17. “Yet your people say, ‘The behavior of the Lord is not right,’ when it is their behavior that is not right.
18. When a righteous man turns from his godliness and commits iniquity, he will die for it.
19. When the wicked turns from his sin and does what is just and right, he will live because of it.
20. Yet you say, ‘The behavior of the Lord is not right.’ House of Israel, I will judge each of you according to his behavior.”
21. In the twelfth year of our exile, in the tenth month, on the fifth of the month, a refugee came to me from Jerusalem saying, “The city has been defeated!”
22. Now the hand of the Lord had been on me the evening before the refugee reached me, but the Lord opened my mouth by the time the refugee arrived in the morning; he opened my mouth and I was no longer unable to speak.