For your hands are stained with blood, and your fingers with iniquity; your lips have spoken lies, and your tongue mutters injustice.
Parallel translations
- WEB For your hands are defiled with blood, and your fingers with iniquity. Your lips have spoken lies. Your tongue mutters wickedness.
- KJV For your hands are defiled with blood, and your fingers with iniquity; your lips have spoken lies, your tongue hath muttered perverseness.
- NKJV For your hands are defiled with blood, And your fingers with iniquity; Your lips have spoken lies, Your tongue has muttered perversity.
- NASB For your hands are defiled with blood, And your fingers with wrongdoing; Your lips have spoken deceit, Your tongue mutters wickedness.
- NLT Your hands are the hands of murderers, and your fingers are filthy with sin. Your lips are full of lies, and your mouth spews corruption.
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 hands, fingers, lips, and tongues are stained with bloodshed, lies, and wickedness. Sin pervades both their deeds and their words.
Overview
God catalogs the people's guilt: hands defiled with blood, lips speaking lies, tongues muttering wickedness. The thoroughness of corruption, from action to speech, underscores the depth of the sin that separates them from God. Such a portrait of total depravity makes plain the necessity of the cleansing and new heart that only the gospel provides.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 20
- Isa 1:15When you spread out your hands in prayer, I will hide My eyes from you; even though you multiply your prayers, I will not listen. Your hands are covered with blood.
- Ezek 13:8Therefore this is what the Lord GOD says: Because you have uttered vain words and seen false visions, I am against you, declares the Lord GOD.
- Jer 2:34Moreover, your skirts are stained with the blood of the innocent poor, though you did not find them breaking in. But in spite of all these things
- Isa 1:21See how the faithful city has become a harlot! She once was full of justice; righteousness resided within her, but now only murderers!
- Jer 2:30“I have struck your sons in vain; they accepted no discipline. Your own sword has devoured your prophets like a voracious lion.”
- Jer 7:8But look, you keep trusting in deceptive words to no avail.
- Ezek 9:9He replied, “The iniquity of the house of Israel and Judah is exceedingly great. The land is full of bloodshed, and the city is full of perversity. For they say, ‘The LORD has forsaken the land; the LORD does not see.’
- Ezek 7:23Forge the chain, for the land is full of crimes of bloodshed, and the city is full of violence.
- Ezek 35:6therefore as surely as I live, declares the Lord GOD, I will give you over to bloodshed and it will pursue you. Since you did not hate bloodshed, it will pursue you.
- Mic 7:2The godly man has perished from the earth; there is no one upright among men. They all lie in wait for blood; they hunt one another with a net.
- Mic 6:12For the wealthy of the city are full of violence, and its residents speak lies; their tongues are deceitful in their mouths.
- Hos 7:13Woe to them, for they have strayed from Me! Destruction to them, for they have rebelled against Me! Though I would redeem them, they speak lies against Me.
- Hos 4:2Cursing and lying, murder and stealing, and adultery are rampant; one act of bloodshed follows another.
- Matt 27:4“I have sinned by betraying innocent blood,” he said. “What is that to us?” they replied. “You bear the responsibility.”
- Jer 22:17“But your eyes and heart are set on nothing except your own dishonest gain, on shedding innocent blood, on practicing extortion and oppression.”
- Jer 9:3–6“They bend their tongues like bows; lies prevail over truth in the land. For they proceed from evil to evil, and they do not take Me into account,” declares the LORD.
- Hos 7:3They delight the king with their evil, and the princes with their lies.
- Ezek 22:2“As for you, son of man, will you judge her? Will you pass judgment on the city of bloodshed? Then confront her with all her abominations
- Mic 3:10–12who build Zion with bloodshed and Jerusalem with iniquity.
- 1 Tim 4:2influenced by the hypocrisy of liars, whose consciences are seared with a hot iron.
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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 59:3 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
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