Isaiah, 59

1. No, the arm of Yahweh is not too short to save, nor his ear too dull to hear,

2. but your guilty deeds have made a gulf between you and your God. Your sins have made him hide his face from you so as not to hear you,

3. since your hands are stained with blood and your fingers with guilt; your lips utter lies, your tongues murmur wickedness.

4. No one makes upright accusations or pleads sincerely. All rely on empty words, utter falsehood, conceive trouble and give birth to evil.

5. They are hatching adders' eggs and weaving a spider's web; eat one of their eggs and you die, crush one and a viper emerges.

6. Their webs are useless for clothing, their deeds are useless for wearing; their deeds are deeds of guilt, violence fills their hands.

7. Their feet run to do evil; they are quick to shed innocent blood. Their thoughts are thoughts of guilt, wherever they go there is havoc and ruin.

8. They do not know the way of peace, there is no fair judgement in their course, they have made their own crooked paths, and no one treading them knows any peace.

9. Thus fair judgement is remote from us nor can uprightness overtake us. We looked for light and all is darkness, for brightness and we walk in gloom.

10. Like the blind we feel our way along walls, we grope our way like people without eyes. We stumble as though noon were twilight, among the robust we are like the dead.

11. We growl, all of us, like bears, like doves we make no sound but moaning, waiting for the fair judgement that never comes, for salvation, but that is far away.

12. How often we have rebelled against you and our sins bear witness against us. Our rebellious acts are indeed with us, we are well aware of our guilt:

13. rebellion and denial of Yahweh, turning our back on our God, talking violence and revolt, murmuring lies in our heart.

14. Fair judgement is driven away and saving justice stands aloof, for good faith has stumbled in the street and sincerity cannot enter.

15. Good faith has vanished; anyone abstaining from evil is victimised. Yahweh saw this and was displeased that there was no fair judgement.

16. He saw there was no one and wondered there was no one to intervene. So he made his own arm his mainstay, his own saving justice his support.

17. He put on saving justice like a breastplate, on his head the helmet of salvation. He put on the clothes of vengeance like a tunic and wrapped himself in jealousy like a cloak.

18. To each he repays his due, retribution to his enemies, reprisals on his foes, to the coasts and islands he will repay their due.

19. From the west, Yahweh's name will be feared, and from the east, his glory, for he will come like a pent-up stream impelled by the breath of Yahweh.

20. Then for Zion will come a redeemer, for those who stop rebelling in Jacob, declares Yahweh.

21. 'For my part, this is my covenant with them, says Yahweh. My spirit with which I endowed you, and my words that I have put in your mouth, will not leave your mouth, or the mouths of your children, or the mouths of your children's children, says Yahweh, henceforth and for ever.'