Then God said to me, “Son of man, do you see what the elders of Israel do in the dark? Each man has a special room for his own false god. They say to themselves, ‘The Lord cannot see us. The Lord left this country.’”
He said, “The family of Israel and Judah has committed many terrible sins! People are being murdered everywhere in this country, and the city is filled with crime. That is because the people say to themselves, ‘The Lord has left this country. The Lord cannot see what we are doing.’
Sometimes people are not immediately punished for the bad things they do. Their punishment is slow to come, and that makes other people want to do bad things too.
When the Pharisee who asked Jesus to come to his house saw this, he thought to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would know that the woman who is touching him is a sinner!”