²⁰ Yet you say, “The way of the Lord is not just.” I will judge each one of you according to your ways, O house of Israel.

²¹ The Fugitive from Jerusalem.^[a] In the twelfth year of our exile, on the fifth day of the tenth month, a fugitive arrived from Jerusalem and said to me, “The city has fallen.” ²² The evening before the fugitive had arrived, the hand of the Lord had come on me, but he had opened my mouth by the time the fugitive had come to me in the morning. Therefore, my mouth was opened, and I was no longer unable to speak.