“Therefore, son of man, say to your countrymen,
‘The righteousness of the righteous man will not save him when he disobeys, and the wickedness of the wicked man will not cause him to fall when he turns from it. The righteous man, if he sins, will not be allowed to live because of his former righteousness.’
If I tell the righteous man that he will surely live, but then he trusts in his righteousness and does evil, none of the righteous things he has done will be remembered; he will die for the evil he has done.
And if I say to the wicked man, ‘You will surely die,’ but he then turns away from his sin and does what is just and right— if he gives back what he took in pledge for a loan, returns what he has stolen, follows the decrees that give life, and does no evil, he will surely live; he will not die. None of the sins he has committed will be remembered against him. He has done what is just and right; he will surely live.
Yet your countrymen say, ‘The way of the Lord is not just.’ But it is their way that is not just. If a righteous man turns from his righteousness and does evil, he will die for it. And if a wicked man turns away from his wickedness and does what is just and right, he will live by doing so. Yet, O house of Israel, you say, ‘The way of the Lord is not just.’ But I will judge each of you according to his own ways.”(Ezekiel 33:1,12-20)
The word of YHWH.
Let me be crystal on this. I was GOING to write about something else, and was GOING to comment about various things. As I was going through the daily office, I knew I had to quote this passage from Ezekiel. Knew, not in the 'hmm...I should probably post that' but knew in the 'owowow...ok, right, someone needs that, fine!'
ReplyDeleteFurther, the original text does say '...word of YHWH came to _me_, saying'. My conversations with the Divine don't involve the tetra gammon, nor any of the flowery language seen in the text and She never says anything like 'tell the people'.