No one calls for righteousness, and no one pleads for truth. They trust in emptiness and speak worthlessness; they conceive trouble and bring forth wickedness.
We have conceived, we writhed in pain; we have given birth to wind. We have not accomplished deliverance in the earth, nor have the inhabitants of the world fallen.
because you have said, “We have made a covenant with death, and with the grave we have effected a vision. When the overflowing scourge passes through, it does not come to us, for we have made lying our refuge, and under falsehood we have hidden ourselves.”
“And you have trusted in your evil, you have said, ‘No one sees me.’ Your wisdom and your knowledge have led you astray. And you have said in your heart, ‘I am, and there is none but me.’
And there is no one who calls on Your Name, who stirs himself up to take hold of You; for You have hidden Your face from us, and have consumed us because of our crookednesses.
“For because you have trusted in your works and your treasures, you shall be captured. And Kemosh shall go forth into exile, his priests and his heads together.
“Diligently search the streets of Yerushalayim, and please look, and know and seek in her open places if you find a man, if there is anyone doing right-ruling, seeking the truth, then I shall pardon her.
Woe to those plotting wickedness, and working out evil upon their beds! In the light of the morning they practise it, because it is in the might of their hand.