7. Now as for you, son of man: I have set you a watchman to the house of Israel. Therefore you shall hear a word from My mouth and warn them from Me.
8. When I say to the wicked, “O wicked man, you shall surely die,” and you do not speak to warn the wicked from his way, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity. But his blood I will require from your hand.
9. Nevertheless, if you on your part warn the wicked to turn from his way and he does not turn from his way, he shall die in his iniquity. But you have delivered your soul.
10. Therefore as for you, son of man, say to the house of Israel: Thus you have spoken, saying, “Surely our transgressions and our sins are upon us, and we pine away in them. How should we then live?”
11. Say to them: As I live, says the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn, turn from your evil ways! For why will you die, O house of Israel?
12. Therefore you, son of man, say to the sons of your people: The righteousness of a righteous man shall not deliver him in the day of his transgression. As for the wickedness of the wicked, he shall not fall by it in the day that he turns from his wickedness. Nor shall the righteous be able to live for his righteousness in the day that he sins.
13. When I say to the righteous that he shall surely live and he so trusts in his righteousness that he commits iniquity, all his righteousness shall not be remembered. But for that iniquity of his that he has committed, he shall die.
14. Again, when I say to the wicked, “You shall surely die,” and he turns from his sin and does that which is lawful and right,
15. if the wicked man restores a pledge, gives back what he had robbed, walks in the statutes of life without committing iniquity, he shall surely live. He shall not die.
16. None of his sins that he has committed shall be remembered against him. He has done what is lawful and right. He shall surely live.
17. Yet the sons of your people say, “The way of the Lord is not right,” when their way is not right.