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Pulp Fiction — "Ezekiel 25:17"

Invented Film 1994

Almost the entire monologue is invented. The actual Ezekiel 25:17 is a single sentence about divine vengeance.

Context — what the work shows

Jules Winnfield (Samuel L. Jackson) recites a lengthy speech before executions, attributing it to "Ezekiel 25:17."

Claimed reference

"The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men…" — attributed to Ezekiel 25:17.

Actual reference

Ezekiel 25:17 (BSB): "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."

What the text actually says

Ezekiel 25:17 sits at the end of an oracle of judgment against the Philistines. The full sentence reads: "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." No "path of the righteous," no "tyranny of evil men," no shepherd imagery — just a brief declaration of judgment.

Verdict

Only the final line of Jules's speech echoes the real verse — and even that line is adapted. The bulk of the monologue has no biblical source; Tarantino expanded a line he borrowed from the 1976 Sonny Chiba film "The Bodyguard," which itself took liberties with the text.

The chain of borrowing

The chain that produced the Pulp Fiction speech runs through three films, not directly through the Bible:

  1. The biblical Ezekiel 25:17 — a single-sentence judgment oracle against the Philistines. The Hebrew text gives no shepherd, no path of the righteous, no benediction.
  2. Karate Kiba / The Bodyguard (1976) — the Sonny Chiba film opens with a card attributing the speech to Ezekiel 25:17. The card is the source of most of the lines Jules recites.
  3. Pulp Fiction (1994) — Tarantino took the 1976 card almost verbatim, with small edits, and gave it to Jules.

The speech is therefore a film-to-film borrowing, not a Bible-to-film borrowing.

What the actual passage says

The full immediate context is Ezekiel 25:15–17, an oracle against the Philistines:

“This is what the Lord GOD says: ‘Because the Philistines acted in vengeance, taking revenge with malice of soul to destroy with ancient hostility, therefore this is what the Lord GOD says: Behold, I will stretch out My hand against the Philistines and cut off the Cherethites and destroy the remnant along the coast of the sea. 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.’” (BSB)

Three sentences. The “righteous man” and “shepherds” of the cinematic speech are not present in any standard translation.

Why the speech endures

The film’s Ezekiel speech is one of the most quoted “biblical” passages in modern pop culture. Most viewers who have heard the speech have never read the actual verse. That gap — between the cinematic memory and the textual reality — is exactly the kind of misquotation QuotesFromBible documents elsewhere.