1. People of Israel, the Lord's arm is not too weak to save you. His ears aren't too deaf to hear your cry for help.
2. But your sins have separated you from your God. They have caused him to turn his face away from you. So he won't listen to you.
3. Your hands and fingers are stained with blood. You are guilty of committing murder. Your mouth has told lies. Your tongue says evil things.
4. People aren't fair when they present their cases in court. They aren't honest when they state their case. They depend on weak arguments. They tell lies. They plan to make trouble. Then they carry it out.
5. The plans they make are like the eggs of poisonous snakes. Anyone who eats those eggs will die. When one of them is broken, a snake comes out.
6. Those people weave their evil plans together like a spider's web. But the webs they make can't be used as clothes. They can't cover themselves with what they make. Their acts are evil. They do things to harm others.
7. They are always in a hurry to sin. They run quickly to murder those who aren't guilty. Their thoughts are evil. They leave a trail of suffering and pain.
8. They don't know how to live at peace with others. What they do isn't fair. They lead twisted lives. No one who lives like that will enjoy peace and rest.
9. We aren't being treated fairly. We haven't been set free yet. The God who always does what is right hasn't come to help us. We look for light. But we see nothing but darkness. We look for brightness. But we walk in deep shadows.
10. Like blind people we feel our way along the wall. We are like those who can't see. At noon we trip and fall as if the sun had already set. Compared to those who are healthy, we are like dead people.
11. All of us growl like hungry bears. We cry like sad doves. We want the Lord to do what is fair and save us. But he doesn't do it. We long for him to set us free. But the time for that seems far away.
12. That's because we've done so many things he considers wrong. Our sins prove that we are guilty. The wrong things we've done are always troubling us. We admit that we have sinned.
13. We've refused to obey the Lord. We've made evil plans against him. We've turned our backs on our God. We've stirred up trouble and refused to follow him. We've told lies that came from our own minds.
14. So people stop others from doing what is fair. They keep them from doing what is right. No one tells the truth in court anymore. No one is honest there.
15. In fact, truth can't be found anywhere. Those who refuse to do evil are attacked. The Lord sees that people aren't treating others fairly. That makes him unhappy.