¹⁶ But you turned back and you profaned my name when you brought back each one his male slave and each one his female slave, whom you had let go free according to their desire, and you subdued them to be to you as male slaves and as female slaves.’

¹⁷ “Therefore^[a] thus says Yahweh, ‘You have not listened to me to proclaim release each one to his fellow countryman and each one to his neighbor. Look, I am going to proclaim to you a release,’ declares^[b] Yahweh, ‘to the sword, to the plague, and to the famine, and I will make you a terror to all the kingdoms of the earth. ¹⁸ And I will make the men who transgressed my covenant, who have not kept the words of the covenant that they made^[c] before me,^[d] like the calf which they cut in two and they passed between its parts—