Isaiah 59:2–13

²It’s your sins that have cut you off from God.

Because of your sins, he has turned away

and will not listen anymore.

³Your hands are the hands of murderers,

and your fingers are filthy with sin.

Your lips are full of lies,

and your mouth spews corruption.

⁴No one cares about being fair and honest.

The people’s lawsuits are based on lies.

They conceive evil deeds

and then give birth to sin.

⁵They hatch deadly snakes

and weave spiders’ webs.

Whoever eats their eggs will die;

whoever cracks them will hatch a viper.

⁶Their webs can’t be made into clothing,

and nothing they do is productive.

All their activity is filled with sin,

and violence is their trademark.

⁷Their feet run to do evil,

and they rush to commit murder.

They think only about sinning.

Misery and destruction always follow them.

⁸They don’t know where to find peace

or what it means to be just and good.

They have mapped out crooked roads,

and no one who follows them knows a moment’s peace.

⁹So there is no justice among us,

and we know nothing about right living.

We look for light but find only darkness.

We look for bright skies but walk in gloom.

¹⁰We grope like the blind along a wall,

feeling our way like people without eyes.

Even at brightest noontime,

we stumble as though it were dark.

Among the living,

we are like the dead.

¹¹We growl like hungry bears;

we moan like mournful doves.

We look for justice, but it never comes.

We look for rescue, but it is far away from us.

¹²For our sins are piled up before God

and testify against us.

Yes, we know what sinners we are.

¹³We know we have rebelled and have denied the Lord.

We have turned our backs on our God.

We know how unfair and oppressive we have been,

carefully planning our deceitful lies.