Ezekiel 22:1-2

Another message came from the Lord instructing Ezekiel to remind the residents of the bloody city of Jerusalem about all their abominations (cf. Ezekiel 20:4). A list of specific sins was necessary for him to pronounce judgment on them. Jerusalem was bloody because of all the blood its residents had shed, the blood of innocent people (cf. Nahum 3:1).

Shedding blood was Jerusalem’s primary offense, according to this prophecy (cf. Ezekiel 22:3-4; Ezekiel 22:6; Ezekiel 22:9; Ezekiel 22:12-13), and it had its roots in idolatry. The pagan religious practices that God’s people had adopted did not curb their abuse of other people, much less encourage altruistic living. Idolatry even promoted the taking of other people’s lives through human sacrifice. Whenever people disregard the revealed will of God, crimes of violence and bloodshed follow.

"Seven times in this prophecy the word ’blood’ or ’bloodshed’ (Hebrew, dam and damim) occur as characterizing the crimes against God’s covenant that had been occurring routinely in Jerusalem. These words have a special idiomatic meaning in Hebrew that their usual translation does not entirely convey in English. They connote ’harm’ or ’hurt,’ and that is what much of Ezekiel 22:1-16 is about: the harm or hurt done by people in power in Jerusalem (and by implication elsewhere in Judah) to those who have no power, such as the poor, the sick, the uneducated, etc. By extension, ’blood’ and bloodshed’ also come to mean in Hebrew anything ’violent’ or just simply ’vile,’ even if it does not actually involve causing physical harm to another person." [Note: Stuart, p. 209.]