36 Bible Verses about Innocence, Teaching On

"Behold, I am sending you out like sheep in the midst of wolves. Therefore be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.

Happy [is] a person to whom Yahweh does not impute iniquity and in whose spirit there is not deceit.

For [the report of] your obedience has reached to all; therefore I am rejoicing over you, and I want you to be wise toward what [is] good, but innocent toward what [is] evil.

Do all [things] without grumbling and disputing, in order that you may become blameless and innocent, children of God without fault in the midst of a crooked and perverted generation, among whom you shine as stars in the world,

so that your hearts may be established blameless in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.

Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your spirit and soul and body be kept complete, blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Therefore, dear friends, [because you] are waiting for these [things], make every effort to be found at peace, spotless and unblemished in him.

For I am conscious of nothing against myself, but not by this am I vindicated. But the one who judges me is the Lord.

And {although you were formerly alienated} and enemies in attitude, because of your evil deeds, but now you have been reconciled by {his physical body} through death, to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him,

then you shall hear in heaven and you shall act and you shall judge your servant, to declare the wicked guilty by bringing his way upon his head and {to declare the righteous innocent} by rewarding him according to his righteousness.

You will stay far from a {false charge}, and do not kill [the] innocent and [the] righteous, because I will not declare [the] wicked righteous.

" 'This [is] the regulation of jealousy, when a woman has an affair under her husband and she is defiled, or when a spirit of jealousy comes over a man and he is jealous [of] his wife, he will present the woman {before Yahweh},and the priest will do to her all of this law. The man will go unpunished from guilt, and the woman, she will bear her guilt.'"

"When a legal dispute {takes place} between men and they come near to the court, and [the judges] judge [with respect to] them, then they shall declare the righteous [to be] in the right and they shall condemn the wicked,

He who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the righteous, the two of them [are] both abominations of Yahweh.

Being partial [to] faces of evil [is] not good, [nor] to subvert the righteous at the judgment.

These [sayings] are also for the wise: {Partiality} in judgment is not good. Whoever says to the guilty, "You are righteous," the people will curse him; the nations will abhor him.

O Yahweh, who may reside in your tent? Who may dwell on your holy mountain? He who walks blamelessly and does what is right. He who speaks honestly in his heart. He does not slander with his tongue. He does not harm his friend, nor {bring up} a disgrace against his neighbor.read more.
In his eyes a rejected one [is] contemptible, but he honors those who respect Yahweh. He takes an oath to [his own] injury and does not retract it. He does not lend his money at interest, and does not take a bribe against [the] innocent. He who does these [things] will never be shaken.

And I looked, and behold, the Lamb standing on Mount Zion, and with him one hundred forty-four thousand who had his name and the name of his Father written on their foreheads. And I heard a sound from heaven like the sound of many waters and like the sound of loud thunder, and the sound that I heard [was] like harpists playing on their harps. And they were singing [something] like a new song before the throne and before the four living creatures and the elders, and no one was able to learn the song except the one hundred forty-four thousand who had been bought from the earth.read more.
These are those who have not been defiled with women, for they are virgins. These [are] the ones who follow the Lamb wherever he goes. These were bought from humanity [as] first fruits to God and to the Lamb, and in their mouth a lie was not found; they are blameless.

Crooked is the way of a man and a foreigner, but the pure [is] upright [in] his conduct.

Finally, brothers, whatever [things] are true, whatever [things are] honorable, whatever [things are] right, whatever [things are] pure, whatever [things are] pleasing, whatever [things are] commendable, if [there is] any excellence of character and if anything praiseworthy, think about these [things].

Then if Yahweh your God enlarges your territory [just] as he swore to your ancestors and gives to you all the land that he {promised} to give to your ancestors, [then] {if you diligently observe this entire commandment} that I [am] commanding you {today} by loving Yahweh your God and by going in his ways {at all times}, then you shall add three more cities for yourselves to these three. [Do this] so that innocent blood will not be shed in the midst of your land that Yahweh your God [is] giving to you [as an] inheritance and [thereby] bloodguilt would be on you.

Thus says Yahweh, "Act [with] justice and righteousness, and deliver [the] one who has been seized from the hand of [the] oppressor. And you must not oppress [the] immigrant, [the] orphan, and [the] widow. And you must not shed innocent blood in this place.

Only you must certainly know that if you put me to death, you will bring on yourselves innocent blood, and on this city and on its inhabitants, for {truly} Yahweh sent me to you to speak all these words in your ears."

But if someone hates his neighbor and lies in wait for him and rises up against him {and murders him}, and [the murderer] flees to one of these cities, then the elders of his city shall send and take him from there, and they shall give him into the hand of the avenger of blood, and he shall be put to death. Your eye shall not take pity on him, and you shall purge the guilt of innocent blood from Israel, {so that good will be directed toward you}.

Moreover, Manasseh shed very much innocent blood until he filled Jerusalem {from one end to another}, apart from his sin which he caused Judah to sin by doing evil in the eyes of Yahweh.

and they poured out innocent blood, the blood of their sons and daughters, whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan, and [so] the land was defiled with the blood.

There are six [things] Yahweh hates, and seven [things are] abominations of his soul: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood,

Their feet run to evil, and they hasten to shed innocent blood. Their thoughts [are] thoughts of iniquity; devastation and destruction [are] in their highways.

"Stand in the gate of the house of Yahweh and proclaim there this word, and say, 'Hear the word of Yahweh, all of Judah, [those who] enter through these gates to bow in worship to Yahweh. Thus says Yahweh of hosts, the God of Israel, "Make your ways and your deeds good and let me dwell with you in this place. Do not trust in {the deceitful words}, {saying}, 'The temple of Yahweh, the temple of Yahweh, they [are] the temple of Yahweh.'read more.
For if you truly make your ways and your deeds good, if you truly do justice between a man and his neighbor, you do not oppress [the] alien, [the] orphan, and [the] widow, you do not shed innocent blood in this place, and you do not go after other gods {to your harm}, then I will let you dwell in this place, in the land that I gave to your ancestors {forever and ever}. Look, you [are] relying for yourselves on {deceitful words} without benefiting.

Then the king said to him, "Do as he spoke; fall upon him and bury him, and so you shall remove the innocent blood that Joab shed from on me and from on the house of my father. Yahweh will return his blood on his head, because he fell upon two men, more righteous and better than he, and he killed them with the sword, even though my father did not know it; [namely] Abner son of Ner, commander of the army of Israel, and Amasa son of Jether, commander of the army of Judah. And their blood will return on the head of Joab and on the head of his descendants forever, but for David and his descendants and for his house and his throne, [there] will be peace forever from Yahweh."

"If someone slain is found in the land that Yahweh your God [is] giving to you to take possession of it [and] [is] lying in the field, [and] it is not known who {killed him}, then your elders and your judges shall go out and shall measure [the distance] to the cities that [are] around the slain one. {And then} the nearest city to the slain one, the elders of that city shall take a heifer of the herd that has not been worked with [in the field], that has not pulled a yoke,read more.
and the elders of that city shall bring the heifer down to a {wadi that flows with water all year} and [that] has not been plowed and has not been sown; [then] {there they shall break the neck of the heifer in the wadi}. Then the priests, the descendants of Levi, shall come near, for Yahweh your God has chosen them to bless in the name of Yahweh, and every legal dispute and every [case of] assault will be {subject to their ruling}. And all of the elders of that city nearest to the slain person shall wash their hands over the heifer [with] the broken neck in the wadi. And they shall declare, and they shall say, 'Our hands did not shed this blood, and our eyes did not see [what was done]. Forgive your people, Israel, whom you redeemed, Yahweh, and [do] not {allow} the guilt of innocent blood in the midst of your people Israel, and let them be forgiven [with regard to] blood.' And [so] you shall purge the innocent blood from your midst, because you must do the right thing in the eyes of Yahweh.

Then David answered Recab and Baanah his brother, the sons of Rimmon the Beerothite, and he said to them, "{As Yahweh lives}, who redeemed my soul from all trouble, when the [one] who told me, "Look, Saul [is] dead," {thought that he [was] bringing good news}, I seized him and killed him at Ziklag, which [was] as my giving the news [back] to him. {How much more} when wicked men kill a righteous man in his house, on his bed! So then, shall I not seek his lifeblood from your hand, so that I may destroy you from the earth?"

" 'But if he hit him with an object of iron, so that he dies, the killer must surely be put to death. And if he hit him with a stone in the hand, by which he will die, and he does die, he [is] a killer; the killer must surely be put to death. Or if he hit him with a wooden object, by which he will die, and he does die, he [is] a killer; the killer must surely be put to death.read more.
The blood avenger himself will put the killer to death; he must put him to death when meeting him. If he shoves him in hatred, or he throws something at him with intention, and he dies, or if he hits him in hostility with his hand, and he dies, the one that struck him will put to death the killer when meeting him. " 'Or if in an instant he shoved him, not in hostility, or threw something at him without intention, or with any stone, without seeing it dropped on him so that he dies, while [he was] not seeking his injury, then the community will judge between the striker and between the blood avenger according to these ordinances. The community will deliver the killer from the hand of the blood avenger, and the community will restore him to the city of his refuge to which he fled; and he will live there in it until the death of the high priest who was anointed with holy oil. But if the killer surely goes out of the territory of the city of his refuge to which he fled, and the blood avenger finds him outside the territory of the city of his refuge, and the blood avenger kills the killer, {he will not be guilty of blood} because he must live in the city of his refuge until the death of the high priest. But after the death of the high priest the killer will return to the land of his property.

Then [when] Judas, the one who had betrayed him, saw that he had been condemned, he regretted [what he had done] [and] returned the thirty silver coins to the chief priests and elders, saying, "I have sinned [by] betraying innocent blood!" But they said, "What [is that] to us? You see to [it]!"

In his days, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came up [because] Jehoiakim had become his servant [for] three years; then he turned and rebelled against him. So Yahweh sent against him raiding bands of Chaldeans, raiding bands of Aram, raiding bands of Moab, and raiding bands of the {Ammonites}. He had sent them against Judah to destroy it, according to the word of Yahweh that he had spoken by the hand of his servants the prophets. Surely, it was {on the command} of Yahweh against Judah to remove them from his sight because of the sins of Manasseh, according to all that he had done.read more.
Also, [for] the blood of the innocent that he had shed--and he filled Jerusalem [with] innocent blood--Yahweh was not willing to forgive.

So they cried out to Yahweh, and they said, "O Yahweh! Please do not let us perish because of this man's life, and {do not make us guilty of innocent blood}, because you, O Yahweh, did what you wanted."