God’s word is, especially at this grim moment when they know that their homeland has been destroyed.
31. as the people are wont to come. Literally, “as the coming of the people.”
the lust in their mouths. While the expression sounds a bit strange (the Septuagint has instead “the lies of their mouth”), it is probably authentic, leading to the reference to “a song of lust” in the next verse. The people are scarcely ready to take in the word of the LORD spoken by the prophet, immersed as they are in concupiscence and greed (“after their gain their heart goes”).
32. you are for them a song of lust, lovely in sound and deftly played. The prophet speaks God’s imperative words, but all his listeners are capable of hearing is the sort of lewd song accompanying their own profligacy to which they are habituated.
33. And when it comes—look, it comes. The meaning “it” invoked is the disaster of which Ezekiel has prophesied—at this dark moment, a disaster compounding the catastrophe of material defeat.