diff --git a/eslint/babel-eslint-parser/index.js b/eslint/babel-eslint-parser/index.js
index 0cabbb85c7..2cf21cb021 100644
--- a/eslint/babel-eslint-parser/index.js
+++ b/eslint/babel-eslint-parser/index.js
@@ -45,7 +45,9 @@ function monkeypatch() {
   try {
     var esrecurseLoc = Module._resolveFilename("esrecurse", eslintMod);
     estraverseRelative = createModule(esrecurseLoc);
-  } catch (err) {}
+  } catch (err) {
+    throw new Error("babel-eslint isn't currently compatible with ESLint 2.3.x. The recommendation is to pin to ESLint 2.2.x right now.");
+  }
 
   // contains all the instances of estraverse so we can modify them if necessary
   var estraverses = [];
diff --git a/eslint/babel-eslint-parser/package.json b/eslint/babel-eslint-parser/package.json
index 505beb3656..a62420bdc6 100644
--- a/eslint/babel-eslint-parser/package.json
+++ b/eslint/babel-eslint-parser/package.json
@@ -33,7 +33,7 @@
   },
   "homepage": "https://github.com/babel/babel-eslint",
   "devDependencies": {
-    "eslint": "^2.3.0",
+    "eslint": "~2.2.0",
     "espree": "^3.0.0",
     "mocha": "^2.3.3"
   }