When you stretch out your hands to pray, I will hide my eyes from you. Repeat your prayers all you want, but I will not listen, for your hands are stained with innocent blood.
you will cry out to me, but I won’t answer. Then it will be too late to expect my help. When desperation drives you to search for me, I will be nowhere to be found.
They can fast and pray all they want, but I still won’t listen to their cry. Neither will I accept their burnt offerings and meal offerings that they present to me. I will destroy them by war, food shortages, and plague.”
Share your food with the hungry! Provide for the homeless and bring them into your home! Clothe the naked! Don’t turn your back on your own flesh and blood!
“Great sorrow awaits you religious scholars and you Pharisees—such frauds and pretenders! You do all you can to keep people from experiencing the reality of heaven’s kingdom realm. Not only do you refuse to enter in, you also forbid anyone else from entering in!
And the Lord has washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion and cleansed the bloodstains of Jerusalem by a Spirit of justice and by a Spirit of burning.
During your fasts, you quarrel and fight with others and strike them with an angry fist. When you fast like that, your voice will not be heard on high.
I heard a cry of a woman gasping in labor pains; I saw her writhing in distress as one giving birth to her first child. It is the daughter of Zion, gasping and stretching out her hands for help, saying: “I’m staring at death! I’m fainting before my murderers!”
“Therefore, I, Yahweh, say: Behold! I am bringing calamity upon them from which they will not be able to escape. And they will cry to me, but I will pay no attention.
“Son of man, these men have set up idols deep within their hearts. And they have set idols before their eyes, so why should I let them ask me anything?
The nations will also realize that the people of Israel went into captivity because of their guilt, for they were unfaithful to me. So, I hid my face from them and gave them over to the power of their enemies, whereby they were all killed in war.