Isaiah 59

¹ Look: the LORD’s hand is not too short to save, nor his ear too heavy to hear.

² But your wrongdoings have made a separation between you and your God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear.

³ For your palms are stained with blood, and your fingers with guilt; your lips have spoken lies, and your tongue mutters injustice.

⁴ No one calls for justice, and no one goes to court with integrity; they trust in emptiness and speak what is false. They conceive trouble and give birth to wickedness.

⁵ They hatch viper eggs and weave spiderwebs. Whoever eats their eggs dies, and when one is crushed, a venomous snake comes out.

⁶ Their webs will not serve as clothing, nor will they cover themselves with what they make. Their deeds are deeds of wickedness, and acts of violence are in their hands.

⁷ Their feet run toward evil and hurry to shed innocent blood; their thoughts are thoughts of wickedness. Destruction and ruin lie along their paths.

⁸ They do not know the way of peace, and there is no justice in their tracks. They have twisted their paths; whoever walks in them knows no peace.

⁹ Therefore justice is far from us, and righteousness does not reach us. We hope for light, but darkness comes; for brightness, but we walk in gloom.

¹⁰ We grope along the wall like blind people; we grope as if we had no eyes. We stumble at noon as if it were twilight; among the strong, we are like the dead.

¹¹ All of us growl like bears and keep cooing like doves. We hope for justice, but it does not come; for salvation, but it is far from us.

¹² For our transgressions have multiplied before you, and our sins testify against us. Our transgressions are with us, and we know our guilt.

¹³ We transgress and deny the LORD; we turn away from following our God. We speak oppression and revolt, conceiving and muttering lies from the heart.

¹⁴ Justice has been pushed back, and righteousness stands far away; truth stumbles in the public square, and honesty cannot enter.

¹⁵ Truth has vanished, and whoever turns away from evil is plundered. The LORD saw, and it was evil in his eyes that there was no justice.

¹⁶ He saw that there was no one and was appalled that no one would intercede. Then his own arm brought him salvation, and his righteousness sustained him.

¹⁷ He put on righteousness like a breastplate and placed the helmet of salvation on his head; he put on garments of vengeance and wrapped himself in zeal like a cloak.

¹⁸ According to their deeds, so he will repay: fury to his adversaries, retribution to his enemies; he will repay the islands.

¹⁹ From the west they will fear the name of the LORD, and from the rising of the sun, his glory, for he will come like a rushing river, driven by the wind of the LORD.

²⁰ A Redeemer will come to Zion, and to those in Jacob who turn from transgression, says the LORD.

²¹ As for me, this is my covenant with them, says the LORD: “My Spirit, who is upon you, and my words, which I have put in your mouth, will not depart from your mouth. They will not depart from the mouth of your offspring, or from the mouths of your offspring’s offspring, says the LORD, from now on and forever.”

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