Ezra 9:7

9:7 From the days of our fathers until this very day our guilt has been great. Because of our iniquities we, along with our kings and ¹  priests, have been delivered over by the local kings ²  to sword, captivity, plunder, and embarrassment – right up to the present time.

Psalms 106:6

106:6 We have sinned like ³  our ancestors; ⁴ 

we have done wrong, we have done evil.

Jeremiah 13:23

13:23 But there is little hope for you ever doing good,

you who are so accustomed to doing evil.

Can an Ethiopian ⁵  change the color of his skin?

Can a leopard remove its spots? ⁶ 

Daniel 9:16

9:16 O Lord, according to all your justice, ⁷  please turn your raging anger ⁸  away from your city Jerusalem, your holy mountain. For due to our sins and the iniquities of our ancestors, Jerusalem and your people are mocked by all our neighbors.

¹ tc The MT lacks “and” here, but see the LXX and Vulgate.

² tn Heb “the kings of the lands.”

³ tn Heb “with.”

⁴ tn Heb “fathers” (also in v. 7).

⁵ tn This is a common proverb in English coming from this biblical passage. For cultures where it is not proverbial perhaps it would be better to translate “Can black people change the color of their skin?” Strictly speaking these are “Cushites” inhabitants of a region along the upper Nile south of Egypt. The Greek text is responsible for the identification with Ethiopia. The term in Greek is actually a epithet = “burnt face.”

⁶ tn Heb “Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots? [Then] you also will be able to do good who are accustomed to do evil.” The English sentence has been restructured and rephrased in an attempt to produce some of the same rhetorical force the Hebrew original has in this context.

⁷ tn Or “righteousness.”

⁸ tn Heb “your anger and your rage.” The synonyms are joined here to emphasize the degree of God’s anger. This is best expressed in English by making one of the terms adjectival (cf. NLT “your furious anger”; CEV “terribly angry”).