Ezekiel 3:6–21

⁶You are not being sent to many nations whose speech you can’t understand, whose language is difficult, whose words you cannot understand. If I had sent you to them, they would have listened to you. ⁷But the people of Israel will not be willing to listen to you, because they are not willing to listen to me. Yes, all the people of Israel are stubborn and will not obey. ⁸See, I now make you as stubborn and as hard as they are. ⁹I am making you as hard as a diamond, harder than stone. Don’t be afraid of them or be frightened by them, though they are a people who turn against me.”

¹⁰Also, he said to me, “Human, believe all the words I will speak to you, and listen carefully to them. ¹¹Then go to the captives, your own people, and say to them, ‘The Lord God says this.’ Tell them this whether they listen or not.”

¹²Then the Spirit lifted me up, and I heard a loud rumbling sound behind me, saying, “Praise the glory of the Lord in heaven.” ¹³I heard the wings of the living creatures touching each other and the sound of the wheels by them. It was a loud rumbling sound. ¹⁴So the Spirit lifted me up and took me away. I was unhappy and angry, and I felt the great power of the Lord. ¹⁵I came to the captives from Judah, who lived by the Kebar River at Tel Abib. I sat there seven days where these people lived, feeling shocked.

Israel’s Warning

¹⁶After seven days the Lord spoke his word to me again. He said, ¹⁷“Human, I now make you a watchman for Israel. Any time you hear a word from my mouth, warn them for me. ¹⁸When I say to the wicked, ‘You will surely die,’ you must warn them so they may live. If you don’t speak out to warn the wicked to stop their evil ways, they will die in their sin. But I will hold you responsible for their death. ¹⁹If you warn the wicked and they do not turn from their wickedness or their evil ways, they will die because of their sin. But you will have saved your life.

²⁰“Again, those who do right may turn away from doing good and do evil. If I make something bad happen to them, they will die. Because you have not warned them, they will die because of their sin, and the good they did will not be remembered. But I will hold you responsible for their deaths. ²¹But if you have warned those good people not to sin, and they do not sin, they will surely live, because they believed the warning. And you will have saved your life.”