If I wash myself with snow water, and make my hands ever so clean;
If my step has turned out of the way, and my heart walked after my eyes, and if any spot has cleaved to my hands;
For you said, What advantage will it be unto you? and, What profit shall I have, if I be cleansed from my sin?
Yet shall you plunge me in the ditch, and my own clothes shall abhor me.
I will wash my hands in innocence: so will I go about your altar, O LORD:
Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities.
He that covers his sins shall not prosper: but whosoever confesses and forsakes them shall have mercy.
For though you wash yourself with lye, and use much soap, yet your iniquity is marked before me, says the Lord GOD.
O Jerusalem, wash your heart from wickedness, that you may be saved. How long shall your vain thoughts lodge within you?
For they being ignorant of God's righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God.
If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.