For your hands are defiled with blood, and your fingers with iniquity; your lips have spoken lies, your tongue hath muttered perverseness.
Parallel translations
- WEB For your hands are defiled with blood, and your fingers with iniquity. Your lips have spoken lies. Your tongue mutters wickedness.
- BSB For your hands are stained with blood, and your fingers with iniquity; your lips have spoken lies, and your tongue mutters injustice.
- 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 1:15And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you: yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full of blood.
- Ezek 13:8Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD; Because ye have spoken vanity, and seen lies, therefore, behold, I am against you, saith the Lord GOD.
- Jer 2:34Also in thy skirts is found the blood of the souls of the poor innocents: I have not found it by secret search, but upon all these.
- Isa 1:21How is the faithful city become an harlot! it was full of judgment; righteousness lodged in it; but now murderers.
- Jer 2:30In vain have I smitten your children; they received no correction: your own sword hath devoured your prophets, like a destroying lion.
- Jer 7:8Behold, ye trust in lying words, that cannot profit.
- Ezek 9:9Then said he unto me, The iniquity of the house of Israel and Judah is exceeding great, and the land is full of blood, and the city full of perverseness: for they say, The LORD hath forsaken the earth, and the LORD seeth not.
- Ezek 7:23Make a chain: for the land is full of bloody crimes, and the city is full of violence.
- Ezek 35:6Therefore, as I live, saith the Lord GOD, I will prepare thee unto blood, and blood shall pursue thee: sith thou hast not hated blood, even blood shall pursue thee.
- Mic 7:2The good man is perished out of the earth: and there is none upright among men: they all lie in wait for blood; they hunt every man his brother with a net.
- Mic 6:12For the rich men thereof are full of violence, and the inhabitants thereof have spoken lies, and their tongue is deceitful in their mouth.
- Hos 7:13Woe unto them! for they have fled from me: destruction unto them! because they have transgressed against me: though I have redeemed them, yet they have spoken lies against me.
- Hos 4:2By swearing, and lying, and killing, and stealing, and committing adultery, they break out, and blood toucheth blood.
- Matt 27:4Saying, I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood. And they said, What is that to us? see thou to that.
- Jer 22:17But thine eyes and thine heart are not but for thy covetousness, and for to shed innocent blood, and for oppression, and for violence, to do it.
- Jer 9:3–6And they bend their tongues like their bow for lies: but they are not valiant for the truth upon the earth; for they proceed from evil to evil, and they know not me, saith the LORD.
- Hos 7:3They make the king glad with their wickedness, and the princes with their lies.
- Ezek 22:2Now, thou son of man, wilt thou judge, wilt thou judge the bloody city? yea, thou shalt shew her all her abominations.
- Mic 3:10–12They build up Zion with blood, and Jerusalem with iniquity.
- 1 Tim 4:2Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience 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
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.