Emendation for the Busy: Evaluating Changes to the Text in Ezekiel 24

If a book or personal message has a misspelled word, we try to fix it in our minds. We emend it to make it intelligible. That is what scholars of Scripture do when texts seem to have been copied incorrectly. This process was ongoing through the history of the Bible and continues in the preparation of critical texts today. But how do we know that a particular phrase is "fixed" rather than made up? How can we decide between suggested emendations? This paper will use examples from Ezekiel 24 to consider when emendation is helpful, when it is merely possible, and when it is better to accept the text as-is. I will suggest that, despite the validity of popular emendations such as "bones" to "wood" in verse 5a, emendation is often unnecessary. For example, I argue that a common perceived need to emend verse 10b to refer to "pouring out" broth can be avoided with attention to the verse's metaphor of overcooked stew: the broth is reduced rather than poured out or seasoned. We will learn how and why emendations are made to better understand when we should accept the text as "corrected."