Sin's Consequences and God's Redeeming Intervention
Isaiah 59:1-21
1Look! The hand of the LORD is not too short to save, and his ear is not too dull to hear.2For your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hidden the face from you so that there is no hearing.3For your palms are defiled with blood and your fingers with iniquity; your lips have spoken deception; your tongue mutters injustice.4There is none calling in righteousness, and there is none judging in faithfulness; trusting upon formlessness and speaking vanity, conceiving trouble and begetting evil.5They break eggs of a serpent and weave webs of a spider; the one eating from their eggs dies, and the crushed one hatches a viper.6Their webs will not become a garment, and they will not cover themselves with their works; their works are works of evil, and a work of violence is in their palms.7Their feet run toward evil, and they hasten to shed innocent blood; their thoughts are thoughts of evil, violence, and breaking on their highways.8They do not know the way of peace, and there is no justice in their tracks; their paths they have twisted for themselves; every one treading on it does not know peace.9Therefore justice has turned away from us, and righteousness does not overtake us; we await light, and behold, darkness; for brightness we walk in darknesses.10We grope like the blind along a wall and grope like those without eyes; we stumble at noon as in twilight; among the strong we are like the dead.11We roar like the bears, all of us, and like the doves we mutter; we await justice, and there is none; for salvation it has turned away from us.12For our transgressions have multiplied before you, and our sins have answered against us; for our transgressions are with us, and our iniquities we know them.13Transgressing and deceiving against the LORD, and turning aside from after our God, speaking oppression and revolt, conceiving and muttering from the heart words of deception.14And justice has been removed backward, and righteousness stands from afar; for truth has stumbled in the street, and uprightness cannot come in.15And truth has become lacking, and the one turning from evil is plundered; and the LORD saw, and it was evil in his eyes, for there is no justice.16And he saw that there was no man, and he was appalled that there was no one intervening; so his arm saved for him, and his righteousness supported him.17He put on righteousness as armor and a helmet of salvation on his head; he clothed himself with garments of vengeance and wrapped himself in zeal as in a cloak.18According to their deeds, so he will repay: fury to his adversaries, recompense to his enemies; to the coastlands he will repay their due.19And they will fear the name of the LORD from the west, and his glory from the rising of the sun; for he will come like the River, narrow, the spirit of the LORD driving it.20And a redeemer will come to Zion, and to those returning from transgression in Jacob, declares the LORD.21And as for me, this is my covenant with them, says the LORD: my spirit that is upon you, and my words that I have set in your mouth, will not depart from your mouth or from the mouth of your seed or from the mouth of the seed of your seed, says the LORD, from now and until forever.