36 Bible Verses about Innocence, Teaching On
Most Relevant Verses
“Look, I’m sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as serpents and as harmless as doves.
The report of your obedience has reached everyone. Therefore I rejoice over you. But I want you to be wise about what is good, yet innocent about what is evil.
Do everything without grumbling and arguing, so that you may be blameless and pure, children of God who are faultless in a crooked and perverted generation, among whom you shine like stars in the world.
May He make your hearts blameless in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all His saints. Amen.
Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely. And may your spirit, soul, and body be kept sound and blameless for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Therefore, dear friends, while you wait for these things, make every effort to be found at peace with Him without spot or blemish.
For I am not conscious of anything against myself, but I am not justified by this. The One who evaluates me is the Lord.
Once you were alienated and hostile in your minds because of your evil actions. But now He has reconciled you by His physical body through His death, to present you holy, faultless, and blameless before Him—
may You hear in heaven and act.
May You judge Your servants,
condemning the wicked man by bringing
what he has done on his own head
and providing justice for the righteous
by rewarding him according to his righteousness.
Stay far away from a false accusation. Do not kill the innocent and the just, because I will not justify the guilty.
“This is the law regarding jealousy when a wife goes astray and defiles herself while under her husband’s authority, or when a feeling of jealousy comes over a husband and he becomes jealous of his wife. He is to have the woman stand before the Lord, and the priest will apply this entire ritual to her. The husband will be free of guilt, but that woman will bear the consequences of her guilt.”
“If there is a dispute between men, they are to go to court, and the judges will hear their case. They will clear the innocent and condemn the guilty.
It is not good to show partiality to the guilty
by perverting the justice due the innocent.
These sayings also belong to the wise:
It is not good to show partiality in judgment.
Whoever says to the guilty, “You are innocent”—
people will curse him, and tribes will denounce him;
A Davidic psalm.Lord, who can dwell in Your tent?
Who can live on Your holy mountain? The one who lives honestly, practices righteousness,
and acknowledges the truth in his heart—
who does not slander with his tongue,
who does not harm his friend
or discredit his neighbor,
read more.
who despises the one rejected by the Lord
but honors those who fear the Lord,
who keeps his word whatever the cost,
who does not lend his money at interest
or take a bribe against the innocent—
the one who does these things will never be moved.
Then I looked, and there on Mount Zion stood the Lamb, and with Him were 144,000 who had His name and His Father’s name written on their foreheads. I heard a sound from heaven like the sound of cascading waters and like the rumbling of loud thunder. The sound I heard was also like harpists playing on their harps. They sang a new song before the throne and before the four living creatures and the elders, but no one could learn the song except the 144,000 who had been redeemed from the earth. read more.
These are the ones not defiled with women, for they have kept their virginity. These are the ones who follow the Lamb wherever He goes. They were redeemed from the human race as the firstfruits for God and the Lamb. No lie was found in their mouths; they are blameless.
A guilty man’s conduct is crooked,
but the behavior of the innocent is upright.
Finally brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable—if there is any moral excellence and if there is any praise—dwell on these things.
If the Lord your God enlarges your territory as He swore to your fathers, and gives you all the land He promised to give them— provided you keep every one of these commands I am giving you today and follow them, loving the Lord your God and walking in His ways at all times—you are to add three more cities to these three. In this way, innocent blood will not be shed, and you will not become guilty of bloodshed in the land the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance.
This is what the Lord says: Administer justice and righteousness. Rescue the victim of robbery from the hand of his oppressor. Don’t exploit or brutalize the foreigner, the fatherless, or the widow. Don’t shed innocent blood in this place.
But know for certain that if you put me to death, you will bring innocent blood on yourselves, on this city, and on its residents, for it is certain the Lord has sent me to speak all these things directly to you.”
But if someone hates his neighbor, lies in ambush for him, attacks him, and strikes him fatally, and flees to one of these cities, the elders of his city must send for him, take him from there, and hand him over to the avenger of blood and he will die. You must not look on him with pity but purge from Israel the guilt of shedding innocent blood, and you will prosper.
Manasseh also shed so much innocent blood that he filled Jerusalem with it from one end to another. This was in addition to his sin that he caused Judah to commit. Consequently, they did what was evil in the Lord’s sight.
They shed innocent blood—
the blood of their sons and daughters
whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan;
so the land became polluted with blood.
The Lord hates six things;
in fact, seven are detestable to Him:
arrogant eyes, a lying tongue,
hands that shed innocent blood,
Their feet run after evil,
and they rush to shed innocent blood.
Their thoughts are sinful thoughts;
ruin and wretchedness are in their paths.
“Stand in the gate of the house of the Lord and there call out this word: Hear the word of the Lord, all you people of Judah who enter through these gates to worship the Lord. “This is what the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel, says: Correct your ways and your deeds, and I will allow you to live in this place. Do not trust deceitful words, chanting: This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord. read more.
Instead, if you really change your ways and your actions, if you act justly toward one another, if you no longer oppress the foreigner, the fatherless, and the widow and no longer shed innocent blood in this place or follow other gods, bringing harm on yourselves, I will allow you to live in this place, the land I gave to your ancestors long ago and forever. But look, you keep trusting in deceitful words that cannot help.
The king said to him, “Do just as he says. Strike him down and bury him in order to remove from me and from my father’s house the blood that Joab shed without just cause. The Lord will bring back his own blood on his head because he struck down two men more righteous and better than he, without my father David’s knowledge. With his sword, Joab murdered Abner son of Ner, commander of Israel’s army, and Amasa son of Jether, commander of Judah’s army. Their blood will come back on Joab’s head and on the head of his descendants forever, but for David, his descendants, his dynasty, and his throne, there will be peace from the Lord forever.”
“If a murder victim is found lying in a field in the land the Lord your God is giving you to possess, and it is not known who killed him, your elders and judges must come out and measure the distance from the victim to the nearby cities. The elders of the city nearest to the victim are to get a young cow that has not been yoked or used for work. read more.
The elders of that city will bring the cow down to a continually flowing stream, to a place not tilled or sown, and they will break its neck there by the stream. Then the priests, the sons of Levi, will come forward, for Yahweh your God has chosen them to serve Him and pronounce blessings in His name, and they are to give a ruling in every dispute and case of assault. All the elders of the city nearest to the victim will wash their hands by the stream over the young cow whose neck has been broken. They will declare, ‘Our hands did not shed this blood; our eyes did not see it. Lord, forgive Your people Israel You redeemed, and do not hold the shedding of innocent blood against them.’ Then they will be absolved of responsibility for bloodshed. You must purge from yourselves the guilt of shedding innocent blood, for you will be doing what is right in the Lord’s sight.
But David answered Rechab and his brother Baanah, sons of Rimmon the Beerothite, “As the Lord lives, the One who has redeemed my life from every distress, when the person told me, ‘Look, Saul is dead,’ he thought he was a bearer of good news, but I seized him and put him to death at Ziklag. That was my reward to him for his news! How much more when wicked men kill a righteous man in his own house on his own bed! So now, should I not require his blood from your hands and wipe you off the earth?”
“If anyone strikes a person with an iron object and death results, he is a murderer; the murderer must be put to death. If a man has in his hand a stone capable of causing death and strikes another person and he dies, the murderer must be put to death. If a man has in his hand a wooden object capable of causing death and strikes another person and he dies, the murderer must be put to death. read more.
The avenger of blood himself is to kill the murderer; when he finds him, he is to kill him. Likewise, if anyone in hatred pushes a person or throws an object at him with malicious intent and he dies, or if in hostility he strikes him with his hand and he dies, the one who struck him must be put to death; he is a murderer. The avenger of blood is to kill the murderer when he finds him. “But if anyone suddenly pushes a person without hostility or throws any object at him without malicious intent or without looking drops a stone that could kill a person and he dies, but he was not his enemy and wasn’t trying to harm him, the assembly is to judge between the slayer and the avenger of blood according to these ordinances. The assembly is to protect the one who kills someone from the hand of the avenger of blood. Then the assembly will return him to the city of refuge he fled to, and he must live there until the death of the high priest who was anointed with the holy oil. “If the one who kills someone ever goes outside the border of the city of refuge he fled to, and the avenger of blood finds him outside the border of his city of refuge and kills him, the avenger will not be guilty of bloodshed, for the one who killed a person was supposed to live in his city of refuge until the death of the high priest. Only after the death of the high priest may the one who has killed a person return to the land he possesses.
Then Judas, His betrayer, seeing that He had been condemned, was full of remorse and returned the 30 pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders. “I have sinned by betraying innocent blood,” he said.
“What’s that to us?” they said. “See to it yourself!”
During Jehoiakim’s reign, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon attacked. Jehoiakim became his vassal for three years, and then he turned and rebelled against him. The Lord sent Chaldean, Aramean, Moabite, and Ammonite raiders against Jehoiakim. He sent them against Judah to destroy it, according to the word of the Lord He had spoken through His servants the prophets. Indeed, this happened to Judah at the Lord’s command to remove them from His sight. It was because of the sins of Manasseh, according to all he had done, read more.
and also because of all the innocent blood he had shed. He had filled Jerusalem with innocent blood, and the Lord would not forgive.
So they called out to the Lord: “Please, Yahweh, don’t let us perish because of this man’s life, and don’t charge us with innocent blood! For You, Yahweh, have done just as You pleased.”
