And they are not like their fathers, A generation apostate and rebellious, A generation! it hath not prepared its heart, Nor stedfast with God `is' its spirit.
Ah, sinning nation, a people heavy `with' iniquity, A seed of evil doers, sons -- corrupters! They have forsaken Jehovah, They have despised the Holy One of Israel, They have gone away backward.
I have said: Only, ye do fear Me, Ye do accept instruction, And her habitation is not cut off, All that I have appointed for her, But they have risen early, They have corrupted all their doings.
`A generation evil and adulterous doth seek a sign, and a sign shall not be given to it, except the sign of Jonah the prophet;' and having left them he went away.
And having seen many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming about his baptism, he said to them, `Brood of vipers! who did shew you to flee from the coming wrath?
for I have known that after my death ye do very corruptly, and have turned aside out of the way which I commanded you, and evil hath met you in the latter end of the days, because ye do the evil thing in the eyes of Jehovah, to make Him angry with the work of your hands.'
`When thou begettest sons and sons' sons, and ye have become old in the land, and have done corruptly, and have made a graven image, a similitude of anything, and have done the evil thing in the eyes of Jehovah, to provoke Him to anger: --
that ye may become blameless and harmless, children of God, unblemished in the midst of a generation crooked and perverse, among whom ye do appear as luminaries in the world,
And it hath come to pass, at the death of the judge -- they turn back and have done corruptly above their fathers, to go after other gods, to serve them, and to bow themselves to them; they have not fallen from their doings, and from their stiff way.