2. “Son of man, speak to the children of your people and say to them: ‘When I bring the sword upon a land, suppose the people of the land take a man from among them, and set him as their watchman.
3. If, when he sees the sword coming upon the land, he blows the shofar and warns the people,
4. then whoever hears the sound of the shofar but ignores the warning, if the sword comes and takes him away, his blood will be on his own head.
5. He heard the sound of the shofar and ignored the warning; his blood will be on himself. However, if he had taken warning, he would have saved his soul.
6. But if the watchman sees the sword come and does not blow the shofar, the people are not warned. Then the sword does come and takes a person from among them—he is taken away in his iniquity, but his blood I will require at the watchman’s hand.’
7. “You, son of man, I have set you as a watchman for the house of Israel. When you hear the word from My mouth, warn them from Me.
8. When I say to the wicked: ‘Wicked one, you will surely die!’ and you do not speak to warn the wicked about his way—that wicked one will die in his iniquity, but his blood I will require at your hand.
9. If you warn the wicked of his way to turn from it and he does not turn from his way, then he will die in his iniquity—but you have saved your soul.
10. “You, son of man, say to the house of Israel: ‘You have said, “Surely our transgressions and our sins are upon us and we are pining away in them. So how can we live.”
11. Say to them: ‘As I live’—it is a declaration of Adonai—‘I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live. Return, return from your evil ways. Why will you die, O house of Israel?’
12. “You, son of man, say to the children of your people: ‘The righteousness of the righteous person will not deliver him in the day of his transgression. Nor will the wickedness of the wicked person make him stumble in it on the day he turns away from his wickedness. Nor will the righteous person be able to live by it on the day he sins.
13. When I tell the righteous that he will surely live, but he trusts in his own righteousness and commits iniquity, none of his righteous deeds will be remembered. But in his iniquity that he has committed, he will die.
14. When I say to the wicked, “You will surely die,” yet he turns from his sin and does what is just and right—
15. if the wicked restores a pledge, gives back what he had taken by robbery, walks in the laws 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 just and right; he will surely live.’
17. “Yet the children of your people say, ‘The way of Adonai isn’t fair!’ but it is their way, theirs that is unfair.
18. When a righteous person turns from his righteousness and commits iniquity, he will die in it.