Isaiah 1:23

³Their hands are on that which is evil to do it diligently. The ruler and judge ask for a bribe. The powerful man dictates the evil desire of his soul. Thus they conspire together.

⁸“You shall take no bribe, for a bribe blinds those who have sight and perverts the words of the righteous.

¹⁰Don’t oppress the widow, the fatherless, the foreigner, nor the poor; and let none of you devise evil against his brother in your heart.’

²saying, “There was a judge in a certain city who didn’t fear God and didn’t respect man. ³A widow was in that city, and she often came to him, saying, ‘Defend me from my adversary!’ ⁴He wouldn’t for a while; but afterward he said to himself, ‘Though I neither fear God nor respect man, ⁵yet because this widow bothers me, I will defend her, or else she will wear me out by her continual coming.’”

⁵In the morning, their rulers, elders, and scribes were gathered together in Jerusalem. ⁶Annas the high priest was there, with Caiaphas, John, Alexander, and as many as were relatives of the high priest. ⁷When they had stood Peter and John in the middle of them, they inquired, “By what power, or in what name, have you done this?”

⁸Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, “You rulers of the people and elders of Israel, ⁹if we are examined today concerning a good deed done to a crippled man, by what means this man has been healed, ¹⁰may it be known to you all, and to all the people of Israel, that in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead, this man stands here before you whole in him. ¹¹He is ‘the stone which was regarded as worthless by you, the builders, which has become the head of the corner.’

¹Woe to those who decree unrighteous decrees, and to the writers who write oppressive decrees ²to deprive the needy of justice, and to rob the poor among my people of their rights, that widows may be their plunder, and that they may make the fatherless their prey!

¹⁴The LORD will enter into judgment with the elders of his people and their leaders: “It is you who have eaten up the vineyard. The plunder of the poor is in your houses.

⁵I will come near to you to judgment. I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, against the adulterers, against the perjurers, and against those who oppress the hireling in his wages, the widow, and the fatherless, and who deprive the foreigner of justice, and don’t fear me,” says the LORD of Armies.

²⁸They have grown fat. They shine; yes, they excel in deeds of wickedness. They don’t plead the cause, the cause of the fatherless, that they may prosper; and they don’t defend the rights of the needy.

²⁹“Shouldn’t I punish for these things?” says the LORD. “Shouldn’t my soul be avenged on such a nation as this?

⁴⁶saying to them, “It is written, ‘My house is a house of prayer,’ but you have made it a ‘den of robbers’!”