Your sins are between you and your God
1You think that the Lord can not save you,
and you think that He can not hear you.
You are wrong.
2It is your sins that are
between you and your God.
That is why He does not want to listen
to you and does not want to see you.
3You have killed people and you are impure.
You tell lies and you say bad things
about other people.
4You are not fair to each other
when you go to court and you are
not honest when you accuse each other.
You let them punish people
for things that they did not do,
and you make people suffer
who have done nothing wrong.
5You cause bad things to happen,
like when a snake comes out of its egg
and starts to kill people.
If you eat those eggs, you will die,
and if you break the eggs,
snakes will come out of them.
The lies that you tell
are like the web of a spider.
6You can not make clothes
from those threads
and you can not cover yourself with them.
Everything you do is sinful,
and you keep on doing bad things to other people.
7You love doing bad things
to other people, and you love to kill them.
You think only of bad things to do
and you break and destroy everything
where you go.
8You don't know how to make peace
or how to do what is right to other people.
The way that you live is wrong.
People who live like that
will never have peace.
Our sins show that we are guilty
9Nothing in us is right or fair,
and not one of us is righteous.
We waited for the light to come,
but there is only darkness.
We hoped that light would shine for us,
but where we walk, it is very dark.
10We have to feel with our hands
where to go like people who can't see,
and we fall down like people walking in the dark
but the sun is shining brightly.
We are like dead people among healthy people.
11We complain like doves,
and we roar like bears.
We wait for people to do
what is fair and right again.
We wait for someone to help us,
but it does not happen.
12It is because we have
rebelled_against You, O Lord.
Our sins show that we are guilty.
We know that we have done wrong,
and we know that we have sinned.
13We were rebellious_against the Lord,
and we lived like people who don't know Him.
We turned away from our God.
We made plans to do bad things
to people and to disobey God,
and we thought about the lies we wanted to tell.
14Not one of us has done
what is right to other people,
and no one was fair. No one in our streets
said things that were true,
and no one wanted to be honest.
15Yes, everyone told lies.
The people who tried to stop doing wrong
were attacked by other people
who took everything that they had.
The Saviour will come to Zion
The Lord saw everything
and He became angry
because no one did what was right.
16He saw it and He was surprised
that no one wanted to do anything
to help the people.
So the Lord did it Himself.
He made people righteous with his power.
17Then the Lord prepared
to save us and to do what is right.
He wanted to punish his enemies
for the wrong things they did
because it made Him very angry.
18He will punish his enemies,
even the enemies who live far away
near the sea,
because He is angry about everything
that they did to his people.
19All people from the west
to the east will become afraid
when they hear the name of the Lord,
because they will know that He is the King.
He will come like a river that
floods everything and like a storm wind.
20‘The Saviour will come to Zion,
to the people of Judah
who have turned away from sin.’
This is what the Lord says. 21The Lord also says:
‘I promise that my Spirit will stay in you
and my words that I have put into your mouth
will stay with you,
and also with your descendants,
now and forever.’
