Isaiah 59:2–13

²but your iniquities have made a separation

between you and your God,

and your sins have hid 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 enters suit justly,

no one goes to law honestly;

they rely on empty pleas,

they speak lies,

they conceive mischief and bring forth iniquity.

⁵They hatch adders’ eggs, they weave the spider’s web;

he who eats their eggs dies,

and from one which is crushed a viper is hatched.

⁶Their webs will not serve as clothing;

men will not 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 make haste to shed innocent blood;

their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity,

desolation and destruction are in their highways.

⁸The way of peace they know not,

and there is no justice in their paths;

they have made their roads crooked,

no one who goes in them knows peace.

⁹Therefore justice is far from us,

and righteousness does not overtake us;

we look for light, and behold, darkness,

and for brightness, but we walk in gloom.

¹⁰We grope for the wall like the blind,

we grope like those who have no eyes;

we stumble at noon as in the twilight,

among those in full vigor we are like dead men.

¹¹We all growl like bears,

we moan and moan like doves;

we look for justice, but there is none;

for salvation, but it is far from us.

¹²For our transgressions are multiplied before thee,

and our sins testify against us;

for our transgressions are with us,

and we know our iniquities:

¹³transgressing, and denying the Lord,

and turning away from following our God,

speaking oppression and revolt,

conceiving and uttering from the heart lying words.