Again, when a righteous man turns away from his righteousness and does evil, and I put a stumbling block before him, he will die; since you have not warned him, he shall die in his sin, and his righteous deeds which he has done shall not be remembered; but his blood I will require at your hand.
Ezekiel 3:18 When I say to the wicked, ‘You will surely die,’ and you do not warn him or speak out to warn the wicked from his wicked way that he may live, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity, but his blood I will require at your hand.
Ezekiel 3:19 Yet if you have warned the wicked and he does not turn from his wickedness or from his wicked way, he shall die in his iniquity; but you have delivered yourself.
Ezekiel 3:20 Again, when a righteous man turns away from his righteousness and does evil, and I put a stumbling block before him, he will die; since you have not warned him, he shall die in his sin, and his righteous deeds which he has done shall not be remembered; but his blood I will require at your hand.
Ezekiel 3:21 However, if you have warned the righteous man that the righteous should not sin and he does not sin, he shall surely live because he took warning; and you have delivered yourself.”
Ezekiel 3:22 And the hand of Yahweh was on me there, and He said to me, “Get up, go out to the plain, and there I will speak to you.”
The verse centers on "again", "righteous", "turns", "away", "righteousness", "does", "evil", and "stumbling". It is saying that the verse draws attention to "again" and "righteous", so its meaning should be read from those terms before moving to application.
The nearby context moves from verse 19's "Yet if you have warned the wicked..." into verse 21's "However if you have warned the righteous...", so "again" and "righteous" belong inside that flow. In Ezekiel context, the local focus is covenant, worship, and faithfulness.
A plain takeaway is to answer the verse's own emphasis on "again" and "righteous" with trust shaped by these words, not by a vague optimism outside the passage.