The Watchman in Ezekiel 33 and Warning My Eleven-Year-Old

Most people go straight to the trumpet in Ezekiel 33 and skip how the watchman gets his job. Verse 2 has it done by the people: "if the people of the land take a man of their coasts, and set him for their watchman." Five verses later the Lord says it to Ezekiel directly, "I have set thee a watchman unto the house of Israel" (33:7). That's one office handed out two ways and I think the chapter wants both in view. I take "a man of their coasts" to mean somebody from their own territory, which is my reading of the word. The verse only says they take him.

This week's Come, Follow Me chapter asks very little of him.

What the chapter says, in the order it says it

Verse 3 is an "if": if he sees the sword coming upon the land, he blows the trumpet and warns the people. Verses 4 and 5 turn to whoever hears it. Someone who hears the sound and takes no warning has his blood "upon his own head," and in verse 5 the other side is stated just as flatly: "But he that taketh warning shall deliver his soul."

Verse 6 is the watchman who sees the sword and does not blow, the one that gets quoted at parents, and the weight it puts on him is real. Here it is whole.

But if the watchman see the sword come, and blow not the trumpet, and the people be not warned; if the sword come, and take any person from among them, he is taken away in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at the watchman's hand.

Ezekiel 33:6

Verse 9 is the matching case. The watchman warns the wicked of his way and the man doesn't turn. He dies in his iniquity, the verse says, "but thou hast delivered thy soul." Same trumpet and same watchman with a different ending, and the only thing that changed is what the other man did, so the chapter lets the watchman's account close at the blowing.

Where the manual stops and I keep going

The manual applies the watchman to prophets and leaders. Its heading for the children's page is "Prophets are like watchmen who warn us of danger." I'm applying it to parents, which the manual doesn't do. Nothing in Ezekiel speaks to a mother and an eleven-year-old, so from here on you're reading me.

What a one-time warning sounds like

A warning I mean to give once is short and about one thing, and it's said sitting down with nobody else in the room, which rules out the dinner table with Lily listening. On Sunday, the first dark evening after the clocks went back, I sat on Caleb's bed and told him once that a driver backing out can't see a hoodie at night and he needs a light on the bike. Then I went downstairs. I taught third grade for five years, and in a room of eight-year-olds saying it five times was the method and it worked. At eleven, the fifth time gives him five chances to be annoyed at me and none to think about the bike. I wrote about the dinner version of this in what I do the third time my kid whines about dinner, and a warning that actually matters runs into the same wall with higher stakes.

By the third telling there's no information left in it. He already has the sentence, and what he gets is a mother with her worry turned up, which he waits out the way you wait out the ad before a video.

What I try instead is to let a day go by and ask a plain question with an answer, like how the ride home was or whether the light is working. I leave the supplies where he'd find them. If something small happens by itself, a cold ride or a car that comes closer than he liked, I keep my mouth shut and let it belong to him.

What verses 4 and 5 hand back

Those two verses are the ones I reread when I want to say it again. The person who hears the sound and takes no warning carries that himself and the person who takes it delivers his own soul, and neither verse gives the watchman a job after the trumpet.

Near the end of the chapter there's a picture of what that looks like from the watchman's side. The people come to Ezekiel, "they sit before thee as my people, and they hear thy words, but they will not do them" (33:31). Verse 32 says he is to them "a very lovely song." They like listening to him. The chapter reports that without blaming him for it, and I notice I would. If a child hears me out and nods and does nothing, my first thought is that I said it wrong. The text treats the saying and the doing as two separate people's work.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does Ezekiel 33 say to warn only once?

No. It says the watchman blows the trumpet and warns the people and never gives a number. Once is a rule I made up for myself, so if you try it, call it that.

What if my kid ignores the warning completely?

Then you did what verse 9 describes for the watchman. The verse doesn't promise he'll come around, and I find that hard to accept. Stay easy to talk to so the next conversation isn't the first one over again.

Is checking in later a second warning?

For me it isn't, as long as it's a question and not the same sentence in a different coat. Caleb can tell the difference quicker than I can.

Should I warn a kid in front of his siblings or friends?

I wouldn't. A warning given with an audience turns into a performance for the audience, and he'll answer the audience. Sitting down alone costs me two minutes and gets me a real answer.

Verse 11 and the second "turn ye"

Verse 11 is where my rule gets harder to hold, because the Lord says through Ezekiel that he has no pleasure in the death of the wicked, "but that the wicked turn from his way and live: turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die, O house of Israel?"

He says it twice before the sentence is over and then asks a question. It comes after the watchman has done the blowing, in the same speech, addressed to the whole house of Israel. Nothing in the verse tells me whether it's a second trumpet or the first one finishing, and I can't make it fit a once-only rule either way.

with love, Melissa