Ezekiel33chapter 33

The watchman charge from chapter three is repeated here, and this time it is spelled out as a legal case. A city posts a lookout; if he sees the sword coming and blows the horn, anyone who ignores it has his blood on his own head; if the lookout sees and does not blow, God requires the blood at the watchman's hand. Towns really did keep men in wall towers and field towers through the night, and the ram's horn really was the alarm.

The timing of the fugitive's arrival is a detail worth pausing on. Jerusalem fell in the summer of 586 BC; this man reaches the canal settlements about five or six months later. That is about right for the journey — Ezra's caravan from Babylonia to Jerusalem took roughly four months — so the gap is not a puzzle but a measure of how far away these people were and how long they had waited in the dark.

Ezekiel's mouth is opened the evening before the man arrives. He had been under restraint since the day the siege began, speaking only about the nations. From here on he speaks freely and the message changes direction entirely, from judgment to rebuilding.

Two arguments from the ground are quoted. The survivors still in Judah say: Abraham was only one man, and he got the land as a possession; we are many, so the land is surely ours. It is a property claim dressed as theology. And the exiles say: our transgressions are on us and we are rotting away, how then can we live? — despair used as an excuse in the same way the sour-grapes proverb had been.

The last picture is the sharpest in the chapter. The people come and sit before Ezekiel as they always do, and they hear his words and do not do them. To them he is like a singer with a beautiful voice who plays well on an instrument. His preaching had become good entertainment.