³ The evil-doers are strange from the first; from the hour of their birth they go out of the true way, saying false words.

⁵ Truly, I was formed in evil, and in sin did my mother give me birth.

⁸ Truly you had no word of them, no knowledge of them; no news of them in the past had come to your ears; because I saw how false was your behaviour, and that your heart was turned against me from your earliest days.

¹⁴ What is man, that he may be clean? and how may the son of woman be upright?

¹⁰ I was in your hands even before my birth; you are my God from the time when I was in my mother's body.

¹⁵ Foolish ways are deep-seated in the heart of a child, but the rod of punishment will send them far from him.

³ Give ear to me, O family of Jacob, and all the rest of the people of Israel, who have been supported by me from their birth, and have been my care from their earliest days:

³ Among whom we all at one time were living in the pleasures of our flesh, giving way to the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and the punishment of God was waiting for us even as for the rest.