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For your hands are defiled with blood, And your fingers with iniquity; Your lips have spoken lies, Your tongue has muttered perversity.
Isaiah 59:3 · New King James Version
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.
  • BSB For your hands are stained with blood, and your fingers with iniquity; your lips have spoken lies, and your tongue mutters injustice.
  • 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, I will hide my eyes from you. Yes, when you make many prayers, I will not hear. Your hands are full of blood.
  • Ezek 13:8“‘Therefore thus says the Lord Yahweh: “Because you have spoken falsehood and seen lies, therefore, behold, I am against you,” says the Lord Yahweh.
  • Jer 2:34Also the blood of the souls of the innocent poor is found in your skirts. You did not find them breaking in; but it is because of all these things.
  • Isa 1:21How the faithful city has become a prostitute! She was full of justice; righteousness lodged in her, but now murderers.
  • Jer 2:30“I have struck your children in vain. They received no correction. Your own sword has devoured your prophets, like a destroying lion.
  • Jer 7:8Behold, you trust in lying words, that can’t profit.
  • Ezek 9:9Then he said to me, “The iniquity of the house of Israel and Judah is exceedingly great, and the land is full of blood, and the city full of perversion; for they say, ‘Yahweh has forsaken the land, and Yahweh doesn’t see.’
  • Ezek 7:23“‘Make chains; for the land is full of bloody crimes, and the city is full of violence.
  • Ezek 35:6therefore, as I live, says the Lord Yahweh, I will prepare you for blood, and blood shall pursue you: since you have not hated blood, therefore blood shall pursue you.
  • Mic 7:2The godly man has perished out of the earth, and there is no one upright among men. They all lie in wait for blood; every man hunts his brother with a net.
  • Mic 6:12Her rich men are full of violence, her inhabitants speak lies, and their tongue is deceitful in their speech.
  • 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.
  • Hos 4:2There is cursing, lying, murder, stealing, and committing adultery; they break boundaries, and bloodshed causes bloodshed.
  • Matt 27:4saying, “I have sinned in that I betrayed innocent blood.” But they said, “What is that to us? You see to it.”
  • Jer 22:17But your eyes and your heart are not but for your covetousness, and for shedding innocent blood, for oppression, and for doing violence.”
  • Jer 9:3–6“They bend their tongue, as their bow, for falsehood; and they have grown strong in the land, but not for truth: for they proceed from evil to evil, and they don’t know me,” says Yahweh.
  • Hos 7:3They make the king glad with their wickedness, and the princes with their lies.
  • Ezek 22:2“You, son of man, will you judge? Will you judge the bloody city? Then cause her to know all her abominations.
  • Mic 3:10–12They build up Zion with blood, and Jerusalem with iniquity.
  • 1 Tim 4:2through the hypocrisy of men who speak lies, branded in their own conscience as with a hot iron;

Themes, concepts, people & topics

Topics (2)

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 59:3YouTube · 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 59:3 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.