Isaiah 59:2–13

²Rather, your iniquities have been barriers

between you and your God,

and your sins have hidden his face from you

so that he does not hear.^*

³For your hands are defiled with blood

and your fingers with iniquity;

your lips have spoken lies;

your tongue mutters wickedness.^*

⁴No one brings suit justly;

no one goes to law honestly;

they rely on empty pleas; they speak lies,

conceiving mischief and bearing iniquity.^*

⁵They hatch adders’ eggs

and weave the spider’s web;

whoever eats their eggs dies,

and the crushed egg hatches out a viper.^*

⁶Their webs cannot serve as clothing;

they cannot cover themselves with what they make.

Their works are works of iniquity,

and deeds of violence are in their hands.^*

⁷Their feet run to evil,

and they rush to shed innocent blood;

their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity;

desolation and destruction are in their highways.^*

⁸The way of peace they do not know,

and there is no justice in their ways.

Their roads they have made crooked;

no one who walks in them knows peace.^*

⁹Therefore justice is far from us,

and deliverance does not reach us;

we wait for light, but there is only darkness;

and for brightness, but we walk in gloom.^*

¹⁰We grope like the blind along a wall,

groping like those who have no eyes;

we stumble at noon as in the twilight,

among the vigorous^c as though we were dead.^*

¹¹We all growl like bears;

like doves we moan mournfully.

We wait for justice, but there is none;

for salvation, but it is far from us.^*

¹²For our transgressions before you are many,

and our sins testify against us.

Our transgressions indeed are with us,

and we know our iniquities:^*

¹³transgressing and denying the Lord

and turning away from following our God,

talking oppression and revolt,

conceiving lying words and uttering them from the heart.^*