For people like this are not truly serving the Lord, our Messiah, but are being driven by their own desires for a following. Utilizing their smooth words and well-rehearsed blessings, they seek to deceive the hearts of innocent ones.
Their words are deadly arrows poisoned with deceit. Each one greets his neighbor with ‘Shalom,’ but deep in his heart, he secretly sets a trap for him.
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.
Don’t allow me to be punished along with the wicked— these hypocrites who speak sweetly to their neighbors’ faces while holding evil against them in their hearts.
Then you will say to them: ‘You are the nation that refused to listen to the voice of your God, Yahweh. Truth has perished and disappeared from their lips, for they did not accept Yahweh’s correction.’ ”