You felt secure in your wickedness; you said, “No one sees me.” Your wisdom and your knowledge led you astray, and you said in your heart, “I am, and there is no one besides me.”
Whom did you dread and fear so that you lied and did not remember me or give me a thought? Have I not kept silent and closed my eyes, and so you do not fear me?
transgressing and denying the Lord and turning away from following our God, talking oppression and revolt, conceiving lying words and uttering them from the heart.
O Lord, my strength and my stronghold, my refuge in the day of trouble, to you shall the nations come from the ends of the earth and say: “Our ancestors have inherited nothing but lies, worthless things in which there is no profit.
Ephraim herds the wind and pursues the east wind all day long; they multiply falsehood and violence; they make a treaty with Assyria, and oil is carried to Egypt.
My people consult a piece of wood, and their divining rod gives them oracles. For a spirit of prostitution has led them astray, and they have prostituted themselves, forsaking their God.
What use is an idol once its maker has shaped it— a cast image, a teacher of lies? For its maker trusts in what has been made, though the product is only an idol that cannot speak!
The great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world—he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.
and by the signs that it is allowed to perform on behalf of the beast it deceives the inhabitants of earth, telling them to make an image for the beast that had been wounded by the sword and yet lived,
and the light of a lamp will shine in you no more, and the voice of bridegroom and bride will be heard in you no more, for your merchants were the magnates of the earth, and all nations were deceived by your sorcery.
and threw him into the pit and locked and sealed it over him, so that he would deceive the nations no more, until the thousand years were ended. After that he must be let out for a little while.