You must be loyal ¹  to your servant, for you have made a covenant with your servant in the Lord’s name. ²  If I am guilty, ³  you yourself kill me! Why bother taking me to your father?”

He said to the king, “Don’t think badly of me, my lord, and don’t recall the sin of your servant on the day when you, my lord the king, left ¹  Jerusalem! ²  Please don’t call it to mind!

All your allies have abandoned you. ¹  They no longer have any concern for you. For I have attacked you like an enemy would. I have chastened you cruelly. For your wickedness is so great and your sin is so much. ² 

Why do you complain about your injuries, that your pain is incurable? I have done all this to you because your wickedness is so great and your sin is so much.

But you have plowed wickedness; you have reaped injustice; you have eaten the fruit of deception. Because you have depended on your chariots; ¹  you have relied ²  on your many warriors.

Judah replied, “What can we say ¹  to my lord? What can we speak? How can we clear ourselves? ²  God has exposed the sin of your servants! ³  We are now my lord’s slaves, we and the one in whose possession the cup was found.”

“‘If a man has sexual intercourse with ¹  his sister, whether the daughter of his father or his mother, so that he sees her nakedness and she sees his nakedness, it is a disgrace. They must be cut off in the sight of the children of their people. ²  He has exposed his sister’s nakedness; he will bear his punishment for iniquity. ³ 

So in this way Jacob’s sin will be forgiven, ¹  and this is how they will show they are finished sinning: ²  They will make all the stones of the altars ³  like crushed limestone, and the Asherah poles and the incense altars will no longer stand. ⁴ 

However, you must confess that you have done wrong, ¹  and that you have rebelled against the Lord your God. You must confess ²  that you have given yourself to ³  foreign gods under every green tree, and have not obeyed my commands,’ says the Lord.

“Therefore this is what the sovereign Lord says: ‘Because you have brought up ¹  your own guilt by uncovering your transgressions and revealing your sins through all your actions, for this reason you will be taken by force. ² 

Gilead is a city full of evildoers; ¹  its streets are stained with bloody footprints! ² 

then he says, ¹  “Their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no longer.” ² 

As for the Rock, ¹  his work is perfect, for all his ways are just. He is a reliable God who is never unjust, he is fair ²  and upright.

Respect the Lord and make careful decisions, for the Lord our God disapproves of injustice, partiality, and bribery.” ¹ 

All those who behave wickedly ¹  do not understand ²  – those who devour my people as if they were eating bread, and do not call out to God.

They devise ¹  unjust schemes; they disguise ²  a well-conceived plot. ³  Man’s inner thoughts cannot be discovered. ⁴ 

I saw something else on earth: ¹  In the place of justice, there was wickedness, and in the place of fairness, ²  there was wickedness.

“‘As for you, profane and wicked prince of Israel, ¹  whose day has come, the time of final punishment,

“‘You have shown unrelenting hostility and poured the people of Israel onto the blades of a sword ¹  at the time of their calamity, at the time of their final punishment.

When I please, ¹  I will discipline them; ²  I will gather nations together to attack them, ³  to bind them in chains ⁴  for their two sins. ⁵