Can’t you hear their slander, their lies? Their words are like poison-tipped arrows shot from the shadows. They are unafraid and have no fear of consequences.
But you who are known as the Pharisees are rotten to the core like venomous snakes. How can your words be good if you are rotten within? For what has been stored up in your hearts will be heard in the overflow of your words!
Yahweh says: “They shoot out lies with their tongues, just as an archer uses a bow to shoot arrows. Their lies have prevailed in the land, but they are not faithful to Yahweh. My people go from one evil thing to another because they do not know my heart.
No one seeks true justice; no one pleads his case with honesty. They rely on their illusions and misleading lies; they conceive trouble and give birth to sin.
Empty out of my heart everything that is false— every lie, and every crooked thing. And give me neither undue poverty nor undue wealth— but rather, feed my soul with the measure of prosperity that pleases you.
And when these “friends” come to visit me with their pious sympathy and their hollow words and with hypocrisy hidden in their hearts, I can see right through it all. For they come merely to gather gossip about me, using all they find to mock me with malicious hearts of slander.
Their words are unreliable. Destruction is in their hearts, drawing people into their darkness with their speeches. They are smooth-tongued deceivers, flattering with their words.
The sins of your mouth multiply evil. You have a lifestyle of lies; you are devoted to deceit as you speak against others, even slandering those of your own household!
May your wrath be kindled to destroy them; finish them off! Make an end of them and their deeds until they are no more! Let them all know and learn that God is the ruler over Jacob, the God-King over all the earth! Pause in his presence