Wicked (People): Described

But the men of Sodom were wicked, sinning greatly against the LORD.

Then the LORD said, “The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is great. Because their sin is so grievous,

Even the land has become defiled, so I am punishing it for its sin, and the land will vomit out its inhabitants.

The LORD also said to me, “I have seen this people, and they are indeed a stiff-necked people.

You have been rebelling against the LORD since the day I came to know you.

He found him in a desert land, in a barren, howling wilderness; He surrounded him, He instructed him, He guarded him as the apple of His eye.

But their vine is from the vine of Sodom and from the fields of Gomorrah. Their grapes are poisonous; their clusters are bitter.

Their wine is the venom of serpents, the deadly poison of cobras.

As the old proverb says, ‘Wickedness proceeds from the wicked.’ But my hand will never be against you.

When Elijah arrived, Ahab said to him, “So you have found me out, my enemy.” He replied, “I have found you out because you have sold yourself to do evil in the sight of the LORD.

And now you intend to reduce to slavery the men and women of Judah and Jerusalem. But are you not also guilty before the LORD your God?

In the time of his distress, King Ahaz became even more unfaithful to the LORD.

…that You gave through Your servants the prophets, saying: ‘The land that you are entering to possess is a land polluted by the impurity of its peoples and the abominations with which they have filled it from end to end.

Who can bring out clean from unclean? No one!

…how much less man, who is vile and corrupt, who drinks injustice like water?

A wicked man writhes in pain all his days; only a few years are reserved for the ruthless. …

Though evil is sweet in his mouth and he conceals it under his tongue,

…though he cannot bear to let it go and keeps it in his mouth,

Is not your wickedness great? Are not your iniquities endless?

Men move boundary stones; they pasture stolen flocks. …

For not a word they speak can be trusted; destruction lies within them. Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit.

Behold, the wicked man travails with evil; he conceives trouble and births falsehood. …

In his pride the wicked man does not seek Him; in all his schemes there is no God. …

For the choirmaster. A Psalm of David, the servant of the LORD. An oracle is in my heart regarding the transgression of the wicked man: There is no fear of God before his eyes. …

The wicked scheme against the righteous and gnash their teeth at them,

A man who has riches without understanding is like the beasts that perish.

For you hate My instruction and cast My words behind you. …

For the choirmaster. A Maskil of David. After Doeg the Edomite went to Saul and told him, “David has gone to the house of Ahimelech.” Why do you boast of evil, O mighty man? The loving devotion of God endures all day long. …

For the choirmaster. According to Mahalath. A Maskil of David. The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.” They are corrupt; their ways are vile. There is no one who does good. …

The wicked are estranged from the womb; the liars go astray from birth. …

They return in the evening, snarling like dogs and prowling around the city.

See what they spew from their mouths—sharp words from their lips: “For who can hear us?”

…who sharpen their tongues like swords and aim their bitter words like arrows, …

They have no struggle in their death; their bodies are well-fed. …

How long will the wicked, O LORD, how long will the wicked exult? …

Salvation is far from the wicked because they do not seek Your statutes.

For they hated knowledge and chose not to fear the LORD.

They accepted none of my counsel; they despised all my reproof.

…to deliver you from the way of evil, from the man who speaks perversity, …

For they cannot sleep unless they do evil; they are deprived of slumber until they make someone fall.

A worthless person, a wicked man, walks with a perverse mouth, …

The fool delights in shameful conduct, but a man of understanding has wisdom.

Desire fulfilled is sweet to the soul, but turning from evil is detestable to fools.

Fools mock the making of amends, but goodwill is found among the upright.

The LORD detests the way of the wicked, but He loves those who pursue righteousness.

Discipline is harsh for him who leaves the path; he who hates correction will die.

Though you grind a fool like grain with mortar and a pestle, yet his folly will not depart from him.

Those who forsake the law praise the wicked, but those who keep the law resist them.

I said to myself, “As for the sons of men, God tests them so that they may see for themselves that they are but beasts.”

When the sentence for a crime is not speedily executed, the hearts of men become fully set on doing evil.

Alas, O sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a brood of evildoers, children who act corruptly! They have forsaken the LORD; they have despised the Holy One of Israel and turned their backs on Him. …

The expression on their faces testifies against them, and like Sodom they flaunt their sin; they do not conceal it. Woe to them, for they have brought disaster upon themselves.

Woe to those who rise early in the morning in pursuit of strong drink, who linger into the evening, to be inflamed by wine.

At their feasts are the lyre and harp, tambourines and flutes and wine. They disregard the actions of the LORD and fail to see the work of His hands.

Woe to those who draw iniquity with cords of deceit and pull sin along with cart ropes, …

Though grace is shown to the wicked man, he does not learn righteousness. In the land of righteousness he acts unjustly and fails to see the majesty of the LORD.

O LORD, Your hand is upraised, but they do not see it. They will see Your zeal for Your people and be put to shame. The fire set for Your enemies will consume them!

“Woe to the rebellious children,” declares the LORD, “to those who carry out a plan that is not Mine, who form an alliance, but against My will, heaping up sin upon sin.

For a fool speaks foolishness; his mind plots iniquity. He practices ungodliness and speaks falsely about the LORD; he leaves the hungry empty and deprives the thirsty of drink.

The weapons of the scoundrel are destructive; he hatches plots to destroy the poor with lies, even when the plea of the needy is just.

But the wicked are like the storm-tossed sea, for it cannot be still, and its waves churn up mire and muck.

“There is no peace,” says my God, “for the wicked.”

But your iniquities have built barriers between you and your God, and your sins have hidden His face from you, so that He does not hear. …

We have become like those You never ruled, like those not called by Your name.

Although you wash with lye and use an abundance of soap, the stain of your guilt is still before Me,” declares the Lord GOD. …

Will He be angry forever? Will He be indignant to the end?’ This you have spoken, but you keep doing all the evil you can.”

“For My people are fools; they have not known Me. They are foolish children, without understanding. They are skilled in doing evil, but they know not how to do good.”

Then I said, “They are only the poor; they have played the fool, for they do not know the way of the LORD, the justice of their God.

I will go to the powerful and speak to them. Surely they know the way of the LORD, the justice of their God.” But they too, with one accord, had broken the yoke and torn off the chains.

For among My people are wicked men; they watch like fowlers lying in wait; they set a trap to catch men. …

As a well gushes its water, so she pours out her evil. Violence and destruction resound in her; sickness and wounds are ever before Me.

Are they ashamed of the abomination they have committed? No, they have no shame at all; they do not even know how to blush. So they will fall among the fallen; when I punish them, they will collapse,” says the LORD.

I have listened and heard; they do not speak what is right. No one repents of his wickedness, asking, ‘What have I done?’ Everyone has pursued his own course like a horse charging into battle.

Are they ashamed of the abomination they have committed? No, they have no shame at all; they do not even know how to blush. So they will fall among the fallen; when I punish them, they will collapse, says the LORD.

“They bend their tongues like bows; lies prevail over truth in the land. For they proceed from evil to evil, and they do not take Me into account,” declares the LORD. …

Yet they would not obey or incline their ears, but each one followed the stubbornness of his evil heart. So I brought on them all the curses of this covenant I had commanded them to follow but they did not keep.”

What right has My beloved in My house, having carried out so many evil schemes? Can consecrated meat avert your doom? When you are wicked, then you rejoice.

These evil people, who refuse to listen to My words, who follow the stubbornness of their own hearts, and who go after other gods to serve and worship them, they will be like this loincloth—of no use at all.

This is what the LORD says about this people: “Truly they love to wander; they have not restrained their feet. So the LORD does not accept them; He will now remember their iniquity and punish them for their sins.”

“The sin of Judah is written with an iron stylus, engraved with a diamond point on the tablets of their hearts and on the horns of their altars.

For this is what the LORD says: “Your injury is incurable; your wound is grievous. …

But the house of Israel will be unwilling to listen to you, since they are unwilling to listen to Me. For the whole house of Israel is hard-headed and hard-hearted.

Then you will know that I am the LORD. For you have neither followed My statutes nor practiced My ordinances, but you have conformed to the ordinances of the nations around you.”

And you not only walked in their ways and practiced their abominations, but soon you were more depraved than they were.

…because they kept rejecting My ordinances, refusing to walk in My statutes, and profaning My Sabbaths; for their hearts continually went after their idols.

They feed on the sins of My people and set their hearts on iniquity.

They delight the king with their evil, and the princes with their lies.

Foreigners consume his strength, but he does not notice. Even his hair is streaked with gray, but he does not know.

I found Israel like grapes in the wilderness. I saw your fathers as the firstfruits of the fig tree in its first season. But they went to Baal-peor, and consecrated themselves to Shame; so they became as detestable as the thing they loved.

The iniquity of Ephraim is bound up; his sin is stored up.

There are those who hate the one who reproves in the gate and despise him who speaks with integrity.

Then I said: “Hear now, O leaders of Jacob, you rulers of the house of Israel. Should you not know justice?

You hate good and love evil. You tear the skin from my people and strip the flesh from their bones.

The godly man has perished from the earth; there is no one upright among men. They all lie in wait for blood; they hunt one another with a net. …

The LORD within her is righteous; He does no wrong. He applies His justice morning by morning; He does not fail at dawn, yet the unjust know no shame.

I said, ‘Surely you will fear Me and accept correction.’ Then her dwelling place would not be cut off despite all for which I punished her. But they rose early to corrupt all their deeds.

Then Haggai replied, “So it is with this people and this nation before Me, declares the LORD, and so it is with every work of their hands; whatever they offer there is defiled.

…the people living in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death, a light has dawned.”

But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!

He replied, “The mystery of the kingdom of God has been given to you, but to those on the outside everything is expressed in parables,

…to shine on those who live in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the path of peace.”

For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”

Whoever believes in Him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe has already been condemned, because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. …

…but I know you, that you do not have the love of God within you.

Jesus replied, “Truly, truly, I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin.

You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out his desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, refusing to uphold the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, because he is a liar and the father of lies.

You have no part or share in our ministry, because your heart is not right before God.

For I see that you are poisoned by bitterness and captive to iniquity.”

…and said, “O child of the devil and enemy of all righteousness, you are full of all kinds of deceit and trickery! Will you never stop perverting the straight ways of the Lord?

For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood from His workmanship, so that men are without excuse. …

But for those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow wickedness, there will be wrath and anger.

As it is written: “There is no one righteous, not even one. …

Those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh; but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit.

…because the mind of the flesh is hostile to God: It does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so.

Those controlled by the flesh cannot please God.

So it is not the children of the flesh who are God’s children, but it is the children of the promise who are regarded as offspring.

And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, …

…remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world.

So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. …

Have no fellowship with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them.

For it is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret.

…so that you may be blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and perverse generation, in which you shine as lights in the world

Once you were alienated from God and were hostile in your minds, engaging in evil deeds.

For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk, get drunk at night.

…in blazing fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus.

We realize that law is not enacted for the righteous, but for the lawless and rebellious, for the ungodly and sinful, for the unholy and profane, for killers of father or mother, for murderers,

…for the sexually immoral, for homosexuals, for slave traders and liars and perjurers, and for anyone else who is averse to sound teaching

For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, …

To the pure, all things are pure; but to the defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure. Indeed, both their minds and their consciences are defiled.

They profess to know God, but by their actions they deny Him. They are detestable, disobedient, and unfit for any good deed.

For at one time we too were foolish, disobedient, misled, and enslaved to all sorts of desires and pleasures—living in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another.

Such punishment is specially reserved for those who indulge the corrupt desires of the flesh and despise authority. Bold and self-willed, they are unafraid to slander glorious beings.

The one who practices sin is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the very start. This is why the Son of God was revealed, to destroy the works of the devil.

By this the children of God are distinguished from the children of the devil: Anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is anyone who does not love his brother.

We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love our brothers. The one who does not love remains in death.

Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that eternal life does not reside in a murderer.

These men are hidden reefs in your love feasts, shamelessly feasting with you but shepherding only themselves. They are clouds without water, carried along by the wind; fruitless trees in autumn, twice dead after being uprooted.

They are wild waves of the sea, foaming up their own shame; wandering stars, for whom blackest darkness has been reserved forever.

You say, ‘I am rich; I have grown wealthy and need nothing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind, and naked.

I counsel you to buy from Me gold refined by fire so that you may become rich, white garments so that you may be clothed and your shameful nakedness not exposed, and salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see.