With your hands you have killed others, and with your fingers you have done wrong. With your lips you have lied, and with your tongue you say evil things.
When you raise your arms to me in prayer, I will refuse to look at you. Even if you say many prayers, I will not listen to you, because your hands are full of blood.
The city of Jerusalem once followed the Lord, but she is no longer loyal to him. She used to be filled with fairness; people there lived the way God wanted. But now, murderers live there.
You say, “We have made an agreement with death; we have a contract with death. When terrible punishment passes by, it won’t hurt us. Our lies will keep us safe, and our tricks will hide us.”
“I punished your people, but it did not help. They didn’t come back when they were punished. With your swords you killed your prophets like a hungry lion.
“But you only look for and think about what you can get dishonestly. You are even willing to kill innocent people to get it. You feel free to hurt people and to steal from them.”
I wish I had a place in the desert— a house where travelers spend the night— so I could leave my people. I could go away from them, because they are all unfaithful to God; they are all turning against him.
So this is what the Lord All-Powerful says: “I will test the people of Judah as a person tests metal in a fire. I have no other choice, because my people have sinned.
“ ‘So this is what the Lord God says: Because you prophets spoke things that are false and saw visions that do not come true, I am against you, says the Lord God.
So the Lord God says, as surely as I live, I will let you be murdered. Murder will chase you. Since you did not hate murdering people, murder will chase you.
Then he said to me, “The sin of the people of Israel and Judah is very great. The land is filled with people who murder, and the city is full of people who are not fair. The people say, ‘The Lord has left the land, and the Lord does not see.’
How terrible for them because they left me! They will be destroyed, because they turned against me. I want to save them, but they have spoken lies against me.
All of the faithful people are gone; there is not one good person left in this country. Everyone is waiting to kill someone; everyone is trying to trap someone else.