^3 (A)Why do you make me see iniquity,
    and why do you idly look at wrong?
Destruction ^(B)and violence are before me;
    strife and contention arise.

7 Woe is me! For I have become
    ^(A)as when the summer fruit has been gathered,
    as when the grapes have been gleaned:
there is no cluster to eat,
    no ^(B)first-ripe fig that my soul desires.
^2 (C)The godly has perished from the earth,
    and ^(D)there is no one upright among mankind;
^(E)they all lie in wait for blood,
    and ^(F)each hunts the other with a net.
^3 (G)Their hands are on what is evil, to do it well;
    ^(H)the prince and ^(I)the judge ask for a bribe,
and the great man utters the evil desire of his soul;
    thus they weave it together.
⁴ The best of them is ^(J)like a brier,
    the most upright of them a thorn hedge.
The day of ^(K)your watchmen, of your punishment, has come;
    ^(L)now their confusion is at hand.

⁸ For whenever I speak, I cry out,
    I shout, ^(A)“Violence and destruction!”
For ^(B)the word of the Lord has become for me
    ^(C)a reproach and ^(D)derision all day long.

^2 [a] Oh that I had in the desert
    a travelers' lodging place,
that I might leave my people
    and go away from them!
For they are all ^(A)adulterers,
    a company of ^(B)treacherous men.
^3 (C)They bend their tongue like a bow;
    falsehood and not truth has grown strong^[b] in the land;
for they proceed from evil to evil,
    ^(D)and they do not know me, declares the Lord.