7. So thou, O son of man, I have made thee a watchman to the house of Israel: therefore thou shalt hear the word from my mouth, and shalt tell it them from me.
8. When I say to the wicked: O wicked man, thou shalt surely die: if thou dost not speak to warn the wicked man from his way: that wicked man shall die in his iniquity, but I will require his blood at thy hand.
9. But if thou tell the wicked man, that he may be converted from his ways, and he be not converted from his way: he shall die in his iniquity: but thou hast delivered thy soul.
10. Thou therefore, O son of man, say to the house of Israel: Thus you have spoken, saying: Our iniquities, and our sins are upon us, and we pine away in them: how then can we live?
11. Say to them: As I live, saith the Lord God, I desire not the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way, and live. Turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways: and why will you die, O house of Israel?
12. Thou therefore, O son of man, say to the children of thy people: The justice of the just shall not deliver him, in what day soever he shall sin: and the wickedness of the wicked shall not hurt him, in what day soever he shall turn from his wickedness: and the just shall not be able to live in his justice, in what day soever he shall sin.
13. Yea, if I shall say to the just that he shall surely live, and he, trusting in his justice, commit iniquity: all his justices shall be forgotten, and in his iniquity, which he hath committed, in the same shall he die.
14. And if I shall say to the wicked: Thou shalt surely die: and he do penance for his sin, and do judgment and justice,
15. And if that wicked man restore the pledge, and render what he had robbed, and walk in the commandments of life, and do no unjust thing: he shall surely live, and shall not die.
16. None of his sins, which he hath committed, shall be imputed to him: he hath done judgment and justice, he shall surely live.
17. And the children of thy people have said: The way of the Lord is not equitable: whereas their own way is unjust.
18. For when the just shall depart from his justice, and commit iniquities, he shall die in them.
19. And when the wicked shall depart from his wickedness, and shall do judgments, and justice: be shall live in them.
20. And you say: The way of the Lord is not right, I will judge every one of you according to his ways, O house of Israel.
21. And it came to pass in the twelfth year of our captivity, in the tenth month, in the fifth day of the month, that there came to me one that was fled from Jerusalem, saying: The city is laid waste.
22. And the hand of the Lord had been upon me in the evening, before he that was fled came: and he opened my mouth till he came to me in the morning, and my mouth being opened, I was silent no more.
23. And the word of the Lord came to me, saying:
24. Son of man, they that dwell in these ruinous places in the land of Israel, speak, saying: Abraham was one, and he inherited the land, but we are many, the land is given us in possession.