Quotes about Responsibility

Some of the elders of the land stood up and said to the whole assembly of the people,

‘The LORD has appointed you priest in place of Jehoiada, to be the chief officer in the house of the LORD, responsible for any madman who acts like a prophet—you must put him in stocks and neck irons.

“In those days, it will no longer be said: ‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the teeth of the children are set on edge.’

Instead, each will die for his own iniquity. If anyone eats the sour grapes, his own teeth will be set on edge.

Jeremiah replied, “The word of the LORD came to me, saying:

but later they changed their minds and took back the menservants and maidservants they had freed, and they forced them to become slaves again.

Then the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah from the LORD, saying,

Every seventh year, each of you must free his Hebrew brother who has sold himself to you. He may serve you six years, but then you must let him go free. But your fathers did not listen or incline their ear.

But now you have changed your minds and profaned My name. Each of you has taken back the menservants and maidservants whom you had set at liberty to go wherever they wanted, and you have again forced them to be your slaves.

Therefore this is what the LORD says: You have not obeyed Me; you have not proclaimed freedom, each man for his brother and for his neighbor. So now I proclaim freedom for you, declares the LORD—freedom to fall by sword, by plague, and by famine! I will make you a horror to all the kingdoms of the earth.

And those who have transgressed My covenant and have not fulfilled the terms of the covenant they made before Me, I will treat like the calf they cut in two in order to pass between its pieces.

The officials of Judah and Jerusalem, the court officials, the priests, and all the people of the land who passed between the pieces of the calf,