For your hands are stained with blood and your fingers are dripping with the guilt of sin. Lies spill from your lips and your tongue mutters treachery.
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.
Your clothes are stained with the lifeblood of the helpless and innocent, though you did not catch them breaking into your home. Despite all your guilt,
“I’ve wasted my time punishing you because you did not respond to my correction. With the ferocity of a hungry lion, you murdered the prophets I sent to you.
Look how the once faithful city has become as unfaithful as a prostitute! She who was once the “Center of Justice,” where righteousness made its home, is now the dwelling place of murderers!
Therefore, as surely as I live—declares Lord Yahweh—I will let you be murdered. Murder will chase you down. Because you did not despise bloodshed, bloodshed will hunt you down!
He answered me, “The guilt of the people of Israel and Judah is enormous. The land is full of bloodshed, and Jerusalem full of perverted justice. They say, ‘Yahweh can’t see us! He has abandoned the nation.’
“But your eyes and heart are only interested in what brings you unjust profit, in violently oppressing your people even if it means shedding innocent blood.”
Then I stammered and said, “Woe is me! I’m destroyed —doomed as a sinful man! For my words are tainted and I live among people who talk the same way. King Yahweh, Commander of Angel Armies—my eyes have gazed upon him!”
For you have said, “We have made a covenant with death and a pact with the underworld, so when the overwhelming scourge sweeps over us, it will not harm us. For we have made lies our refuge and found our shelter in falsehood.”
We have rebelled and even tried to deny Yahweh; we have forsaken our God. Our speech stirs up oppression and revolt, and our hearts conceive, then confess, lies.
If only I had a shelter in the wilderness, a place for weary travelers to spend the night. Then I could leave my people and go away from them because they’re all unfaithful to God — a company of corrupters.
Therefore, Yahweh, Commander of Angel Armies, says: “Listen! I will refine my dear people by fire and test them because of what they have done. I have no other choice.