3 For your hands are defiled with blood, and your fingers with iniquity; your lips pronounce lies; your tongue speaks evil.
4 No one calls for righteousness, nor do any judge by the truth; they trust in vanity, and speak vanities; they conceive trouble and bring forth iniquity.
5 They hatch cockatrice’ eggs and weave the spider’s web; whosoever shall eat of their eggs shall die, and if they should squeeze them, a viper shall come out.
6 Their cloth is unfit to be a garment, neither shall they cover themselves with their works; their works are works of violence, and the work of iniquity is in their hands.
7 Their feet run to evil, and they make haste to shed innocent blood; their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity; wasting and destruction are their paths.
8 The way of peace they did not know; nor is there anything straight about their ways; they have wilfully made themselves crooked paths; whosoever goes therein shall not know peace.
9 Therefore judgment has withdrawn from us, and righteousness has never overtaken us: we wait for light, but behold obscurity; for brightness, but we walk in darkness.