Deuteronomy 21:8

Many say, “Who will show us any good?” Yahweh, let the light of your face shine on us.

In the eighth month, in the second year of Darius, Yahweh’s word came to Zechariah the son of Berechiah, the son of Iddo, the prophet, saying,

Moreover Manasseh shed innocent blood very much, until he had filled Jerusalem from one end to another; in addition to his sin with which he made Judah to sin, in doing that which was evil in Yahweh’s sight.

You have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your presence.

But our God is in the heavens. He does whatever he pleases.

Cain said to Abel, his brother, “Let’s go into the field.” While they were in the field, Cain rose up against Abel, his brother, and killed him.

“Speak to the children of Israel, saying, ‘If anyone sins unintentionally, in any of the things which Yahweh has commanded not to be done, and does any one of them,

They shall no more sacrifice their sacrifices to the goat idols, after which they play the prostitute. This shall be a statute forever to them throughout their generations.’

Make your face to shine on your servant. Save me in your loving kindness.

Turn us again, Yahweh God of Armies. Cause your face to shine, and we will be saved.

Make your face shine on your servant. Teach me your statutes.

Whatever Yahweh pleased, that he has done, in heaven and in earth, in the seas and in all deeps.

Prepare for slaughter of his children because of the iniquity of their fathers, that they not rise up and possess the earth, and fill the surface of the world with cities.

Also the blood of the souls of the innocent poor is found in your skirts. You didn’t find them breaking in, but it is because of all these things.

But your eyes and your heart are only for your covetousness, for shedding innocent blood, for oppression, and for doing violence.”

Then Jeremiah spoke to all the princes and to all the people, saying, “Yahweh sent me to prophesy against this house and against this city all the words that you have heard.

“ ‘ “But you trusted in your beauty, and played the prostitute because of your renown, and poured out your prostitution on everyone who passed by. It was his.

She hasn’t left her prostitution since leaving Egypt; for in her youth they lay with her. They caressed her youthful nipples; and they poured out their prostitution on her.

Therefore they cried to Yahweh, and said, “We beg you, Yahweh, we beg you, don’t let us die for this man’s life, and don’t lay on us innocent blood; for you, Yahweh, have done as it pleased you.”

from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zachariah, who perished between the altar and the sanctuary.’ Yes, I tell you, it will be required of this generation.

By faith, Abel offered to God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, through which he had testimony given to him that he was righteous, God testifying with respect to his gifts; and through it he, being dead, still speaks.

Now therefore, if I have found favor in your sight, please show me your way, now, that I may know you, so that I may find favor in your sight; and consider that this nation is your people.”

Yahweh make his face to shine on you, and be gracious to you.

“ ‘So you shall not pollute the land where you live; for blood pollutes the land. No atonement can be made for the land, for the blood that is shed in it, but by the blood of him who shed it.

“Now therefore fear Yahweh, and serve him in sincerity and in truth. Put away the gods which your fathers served beyond the River, in Egypt; and serve Yahweh.

Notwithstanding, Yahweh didn’t turn from the fierceness of his great wrath, with which his anger burned against Judah, because of all the provocation with which Manasseh had provoked him.

Seek Yahweh and his strength. Seek his face forever more.

The Spirit of God came on Zechariah the son of Jehoiada the priest; and he stood above the people, and said to them, “God says, ‘Why do you disobey Yahweh’s commandments, so that you can’t prosper? Because you have forsaken Yahweh, he has also forsaken you.’ ”

“Teach me, and I will hold my peace. Cause me to understand my error.

Teach me that which I don’t see. If I have done iniquity, I will do it no more’?

Answer me when I call, God of my righteousness. Give me relief from my distress. Have mercy on me, and hear my prayer.

For innumerable evils have surrounded me. My iniquities have overtaken me, so that I am not able to look up. They are more than the hairs of my head. My heart has failed me.

Turn us again, God. Cause your face to shine, and we will be saved.

Turn us again, God of Armies. Cause your face to shine, and we will be saved.

Then they cry to Yahweh in their trouble, and he brings them out of their distress.

arrogant eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood,

if you don’t oppress the foreigner, the fatherless, and the widow, and don’t shed innocent blood in this place, and don’t walk after other gods to your own hurt;

Do not abhor us, for your name’s sake. Do not disgrace the throne of your glory. Remember, and don’t break your covenant with us.

The heart is deceitful above all things and it is exceedingly corrupt. Who can know it?

“Look, Yahweh, and see to whom you have done thus! Should the women eat their offspring, the children that they held and bounced on their knees? Should the priest and the prophet be killed in the sanctuary of the Lord?

“We have transgressed and have rebelled. You have not pardoned.

In all your abominations and your prostitution you have not remembered the days of your youth, when you were naked and bare, and were wallowing in your blood.

Yet she multiplied her prostitution, remembering the days of her youth, in which she had played the prostitute in the land of Egypt.

Thus I will make your lewdness to cease from you, and remove your prostitution from the land of Egypt; so that you will not lift up your eyes to them, nor remember Egypt any more.’

“ ‘Therefore the Lord Yahweh says: “Woe to the bloody city, to the cauldron whose rust is in it, and whose rust hasn’t gone out of it! Take out of it piece after piece. No lot is fallen on it.

So you shall do on the seventh day of the month for everyone who errs, and for him who is simple. So you shall make atonement for the house.

Let the priests, the ministers of Yahweh, weep between the porch and the altar, and let them say, “Spare your people, Yahweh, and don’t give your heritage to reproach, that the nations should rule over them. Why should they say among the peoples, ‘Where is their God?’ ”

Then the men feared Yahweh exceedingly; and they offered a sacrifice to Yahweh, and made vows.

but let them be covered with sackcloth, both man and animal, and let them cry mightily to God. Yes, let them turn everyone from his evil way, and from the violence that is in his hands.

When the natives saw the creature hanging from his hand, they said to one another, “No doubt this man is a murderer, whom, though he has escaped from the sea, yet Justice has not allowed to live.”

For I don’t know what I am doing. For I don’t practice what I desire to do; but what I hate, that I do.

For I know nothing against myself. Yet I am not justified by this, but he who judges me is the Lord.

seeing it is God who said, “Light will shine out of darkness,” who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, God’s love, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.

But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ, his Son, cleanses us from all sin.

In her was found the blood of prophets and of saints, and of all who have been slain on the earth.”

Yahweh said, “What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood cries to me from the ground.

Whoever sheds man’s blood, his blood will be shed by man, for God made man in his own image.

“One who strikes a man so that he dies shall surely be put to death,

I prayed to Yahweh, and said, “Lord Yahweh, don’t destroy your people and your inheritance that you have redeemed through your greatness, that you have brought out of Egypt with a mighty hand.

Yet they are your people and your inheritance, which you brought out by your great power and by your outstretched arm.”

That prophet, or that dreamer of dreams, shall be put to death, because he has spoken rebellion against Yahweh your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt and redeemed you out of the house of bondage, to draw you aside out of the way which Yahweh your God commanded you to walk in. So you shall remove the evil from among you.

You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and Yahweh your God redeemed you. Therefore I command you this thing today.

This is so that innocent blood will not be shed in the middle of your land which Yahweh your God gives you for an inheritance, leaving blood guilt on you.

Afterward, when David heard it, he said, “I and my kingdom are guiltless before Yahweh forever of the blood of Abner the son of Ner.

What one nation in the earth is like your people, even like Israel, whom God went to redeem to himself for a people, and to make himself a name, and to do great things for you, and awesome things for your land, before your people, whom you redeemed to yourself out of Egypt, from the nations and their gods?

The king said to him, “Do as he has said, and fall on him, and bury him; that you may take away the blood, which Joab shed without cause, from me and from my father’s house.

(for they are your people, and your inheritance, which you brought out of Egypt, from the middle of the iron furnace);

and also for the innocent blood that he shed; for he filled Jerusalem with innocent blood, and Yahweh would not pardon.

If he is pleased to contend with him, he can’t answer him one time in a thousand.

Isn’t your wickedness great? Neither is there any end to your iniquities.

Who can discern his errors? Forgive me from hidden errors.

Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity. Cleanse me from my sin.

Deliver me from the guilt of bloodshed, O God, the God of my salvation. My tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness.

May God be merciful to us, bless us, and cause his face to shine on us.

They remembered that God was their rock, the Most High God, their redeemer.

Therefore he said that he would destroy them, had Moses, his chosen, not stood before him in the breach, to turn away his wrath, so that he wouldn’t destroy them.

They shed innocent blood, even the blood of their sons and of their daughters, whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan. The land was polluted with blood.

Sing, you heavens, for Yahweh has done it! Shout, you lower parts of the earth! Break out into singing, you mountains, O forest, all of your trees, for Yahweh has redeemed Jacob, and will glorify himself in Israel.

We have become like those over whom you never ruled, like those who were not called by your name.

Because they have forsaken me, and have defiled this place, and have burned incense in it to other gods that they didn’t know, they, their fathers, and the kings of Judah, and have filled this place with the blood of innocents,

Yahweh says: “Execute justice and righteousness, and deliver him who is robbed out of the hand of the oppressor. Do no wrong. Do no violence to the foreigner, the fatherless, or the widow. Don’t shed innocent blood in this place.

Only know for certain that, if you put me to death, you will bring innocent blood on yourselves, on this city, and on its inhabitants; for in truth Yahweh has sent me to you to speak all these words in your ears.”

“ ‘Make chains; for the land is full of bloody crimes, and the city is full of violence.

Then he said to me, “Have you seen this, son of man? Is it a light thing to the house of Judah that they commit the abominations which they commit here? For they have filled the land with violence, and have turned again to provoke me to anger. Behold, they put the branch to their nose.

Then he said to me, “The iniquity of the house of Israel and Judah is exceedingly great, and the land is full of blood, and the city full of perversion; for they say, ‘Yahweh has forsaken the land, and Yahweh doesn’t see.’

They played the prostitute in Egypt. They played the prostitute in their youth. Their breasts were fondled there, and their youthful nipples were caressed there.

For I brought you up out of the land of Egypt, and redeemed you out of the house of bondage. I sent before you Moses, Aaron, and Miriam.

that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zachariah son of Barachiah, whom you killed between the sanctuary and the altar.

So when Pilate saw that nothing was being gained, but rather that a disturbance was starting, he took water, and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, “I am innocent of the blood of this righteous person. You see to it.”

Therefore I testify to you today that I am clean from the blood of all men,

who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify for himself a people for his own possession, zealous for good works.