¹⁶ but you have turned around and profaned my name. Each of you has taken back and enslaved his male and female slaves, whom you had set free to go where they wished. You forced them back into slavery, to serve as your male and female slaves.

¹⁷ Therefore this is what the Lord says. You have not listened to me by proclaiming freedom for your brothers and your neighbors. So I am proclaiming freedom to you, says the Lord. Freedom to fall by the sword, plague, and famine! I will make you a horror among all the kingdoms of the earth. ¹⁸ I am going to make the men who walked between the covenant pieces,^[a] but who did not keep the terms of the covenant that they had made in my presence, just like the calf they cut in two and then walk between its pieces.