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In transgressing and lying against the Lord, And departing from our God, Speaking oppression and revolt, Conceiving and uttering from the heart words of falsehood.
Isaiah 59:13 · New King James Version
Parallel translations
  • WEB transgressing and denying Yahweh, and turning away from following our God, speaking oppression and revolt, conceiving and uttering from the heart words of falsehood.
  • KJV In transgressing and lying against the LORD, and departing away from our God, speaking oppression and revolt, conceiving and uttering from the heart words of falsehood.
  • BSB rebelling and denying the LORD, turning away from our God, speaking oppression and revolt, conceiving and uttering lies from the heart.
  • NASB Offending and denying the Lord, And turning away from our God, Speaking oppression and revolt, Conceiving and uttering lying words from the heart.
  • NLT We know we have rebelled and have denied the Lord. We have turned our backs on our God. We know how unfair and oppressive we have been, carefully planning our deceitful lies.

Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org

Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

Quick answer

Their sins include rebelling against the Lord, turning from God, and speaking lies from the heart. Sin is fundamentally a betrayal of God Himself.

Overview

The confession specifies transgressing and denying the Lord, turning away from God, and uttering falsehood conceived in the heart. Sin is exposed not merely as social wrong but as rebellion against God. This vertical dimension of sin clarifies why reconciliation must come from God, accomplished through Christ who reconciles rebels to their offended Creator.

Cross-references & the web

Cross-references · 33

  • Mark 7:21–22For from within, out of the hearts of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, sexual sins, murders, thefts,
  • Jas 3:6And the tongue is a fire. The world of iniquity among our members is the tongue, which defiles the whole body, and sets on fire the course of nature, and is set on fire by Gehenna.
  • Heb 3:12Beware, brothers, lest perhaps there be in any one of you an evil heart of unbelief, in falling away from the living God;
  • Ezek 18:25“Yet you say, ‘The way of the Lord is not equal.’ Hear now, house of Israel: Is my way not equal? Aren’t your ways unequal?
  • Jer 3:10Yet for all this her treacherous sister, Judah, has not returned to me with her whole heart, but only in pretense,” says Yahweh.
  • Isa 5:7For the vineyard of Yahweh of Armies is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah his pleasant plant: and he looked for justice, but, behold, oppression; for righteousness, but, behold, a cry of distress.
  • Isa 59:3–4For your hands are defiled with blood, and your fingers with iniquity. Your lips have spoken lies. Your tongue mutters wickedness.
  • Jer 42:20For you have dealt deceitfully against your own souls; for you sent me to Yahweh your God, saying, ‘Pray for us to Yahweh our God; and according to all that Yahweh our God shall say, so declare to us, and we will do it:’
  • Matt 10:33But whoever denies me before men, him I will also deny before my Father who is in heaven.
  • Isa 57:11“Whom have you dreaded and feared, so that you lie, and have not remembered me, nor laid it to your heart? Haven’t I held my peace for a long time, and you don’t fear me?
  • Isa 31:6Return to him from whom you have deeply revolted, children of Israel.
  • Jer 32:40and I will make an everlasting covenant with them, that I will not turn away from following them, to do them good; and I will put my fear in their hearts, that they may not depart from me.
  • Hos 11:12Ephraim surrounds me with falsehood, and the house of Israel with deceit. Judah still strays from God, and is unfaithful to the Holy One.
  • Rom 3:10–18As it is written, “There is no one righteous; no, not one.
  • Jer 17:13Yahweh, the hope of Israel, all who forsake you shall be disappointed. Those who depart from me shall be written in the earth, because they have forsaken Yahweh, the spring of living waters.
  • Ps 18:21For I have kept the ways of Yahweh, and have not wickedly departed from my God.
  • Hos 7:13Woe to them! For they have wandered from me. Destruction to them! For they have trespassed against me. Though I would redeem them, yet they have spoken lies against me.
  • Titus 1:16They profess that they know God, but by their deeds they deny him, being abominable, disobedient, and unfit for any good work.
  • Jer 3:20“Surely as a wife treacherously departs from her husband, so you have dealt treacherously with me, house of Israel,” says Yahweh.
  • Matt 12:34–36You offspring of vipers, how can you, being evil, speak good things? For out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.
  • Isa 48:8Yes, you didn’t hear; yes, you didn’t know; yes, from of old your ear was not opened: for I knew that you dealt very treacherously, and were called a transgressor from the womb.
  • Prov 30:9lest I be full, deny you, and say, ‘Who is Yahweh?’ or lest I be poor, and steal, and so dishonor the name of my God.
  • Jer 2:19–21“Your own wickedness will correct you, and your backsliding will rebuke you. Know therefore and see that it is an evil and bitter thing, that you have forsaken Yahweh your God, and that my fear is not in you,” says the Lord, Yahweh of Armies.
  • Jas 1:15Then the lust, when it has conceived, bears sin; and the sin, when it is full grown, produces death.
  • Hos 6:7But they, like Adam, have broken the covenant. They were unfaithful to me, there.
  • Ps 78:36But they flattered him with their mouth, and lied to him with their tongue.
  • Jer 5:23“But this people has a revolting and a rebellious heart; they have revolted and gone.
  • Jer 2:13“For my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the spring of living waters, and cut them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water.
  • Hos 1:2When Yahweh spoke at first by Hosea, Yahweh said to Hosea, “Go, take for yourself a wife of prostitution and children of unfaithfulness; for the land commits great adultery, forsaking Yahweh.”
  • Isa 32:6For the fool will speak folly, and his heart will work iniquity, to practice profanity, and to utter error against Yahweh, To make empty the soul of the hungry, and to cause the drink of the thirsty to fail.
  • Ezek 6:9Those of you that escape will remember me among the nations where they are carried captive, how I have been broken with their lewd heart, which has departed from me, and with their eyes, which play the prostitute after their idols. Then they will loathe themselves in their own sight for the evils which they have committed in all their abominations.
  • Jer 9:2–5Oh that I had in the wilderness a lodging place of wayfaring men; that I might leave my people, and go from them! For they are all adulterers, an assembly of treacherous men.
  • Acts 5:3–4But Peter said, “Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit, and to keep back part of the price of the land?

Themes, concepts, people & topics

Topics (3)

Resources, by level

Commentaries & study tools

  • VideoBibleProject — Isaiah videosBibleProject · Lay · Free · evangelical

    Free animated overview and word-study videos for this book.

  • VideoWatch teaching on Isaiah 59:13YouTube · Lay · Free

    Sermons and teaching on this passage from across YouTube.

  • CommentaryEnduring Word — verse-by-verseDavid Guzik · Lay · Free · evangelical

    Clear, readable, conservative exposition — the best free place to start on any passage.

  • CommentaryClassic commentaries for this verseBibleHub (20+ works) · Pastoral · Free

    Matthew Henry, Barnes, Gill, the Pulpit Commentary, Ellicott, Cambridge, and more — stacked on one page for this exact verse.

  • CommentaryMatthew Henry on IsaiahMatthew Henry · Pastoral · Free · evangelical

    The beloved Puritan exposition of this whole book — warm, devotional, and verse by verse (free, CCEL).

  • ReferenceInterlinear, lexicon & Strong'sBlue Letter Bible · Seminary · Free

    Hebrew/Greek interlinear, word definitions, and cross-references for this verse.

Christ at the center

Isaiah sees him most clearly: the virgin's son Immanuel, the child on David's throne, the shoot from Jesse, the light to the nations, and above all the Suffering Servant pierced for our transgressions (ch. 53).

How Isaiah 59:13 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.

Original language

Each word below is tagged with its Strong’s number — tap one to see the underlying Hebrew word, its meaning, and every verse that uses it.