Ezekiel 33:1-33
33 And Jehovah’s word came to me
2 “Man, speak to the sons of your people and say to them ‘When upon a country I bring invasions, and the people of the country take one man out of their number and post him as a lookout for them,
3 and he sees an invasion coming against the country and sounds the ram-horn and warns the people,
4 and someone hears the sound of the ram-horn and does not take warning, and the invasion comes and gets him, his blood will be on his own head:
5 * he heard the sound of the ram-horn and did not take warning, his blood is on himself. But he, he took warning, he saved himself.
6 But when the lookout sees the invasion coming and does not sound the ram-horn and the people are not warned and an invasion comes in and takes a life among them, he is taken for his own guilt, but for his blood I will call the lookout to account.’
7 “And as for you, man, I have posted you as lookout for the house of Israel, and you are to hear a word from my mouth and warn them from me.
8 When I say to the wicked man ‘Wicked man, you shall die,’ and you do not speak to warn a wicked man off his course, he is wicked, he will die for his own guilt, but for his blood I will hold you to account.
9 But when you have warned a wicked man off his course, to come back from it, and he did not come back from his course, he will die for his own guilt, but you will have cleared yourself.
10 “And for you, man, say to the house of Israel, ‘You say like this, “When we have our crimes and sins upon us and we are moldering away in them, how are we to lived?”’
11 Say to them ‘By my life, quoth the Lord Jehovah, it does not please me to have a wicked man die but to have a wicked man come back from his course and live. Come back, come back from your bad courses, and why should you die, house of Israel?’
12 ** And for you, man, say to the sons of your people ‘The honest man’s honesty will not deliver him on the day when he commits a crime, and the wicked man’s wickedness will not be his ruin on the day when he turns back from wickedness; and a saint will not be able to keep himself alive by it on the day when he sins.
13 * When I say to the honest man “You shall live” and he trusts to his record of honesty and acts dishonestly, all his honest doings shall not be remembered, and for his dishonesty that he has committed he shall die.
14 And when I say to the wicked man “You shall die” and he turns back from his sin and does the lawful and right thing,
15 a wicked man gives back what was pawned, makes good what was stolen, goes by the rules that carry life, not acting dishonestly, he shall live, not die;
16 all his sins that he has committed shall not be remembered against him; he has done the lawful and right thing, he shall live.
17 And the sons of your people say “The Lord’s course does not balance,” when they are the ones whose course does not balance.
18 When an honest man turns back from his honesty and acts dishonestly, he dies for that;
19 and when a wicked man turns back from his wickedness and does the lawful and right thing, by that he lives:
20 and you say “The Lord’s course does not balance”! I will judge you each according to his courses, house of Israel.’”
21 * And in the year twelve, in the tenth month, on the fifth of the month, of our deportation, there came to me a refugee from Jerusalem with the word “The city is down.”
22 And Jehovah’s hand had been on me in the evening before the refugee came, and he had opened my mouth against his coming in the morning; and my mouth was opened, and I did not become dumb again.
23 And Jehovah’s word came to me
24 “Man, the inhabitants of these wasted sites on the soil of Israel are saying ‘Abraham was one man, and got possession of the country, and there are many of us: the country is given to us to possess.’
25 * So say to them ‘Says the Lord Jehovah, You eat with the blood and raise your eyes to your fetishes and shed blood, and are you to get possession of the country?
26 * You depend on your swords, you commit abomination, and you defile each other’s wives, and are you to get possession of the country?’
27 You shall say this to them: ‘Says the Lord Jehovah, By my life, those who are on the wasted sites shall fall by the sword, and those who are out over the countryside I have given to the beasts for eating, and those who are in the fastnesses and the caves shall die by pestilence;
28 and I will make the country a desolation and a horror, and its pride of strength shall be over with, and Israel’s highlands shall lie desolate and untrodden;
29 and they shall know that I am Jehovah at my making the country a desolation and a horror for all the abominable things they have done.’
30 “And as for you, man, the sons of your people that talk about you along the walls and at the house doors are talking to each other man to man and saying ‘Come in and hear what the word is that comes out from Jehovah,’
31 ** and will come to you like the crowd at a ceremony, and my people will sit down before you and hear your words, but will not act on them; for those men make love with their lips but their hearts are going after their profits.
32 * And you are to them like a love-song with a fine voice and skill in accompaniment, and they listen to your words but do not act on them.
33 But when it comes true, as come it will, they will know there was a prophet among them.”
Footnotes
^ 33:5 Conj. that words out of the middle of this verse have been lost in copying
^ 33:12 Lit. the wicked man’s wickedness he will not be tripped up by on
^ 33:12 Lit. able to live by it
^ 33:13 Var. “he shall
^ 33:21 Var. year eleven Conj. year thirty-two (and omit some words of the verse)
^ 33:25 Conj. eat on the mountains
^ 33:26 Lit. stand on your swords.
^ 33:31 Lit. like an entrance of the people, and
^ 33:31 Lit. with their mouths
^ 33:32 Conj. love-singer
