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The Utter Corruption of God’s People

5Run to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem,
   look around and take note!
Search its squares and see
   if you can find one person
who acts justly
   and seeks truth—
so that I may pardon Jerusalem.^*
2 Although they say, ‘As the Lord lives’,
   yet they swear falsely.
³ O Lord, do your eyes not look for truth?
You have struck them,
   but they felt no anguish;
you have consumed them,
   but they refused to take correction.
They have made their faces harder than rock;
   they have refused to turn back.

⁴ Then I said, ‘These are only the poor,
   they have no sense;
for they do not know the way of the Lord,
   the law of their God.
⁵ Let me go to the rich^*
   and speak to them;
surely they know the way of the Lord,
   the law of their God.’
But they all alike had broken the yoke,
   they had burst the bonds.

⁶ Therefore a lion from the forest shall kill them,
   a wolf from the desert shall destroy them.
A leopard is watching against their cities;
   everyone who goes out of them shall be torn in pieces—
because their transgressions are many,
   their apostasies are great.

⁷ How can I pardon you?
   Your children have forsaken me,
   and have sworn by those who are no gods.
When I fed them to the full,
   they committed adultery
   and trooped to the houses of prostitutes.
⁸ They were well-fed lusty stallions,
   each neighing for his neighbour’s wife.
⁹ Shall I not punish them for these things?

says the Lord;
   and shall I not bring retribution
   on a nation such as this?

¹⁰ Go up through her vine-rows and destroy,
   but do not make a full end;
strip away her branches,
   for they are not the Lord’s.
¹¹ For the house of Israel and the house of Judah
   have been utterly faithless to me,

says the Lord.
¹² They have spoken falsely of the Lord,
   and have said, ‘He will do nothing.
No evil will come upon us,
   and we shall not see sword or famine.’
¹³ The prophets are nothing but wind,
   for the word is not in them.
Thus shall it be done to them!

¹⁴ Therefore thus says the Lord, the God of hosts:
Because they^* have spoken this word,
I am now making my words in your mouth a fire,
   and this people wood, and the fire shall devour them.
¹⁵ I am going to bring upon you
   a nation from far away, O house of Israel,

says the Lord.
It is an enduring nation,
   it is an ancient nation,
a nation whose language you do not know,
   nor can you understand what they say.
¹⁶ Their quiver is like an open tomb;
   all of them are mighty warriors.
¹⁷ They shall eat up your harvest and your food;
   they shall eat up your sons and your daughters;
they shall eat up your flocks and your herds;
   they shall eat up your vines and your fig trees;
they shall destroy with the sword
   your fortified cities in which you trust.

18 But even in those days, says the Lord, I will not make a full end of you. ¹⁹And when your people say, ‘Why has the Lord our God done all these things to us?’ you shall say to them, ‘As you have forsaken me and served foreign gods in your land, so you shall serve strangers in a land that is not yours.’

The Law and Sin

7 What then should we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet, if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, ‘You shall not covet.’ ⁸But sin, seizing an opportunity in the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. Apart from the law sin lies dead. ⁹I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin revived ¹⁰and I died, and the very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. ¹¹For sin, seizing an opportunity in the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me. ¹²So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and just and good.

13 Did what is good, then, bring death to me? By no means! It was sin, working death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure.

The Inner Conflict

14 For we know that the law is spiritual; but I am of the flesh, sold into slavery under sin.^{* 15}I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. ¹⁶Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good. ¹⁷But in fact it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. ¹⁸For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. ¹⁹For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. ²⁰Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me.

21 So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. ²²For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, ²³but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. ²⁴Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? ²⁵Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!

So then, with my mind I am a slave to the law of God, but with my flesh I am a slave to the law of sin.