17. “Yet your people say, ‘The way of the Lord is not just.’ But it is their way that is not just.
18. If a righteous person turns from their righteousness and does evil, they will die for it.
19. And if a wicked person turns away from their wickedness and does what is just and right, they will live by doing so.
20. Yet you Israelites say, ‘The way of the Lord is not just.’ But I will judge each of you according to your own ways.”
21. In the twelfth year of our exile, in the tenth month on the fifth day, a man who had escaped from Jerusalem came to me and said, “The city has fallen!”
22. Now the evening before the man arrived, the hand of the Lord was on me, and he opened my mouth before the man came to me in the morning. So my mouth was opened and I was no longer silent.
23. Then the word of the Lord came to me:
24. “Son of man, the people living in those ruins in the land of Israel are saying, ‘Abraham was only one man, yet he possessed the land. But we are many; surely the land has been given to us as our possession.’
25. Therefore say to them, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Since you eat meat with the blood still in it and look to your idols and shed blood, should you then possess the land?
26. You rely on your sword, you do detestable things, and each of you defiles his neighbor’s wife. Should you then possess the land?’