Ezekiel 33:1-6: in context

God gives Ezekiel the image of a watchman, and lays out the responsibilities on both sides with unusual precision. When a sword is coming against a land, the people appoint a watchman to stand on the wall and warn them. If the watchman sees the danger and blows the trumpet, then anyone who hears the warning and ignores it is responsible for his own death; his blood is on his own head. But, God adds, if the watchman sees the sword coming and does not blow the trumpet, and the people are not warned and someone is killed, then the watchman is held responsible; his blood I will require at the watchman's hand. The one who saw the danger and stayed silent shares the guilt of the death he failed to warn against.

That second half is the sharp one. We tend to think that if someone ignores good advice and comes to harm, that is entirely their own affair, and in one sense the passage agrees; the person who hears the trumpet and does not heed it bears his own blood. But God will not let the watchman off so easily. Seeing the danger creates an obligation to sound the alarm, and staying silent when I could have warned makes me complicit in what follows. The trumpet may be unwelcome, the warning may be ignored, but blowing it is not optional for the one who sees the sword. Silence, in that position, is not neutral.

That presses on the warnings I am tempted to withhold. There are times I see someone heading toward real harm, a destructive choice, a path with a cliff at the end of it, and I say nothing, because warning them would be awkward, or unwelcome, or none of my business, or might cost me the relationship. Ezekiel says that seeing the danger lays an obligation on me, and that how the person responds to the warning is on them, but my silence is on me. Is there a trumpet I am declining to blow, a warning I owe someone heading toward harm, that I am keeping quiet out of fear of how it will be received?