Ezekiel 33

VIN^{(i) 1} The word of the LORD came to me, saying, ² Son of man, speak to the sons of thy people, and say to them, When I bring the sword upon a land, and the people of the land take a man from among them, and set him for their watchman, ³ if he see the sword coming upon the land, and blow the trumpet, and warn the people; ⁴ and he who heareth the trumpet doth not take warning; and the sword cometh and cutteth him off; his blood shall be on his own head. ⁵ He heard the sound of the trumpet, and didn't take warning; his blood shall be on him; whereas if he had taken warning, he would have delivered his soul. ⁶ "'But if the watchman sees the enemy coming and does not blow his horn to warn the people and the enemy comes and kills someone, that watchman must die because of his sin. I will hold him responsible for their deaths.' ⁷ "So you, son of man, I have set you a watchman to the house of Israel; therefore hear the word at my mouth, and give them warning from me. ⁸ When I say to the wicked man, O wicked man, you will surely die and you do not speak to warn the wicked man from his way, that wicked man will die in his iniquity, but I will require his blood at your hand. ⁹ "But if you warn a wicked man to turn from his way and he does not turn from his way, he will die in his iniquity, but you have delivered your life. ¹⁰ "You, son of man, tell the house of Israel: 'Thus you speak, saying, "Our transgressions and our sins are on us, and we pine away in them; how then can we live?"' ¹¹ Say to them: '"As I am alive!" Declares the Sovereign LORD. "I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked. Only that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn back! Turn back from your evil ways! Why then will you die, O house of Israel?"' ¹² "So you, son of man, say to your people that the righteousness of the righteous shall not save him in the day of his transgression, and the wickedness of the wicked will not cause him to stumble on the day of his returning from his wickedness; and the righteous will not be able to live by it on the day when he returns to his sin. ¹³ When I tell the righteous that he will surely live; if he trusts in his righteousness, and commits iniquity, none of his righteous deeds will be remembered; but he will die in his iniquity that he has committed. ¹⁴ Again, when I say to the wicked man, You will surely die, if he turns from his sin and does what is lawful and right, ¹⁵ if the wicked restore the pledge, give again that which he had taken by robbery, walk in the statutes of life, committing no iniquity; he will surely live. He will not die. ¹⁶ None of his sins that he has committed will be remembered against him. He has done what is lawful and right; he will surely live. ¹⁷ "Yet your people say, 'The way of the Lord is not fair!' yet their way is not fair. ¹⁸ When the righteous man turns from his righteousness, and commits iniquity, he shall even die in it. ¹⁹ And when the wicked man turns from his wickedness and does what is lawful and right, he will live by it. ²⁰ Yet you say, The way of the Lord is not fair. O house of Israel, I will judge you, each one according to his ways. ²¹ In the twelfth year of our captivity, in the tenth month, in the fifth day of the month, one who had escaped out of Jerusalem came to me, saying, “The city has been defeated!” ²² Now the hand of the the LORD had been upon me the evening before the fugitive came; and He had opened my mouth by the time the man came to me in the morning. So my mouth was opened, and I was no longer dumb. ²³ Then the word of the LORD came to me, saying, ²⁴ "Son of man, the inhabitants of these ruins on the soil of Israel are saying, 'Abraham was one man, and he took possession of the land, and we are many; the land has been given for us as a possession.' ²⁵ Therefore say to them, The Sovereign LORD says thus: You eat with the blood and lift up your eyes to your idols and shed blood. And will you possess the land? ²⁶ You rely on your sword, you work abomination, and every one of you defiles his neighbour's wife. Shall you possess the land? ²⁷ Thus you will say to them. The Sovereign LORD says thus: As I live, surely those who are in the waste places will fall by the sword and he who is in the open field I will give to the beasts to be devoured and those who are in the strongholds and in the caves will die of the pestilence. ²⁸ And I will make the land a desolation and a wasteland, and the pride of its strength will come to an end, and the mountains of Israel will be desolate with no one traveling through them." ' ²⁹ And they shall know that I am the LORD, when I have made the land desolate and a waste because of all their abominations which they have done. ³⁰ "Son of man, your people are talking about you by the walls and in the doorways of their homes. They are saying to each other: 'Let's go and hear the word that has come from the LORD.' ³¹ And they come to you as the people come, and they sit before you as My people, and they hear your words. But they will not do them. For with their mouth they show much love, but their heart goes after their unjust gain. ³² And, behold, you are to them as a singer of love songs with a beautiful voice, and playing well on an instrument. For they hear your words, but they are not doing them. ³³ “When this comes to pass—behold, it comes—then they will know that a prophet has been among them.”