16. None of the sins that he has committed shall be remembered against him. He has done what is just and right; he shall surely live.
17. “Yet your people say, ‘The way of the Lord is not just,’ when it is their own way that is not just.
18. When the righteous turns from his righteousness and does injustice, he shall die for it.
19. And when the wicked turns from his wickedness and does what is just and right, he shall live by this.
20. Yet you say, ‘The way of the Lord is not just.’ O house of Israel, I will judge each of you according to his ways.”
21. In the twelfth year of our exile, in the tenth month, on the fifth day of the month, a fugitive from Jerusalem came to me and said, “The city has been struck down.”
22. Now the hand of 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 mute.
23. The word of the Lord came to me:
24. “Son of man, the inhabitants of these waste places in the land of Israel keep saying, ‘Abraham was only one man, yet he got possession of the land; but we are many; the land is surely given us to possess.’
25. Therefore say to them, Thus says the Lord God: You eat flesh with the blood and lift up your eyes to your idols and shed blood; shall you then possess the land?
26. You rely on the sword, you commit abominations, and each of you defiles his neighbor’s wife; shall you then possess the land?
27. Say this to them, Thus says the Lord God: As I live, surely those who are in the waste places shall fall by the sword, and whoever is in the open field I will give to the beasts to be devoured, and those who are in strongholds and in caves shall die by pestilence.
28. And I will make the land a desolation and a waste, and her proud might shall come to an end, and the mountains of Israel shall be so desolate that none will pass through.
29. Then they will know that I am the Lord, when I have made the land a desolation and a waste because of all their abominations that they have committed.
30. “As for you, son of man, your people who talk together about you by the walls and at the doors of the houses, say to one another, each to his brother, ‘Come, and hear what the word is that comes from the Lord.’