'Iniquity' in the Bible
“For though you wash yourself with lyeAnd use much soap,The stain of your guilt is [still] before Me [and you are soiled and dirty],” says the Lord God.
‘Only understand fully and acknowledge your wickedness and guilt,That you have rebelled (transgressed) against the Lord your GodAnd have scattered your favors among strangers under every green tree,And you have not obeyed My voice,’ says the Lord.
“Everyone deceives and mocks his neighborAnd does not speak the truth.They have taught their tongue to speak lies;They exhaust themselves with sin and cruelty.
“And if you [wonder and] say in your heart,‘Why have these things happened to me?’It is because of the greatness and nature of your sinThat your skirts have been pulled away [subjecting you to public disgrace]And [like a barefoot slave] your heels have been wounded.
Thus says the Lord to this people [Judah], “In the manner and to the degree [already pointed out] they have loved to wander; they have not restrained their feet. Therefore the Lord does not accept them; He will now remember [in detail] their wickedness and punish them for their sins.”
We know and acknowledge, O Lord,Our wickedness and the iniquity of our fathers; for we have sinned against You.
“Now when you tell these people all these words and they ask you, ‘Why has the Lord decreed all this great tragedy against us? And what is our iniquity, what is the sin which we have committed against the Lord our God?’
For My eyes are on all their ways; they are not hidden from My face, nor is their wickedness concealed from My eyes.
I will first doubly repay and punish them for their wickedness and their sin [before I return them to their land], because they have profaned My land; they have filled My inheritance with the carcasses of their detestable idols and with their abominations.”
Yet You, O Lord, knowAll their deadly plotting against me;Do not forgive their wickednessOr blot out their sin from Your sight.But let them be overthrown before You;Deal with them in the time of Your anger.
‘Then when seventy years are completed, I will punish the king of Babylon and that nation, the land of the Chaldeans (Babylonia),’ says the Lord, ‘for their wickedness, and will make the land [of the Chaldeans] a perpetual waste.
But everyone will die [only] for his own wickedness; every man who eats sour grapes—his [own] teeth shall be set on edge.
And each man will no longer teach his neighbor and his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they will all know Me [through personal experience], from the least of them to the greatest,” says the Lord. “For I will forgive their wickedness, and I will no longer remember their sin.”
You who show lovingkindness to thousands, but repay the wickedness (sin, guilt) of the fathers into the bosom of their children after them [that is, calling the children to account for the sins of their fathers], O great and mighty God; the Lord of hosts is His name;
I will cleanse them from all their wickedness (guilt) by which they have sinned against Me, and I will pardon (forgive) all their sins by which they rebelled against Me.
It may be that the house of Judah will hear all the disaster which I plan to bring on them, so that each one will turn from his evil way, that I may forgive their wickedness and their sin.”
I will also punish him and his descendants and his servants for their wickedness, and I will bring on them and the inhabitants of Jerusalem and the men of Judah all the destruction that I have declared against them—but they would not listen.”’”
In those days and at that time,’ says the Lord, ‘a search will be made for the wickedness of Israel, but there will be none and for the sins of Judah, but none will be found, for I will pardon those whom I leave as a remnant.’