“The Finder of Lost Children”:

Ezekiel 25:17, Pulp Fiction, and the Politics of Righteous Violence

Between Scripture and Silence

This piece does not blindly side with nations or dogmas. It stands with the displaced. The erased. The ones whose grief is too often rewritten as necessity.

At the heart of this exploration is a tension between ancient cries for justice — as found in the Hebrew scriptures — and the modern distortion of those cries into tools of domination. We begin with Ezekiel 25:17, a verse born from Israelite exile and anguish, and examine how its message has been co-opted, repackaged, and weaponised, most famously in Pulp Fiction, where vengeance is cloaked in the language of righteousness.

But this is not a literary exercise. This is a mirror.

Today, Palestinians are exiled, bombed, and blockaded, while the global powers that enable it invoke the same moral high ground ancient prophets once called into question. The irony is sharp: those who once cried for justice are now recast as oppressors, and the cries of the oppressed are dismissed as political noise.

This article honours the spiritual integrity of the original texts while challenging how their language is used, not to heal, but to justify harm. It asks:

• Who gets to be the “righteous man” in our world?
• Who decides which children are “lost” and which are claimed?
• And when do sacred words become the script for violence?

If we take prophecy seriously—not as myth but as moral architecture-then we must hear today’s cries in Palestine, in Gaza, in refugee camps and orphanages, as part of that same lineage.

This isn’t about religion. It’s about power.
And this time, we must get it right.

“I will carry out great vengeance on them and punish them in my wrath. Then they will know that I am the Lord, when I take vengeance on them.”
— Ezekiel 25:17 (NIV)

“The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men.
Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness,
for he is truly his brother’s keeper and the finder of lost children.”
— Fictionalized “Ezekiel 25:17”, Pulp Fiction

There’s a strange comfort in scripture, even when it seethes with vengeance. The language of divine wrath can feel like a balm when the world collapses — when injustice thrives, when mourning is too much to carry. And yet, that same language, when lifted out of context and rebranded as righteousness, becomes dangerous.

Today, as global consciousness shifts — especially in the rising support for Palestinian liberation — we are watching moral language collapse under its own hypocrisy. Suddenly, vengeance is no longer holy. Retribution is no longer godly. The people demanding freedom are no longer seen as prophets — they are cast as threats.

So what changed? The narrative. Not the violence.

🔥 The Original Ezekiel: A Vow of Vengeance

Ezekiel 25:17 comes from a series of judgment oracles where God declares vengeance on Israel’s enemies — Ammon, Moab, Edom, Philistia. These were real geopolitical threats, and the Israelites — exiled, wounded, traumatised — called on divine justice not as abstraction, but as survival.

It’s important to say: Ezekiel isn’t a celebration of conquest. It’s a cry for balance. It emerges from the psychology of a people whose temple had been destroyed, whose children were taken, whose land was no longer theirs. The Philistines, mentioned in verse 17, were just one face of that terror.

The language is sharp: wrath, vengeance, punishment. It reflects an ancient world where survival meant strength, and survival narratives had to be justified in the most sacred of terms.

But nowhere in Ezekiel 25:17 is there a line about “lost children,” or the moral responsibility of shepherding the weak.

That came later — in a Hollywood remix.

🎬 Pulp Fiction: The Morality Mask

Quentin Tarantino’s fictional version of Ezekiel 25:17, delivered by Samuel L. Jackson’s character Jules, adds something chilling:

“…for he is truly his brother’s keeper and the finder of lost children.”

This addition flips the context entirely. Suddenly, the speaker isn’t just an agent of wrath — he’s a saviour. A protector. A moral executioner. But the irony, of course, is that Jules says this right before he kills someone.

It’s the perfect metaphor for how systems of power justify themselves. As long as you call yourself the “finder of lost children,” the one “shepherding the weak,” you can do almost anything and still claim the moral high ground.

And this is where it ties directly into the present.

🌍 The Modern Shift: Palestine and the Collapse of the Saviour Narrative

In 2024 and 2025, public support for Palestine has reached a global tipping point. The world is finally asking: What does it mean when a people are bombed, blockaded, displaced, and erased in the name of security? What does it mean when those who resist are labelled terrorists, while those with tanks and drones call themselves peacekeepers?

It’s the Pulp Fiction paradox in real time.

We are told, in sanitised language, that this is about “protecting democracy,” “defending civilians,” and “eliminating threats.” We are told that those with overwhelming military power are “righteous,” and those who throw stones or hide in tunnels are “evil.”

But scripture never offered that convenience.
Not real scripture, anyway.

The biblical prophets didn’t romanticise power — they warned against it. They didn’t glorify kings — they held them accountable. When Israel was in exile, Ezekiel spoke to a people devastated. Today, when Palestinians are exiled, occupied, and bombed, their grief is dismissed as political inconvenience.

Support for Palestine is rising not because people reject Jewish history, but because they recognise the repetition of that very trauma—occupation, erasure, exile—now reversed.

🧩 Lost Children and Manufactured Orphans

And what of the children?

The line from Pulp Fiction — “the finder of lost children” — lands hard. Because it mirrors modern justifications for intervention, for war, for adoption, for state control. Children are always used as the moral currency. Save the children. Protect the children. Find the lost children.

But how often do we ask: Who made them lost in the first place?

• When bombs fall on Gaza, and orphans are created overnight, who claims the right to “save” them?
• When refugee children are separated at borders, who profits from that disruption?
• When families are displaced through war or poverty, who gets to narrate the child’s future?

Being the “finder” of lost children sounds noble — until you realise that many of those children were stolen by the very systems now claiming to save them.

⚖️ Vengeance, Justice, and the Need to Name

So, where does that leave Ezekiel 25:17? Perhaps in its rightful place — as a wounded cry from a traumatised people, longing for justice in an unjust world.

But the weaponised remix — the Hollywood version that allows killers to feel righteous, that justifies domination by invoking lost children — that version must be confronted because it’s not prophecy. It’s propaganda.

And today, when Palestine speaks, when Indigenous peoples rise, when adoptees demand the truth about their origins, what we’re hearing is not vengeance. It’s the prophetic grief Ezekiel once spoke.

And if we are truly righteous, we will not silence it with fake scripture.

We will listen.
We will remember.
And we will know the difference between saving children and creating orphans.

#FreePalestine
#Ezekiel25
#FinderOfLostChildren
#ScriptureAndPower
#EndReproductiveColonization
#AdopteeVoices
#JusticeNotVengeance