Guiltiness

If the anointed priest sins, bringing guilt on the people, he must bring to the LORD a young bull without blemish as a sin offering for the sin he has committed.

by allowing the people to eat the sacred offerings and thus to bear the punishment for guilt. For I am the LORD who sanctifies them.”

But Joab replied, “May the LORD multiply His troops a hundred times over. My lord the king, are they not all servants of my lord? Why does my lord want to do this? Why should he bring guilt on Israel?”

They abandoned the house of the LORD, the God of their fathers, and served the Asherah poles and idols. So wrath came upon Judah and Jerusalem for this guilt of theirs.

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?

“You must not bring the captives here,” they said, “for you are proposing to bring guilt upon us from the LORD and to add to our sins and our guilt. For our guilt is great, and fierce anger is upon Israel.”

but he did not humble himself before the LORD as his father Manasseh had done; instead, Amon increased his guilt.

and said: “O my God, I am ashamed and embarrassed to lift up my face to You, my God, because our iniquities are higher than our heads, and our guilt has reached the heavens.

From the days of our fathers to this day, our guilt has been great. Because of our iniquities, we and our kings and priests have been delivered into the hands of the kings of the earth and subjected to the sword and to captivity, to pillage and humiliation, as we are this day.

After all that has come upon us because of our evil deeds and our great guilt (though You, our God, have punished us less than our iniquities deserve and have given us such a remnant as this),

O LORD, God of Israel, You are righteous! For we remain this day as a remnant. Here we are before You in our guilt, though because of it no one can stand before You.”

Then Ezra the priest stood up and said to them, “You have been unfaithful by marrying foreign women, adding to the guilt of Israel.

They pledged to send their wives away, and for their guilt they presented a ram from the flock as a guilt offering.

May those who hope in You not be ashamed through me, O Lord GOD of Hosts; may those who seek You not be dishonored through me, O God of Israel.

Those who swear by the guilt of Samaria and say, ‘As surely as your god lives, O Dan,’ or, ‘As surely as the way of Beersheba lives’—they will fall, never to rise again.”