24:6 Ezekiel was then to announce woe on the bloody city (no longer the holy city) of Jerusalem (cf. Nah. 3:1), which the pot represented (cf. 11:3, 7, 11; Jer. 1:13-14). The pot had rust (Heb. hel'ah) in it that evidently stood for the blood of the people slain there (cf. 22:1-16). Ezekiel was then to draw several pieces of meat out of the pot at random perhaps signifying God's rescuing a remnant from judgment.
24:7 Blood was in Jerusalem's midst like the blood of a sacrifice that had not been drained out on the ground and covered up (atoned for) as the Law prescribed (Lev. 17:13). Israel's sins were open for all to see, as blood on a bare rock (cf. Isa. 3:9). Not only was Jerusalem a city that had shed much innocent blood, but it was an unacceptable sacrifice to God because of the blood that was in it.
24:8 Therefore Yahweh was draining the blood out of Jerusalem by allowing the Babylonians to slay the Jews in it. The innocent blood that the Jerusalemites had shed had cried out to God for Him to take vengeance and to execute wrath on the murderers, as Abel's blood had done (Gen. 4:10; cf. Isa. 26:21). As the people of Jerusalem had shed blood openly, so the Lord would shed their blood openly, on the bare rock of Jerusalem.
"The severe judgment sent by God upon Judah should be ample warning to those today who share the same callous disregard for the value of human life, both the born and the unborn."334
