Executive Summary: Ezekiel for Spanish Translation

Why it matters

Ezekiel is the first Old Testament Hebrew book layered onto a Language Package originally built for Romans and the New Testament. It introduces a divine-Name convention (Jehová / Señor Jehová) that did not exist in the baseline, and it reuses several baseline Spanish theological words — above all justicia/justo, gloria, santificación, and Espíritu — for senses that are related to, but doctrinally distinct from, their Romans meanings. Full-book coverage (all 48 chapters) surfaces two live, real-world syncretism risks specific to Spanish-speaking audiences: Espiritismo/Santería-influenced misreadings of the dry-bones vision, and Catholic-tradition assimilation of “el Seol” into “el infierno” or “el purgatorio.” Getting Ezekiel wrong in Spanish does not just create imprecision — it risks either flattening the New Testament’s forensic justification doctrine into legalism, or having the core passage read as an endorsement of necromancy.

Key findings

• 21 doctrines identified and risk-tiered across the full book (Ezekiel 1–48), none silently folded — every chapter is mapped to a doctrine or explicitly marked “reviewed, no new content.”
• 5 Critical-risk doctrines: The Glory and Sovereignty of God; God’s Presence Departing and Returning; Individual Responsibility for Sin (Ezekiel 18); Restoration and the Valley of Dry Bones (the core passage); Sheol and the Realm of the Dead.
• 6 High-risk doctrines: The New Heart and New Spirit; Judgment on Jerusalem and the Nations; Covenant Unfaithfulness as Harlotry; The Watchman and Prophetic Responsibility; The Davidic Shepherd-King Promise; God Sanctifying His Own Name Before the Nations.
• 11 of 21 doctrines (52%) require mandatory human theologian review; the remaining 10 require native-speaker review; zero doctrines are automated-only, unlike the Romans baseline.
• 90 terms now populate the Ezekiel translation memory (24 inherited exactly from the Romans baseline, 66 newly introduced). 23 Critical-risk and 22 High-risk terms (45 total, 50% of all terms) require theologian-level scrutiny at every occurrence.
• The single highest doctrinal-collision risk in the entire Language Package (exceeding even the Romans justification/righteousness fault line) is Ezekiel 18’s behavioral “justo/impío” colliding with the baseline’s forensic “justicia imputada.”
• The core passage itself (Ezekiel 37:1-14) concentrates an unusual density of risk: the divine Name formula, the recognition formula, ruach’s triple polysemy (viento/aliento/espíritu), the chayah-vs-resucitar distinction, the “casa de Israel” interpretive key, and the Espiritismo/Santería dry-bones caution all converge in fourteen verses.

Risks

• Doctrinal collapse risk: rendering chayah as “resucitar” or “justo” without disambiguation would import Christ’s unique resurrection or Paul’s forensic righteousness into a text making a different, though compatible, claim — in either direction, a serious misteaching.
• Syncretism risk: dry-bones imagery, unflagged, is read through a necromantic/mediumship lens in Caribbean and Latin American Espiritismo/Santería contexts — the highest-probability real-world misapplication identified in this analysis.
• Denominational assimilation risk: “el Seol” defaults to “el infierno” or “el purgatorio” in Catholic-majority popular piety; “Jehová” carries an unrelated denominational association with Jehovah’s Witnesses in casual ecumenical usage.
• Consistency-at-scale risk: the recognition formula (~70+ occurrences) and the divine-Name formula (~430+/~217 occurrences) are exceptionally exposed to drift across a multi-worker Phase 2 batch process; a single unflagged deviation compounds across dozens of downstream segments.
• Pastoral misapplication risk: the harlotry metaphor (chs.16, 23) and the Eden/cherub Tyre oracle (28:12-13) are both documented as live over-reading risks in Spanish-language popular teaching (respectively, as literal accusation against women, and as literal Satan biography).

Opportunities

• Ezekiel’s climactic closing phrase, “Jehová está allí” (48:35), gives this curriculum a uniquely warm, clarifying resolution point for all seven core doctrines — an opportunity to end the curriculum on relational assurance rather than unresolved tension.
• The book’s sheer repetition (recognition formula, divine-Name formula) is a teaching asset, not just a translation risk: fixed, identical Spanish renderings let learners recognize the pattern themselves once flagged, reinforcing the doctrine of God’s self-authenticating sovereignty.
• The explicit chayah/resucitar and justo/justificado distinctions give this Language Package a chance to model, for the first time across the whole curriculum, how one Bible-translation glossary can hold two Testaments’ related-but-distinct vocabulary together without collapsing either.

Recommended actions

1. Load the Ezekiel translation_memory.json and 12_ai_translation_requirements.md module alongside (never instead of) the Romans baseline for every Phase 2 Ezekiel segment.
2. Route all segments touching the 5 Critical and 6 High doctrines, and all 45 Critical/High terms, to mandatory human theologian review before approval — no automated-only path exists for this book.
3. Apply the mandatory disambiguation notes (chayah, justo/impío, ruach, she’ol, sanctify-God’s-name, hijo de hombre) at every flagged occurrence without exception, per the escalation rules now fixed in 12_ai_translation_requirements.md.
4. Sample the recognition formula and divine-Name formula specifically during Step 17’s Doctrinal Fidelity Review, given their exceptionally high occurrence count and batch-drift exposure.
5. Brief all reviewers explicitly on the Espiritismo/Santería dry-bones risk and the Sheol/infierno assimilation risk before Phase 2 work begins on chapters 31–32 and 37.