Isaiah 59

1See, the hand of the LORD is not too short to save, nor has his ear become too heavy to hear. 2Rather, your guilt has set up a barrier between you and your God, and your sins have made him turn his face away from you, so that he does not listen. 3Blood has defiled your palms, and guilt your fingers. Your lips have told lies; your tongue keeps muttering what is unjust. 4No one brings a suit in righteousness; no one argues a case honestly. They lean on empty words and tell lies; they are pregnant with mischief and bring wickedness into the world. 5They hatch adders’ eggs and weave spiders’ webs. Eat one of their eggs and you die; crack one open and out comes a viper. 6Their webs will never make a garment, and nothing they produce will cover them. All they produce is wicked work; their hands are full of violent deeds. 7Their feet race toward evil; they are quick to spill innocent blood. Their minds are full of wicked schemes; ruin and wreckage lie along their roads. 8They do not know the road of peace, and their tracks show no justice. They have twisted their paths; no one who walks on them knows peace. 9So justice stays far away from us, and righteousness never catches up with us. We wait in hope for light, and see only darkness; we wait for the glow of dawn, yet we go on walking in the gloom. 10We fumble along the wall as blind people do, groping as if we had no eyes. At high noon we trip as though night were falling; among those full of strength we are no better than corpses. 11We growl like bears, every one of us, and coo our grief like doves. We wait for justice, and none comes; for salvation, and it keeps its distance from us. 12For our rebellious acts pile up before you, and our sins speak as witnesses against us. Our rebellion stays with us, and we know our guilt well. 13We have rebelled and been false to the LORD; we have turned away from following our God. We have spoken of oppression and revolt, and from our hearts we have conceived and voiced lying words. 14Justice is pushed back, and righteousness keeps its distance. Truth trips and falls in the city square, and honesty can find no way in. 15Truth has gone missing, and the one who keeps away from evil is robbed for it. The LORD saw this, and it was evil in his sight that justice was gone. 16He saw that no one was there, and he was dismayed that no one stepped in. So his own arm won him the victory, and his righteousness held him up. 17He put on righteousness as a coat of armor and set the helmet of salvation on his head. He dressed in vengeance for clothing, and drew zeal around him like a robe. 18As they have acted, so he will repay them: fury for his foes, payment in full for his enemies; even the coastlands he will repay in kind. 19In the west they will fear the name of the LORD, and in the east, where the sun rises, they will fear his glory. For he will come like a river forced through a narrow gorge, a torrent driven by the wind of the LORD. 20To Zion a Redeemer will come, to the people of Jacob who turn away from their rebellion, declares the LORD. 21As for me, this is the covenant I make with them, says the LORD: my Spirit who rests on you and my words that I have set in your mouth will never leave your lips, nor the lips of your children, nor the lips of their children after them, says the LORD, from this day on and for all time.