²³ Can an Ethiopian^[a] change the color of his skin?
    Can a leopard take away its spots?
Neither can you start doing good,
    for you have always done evil.

²² No amount of soap or lye can make you clean.
    I still see the stain of your guilt.
    I, the Sovereign Lord, have spoken!

⁵ They all fool and defraud each other;
    no one tells the truth.
With practiced tongues they tell lies;
    they wear themselves out with all their sinning.

³⁰ “I have punished your children,
    but they did not respond to my discipline.
You yourselves have killed your prophets
    as a lion kills its prey.

⁹ “The human heart is the most deceitful of all things,
    and desperately wicked.
    Who really knows how bad it is?

³ Lord, you are searching for honesty.
You struck your people,
    but they paid no attention.
You crushed them,
    but they refused to be corrected.
They are determined, with faces set like stone;
    they have refused to repent.

²⁹ The bellows fiercely fan the flames
    to burn out the corruption.
But it does not purify them,
    for the wickedness remains.
³⁰ I will label them ‘Rejected Silver,’
    for I, the Lord, am discarding them.”

⁵ Why do you continue to invite punishment?
    Must you rebel forever?
Your head is injured,
    and your heart is sick.

²² You cannot separate fools from their foolishness,
    even though you grind them like grain with mortar and pestle.