Isaiah 59:2–13

²It is your evil that has separated

you from your God.

Your sins cause him to turn away from you,

so he does not hear you.

³With your hands you have killed others,

and with your fingers you have done wrong.

With your lips you have lied,

and with your tongue you say evil things.

⁴People take each other to court unfairly,

and no one tells the truth in arguing his case.

They accuse each other falsely and tell lies.

They cause trouble and create more evil.

⁵They hatch evil like eggs from poisonous snakes.

If you eat one of those eggs, you will die,

and if you break one open, a poisonous snake comes out.

People tell lies as they would spin a spider’s web.

⁶The webs they make cannot be used for clothes;

you can’t cover yourself with those webs.

The things they do are evil,

and they use their hands to hurt others.

⁷They eagerly run to do evil,

and they are always ready to kill innocent people.

They think evil thoughts.

Everywhere they go they cause ruin and destruction.

⁸They don’t know how to live in peace,

and there is no fairness in their lives.

They are dishonest.

Anyone who lives as they live will never have peace.

Israel’s Sin Brings Trouble

⁹Fairness has gone far away;

goodness is nowhere to be found.

We wait for the light, but there is only darkness now.

We hope for a bright light, but all we have is darkness.

¹⁰We are like the blind feeling our way along a wall.

We feel our way as if we had no eyes.

In the brightness of day we trip as if it were night.

We are like dead men among the strong.

¹¹All of us growl like the bears.

We call out sadly like the doves.

We look for justice, but there isn’t any.

We want to be saved, but salvation is far away.

¹²We have done many wrong things against our God;

our sins show we are wrong.

We know we have turned against God;

we know the evil things we have done:

¹³sinning and rejecting the Lord,

turning away from our God,

planning to hurt others and to disobey God,

planning and speaking lies.