If you did this, you would defile the land where you are living. Murder defiles the land, and except by the death of the murderer there is no way to perform the ritual of purification for the land where someone has been murdered.

Do not defile the land where you are living, because I am the LORD and I live among the people of Israel."

They killed those innocent children, and the land was defiled by those murders.

The people have defiled the earth by breaking God's laws and by violating the covenant he made to last forever.

I brought them into a fertile land, to enjoy its harvests and its other good things. But instead they ruined my land; they defiled the country I had given them.

I will make them pay double for their sin and wickedness, because they have defiled my land with idols that are as lifeless as corpses, and have filled it with their false gods."

"Mortal man," he said, "when the Israelites were living in their land, they defiled it by the way they lived and acted. I regarded their behavior as being as ritually unclean as a woman is during her monthly period.

I let them feel the force of my anger because of the murders they had committed in the land and because of the idols by which they had defiled it.

For we know that up to the present time all of creation groans with pain, like the pain of childbirth.

then I will punish them for their sins; I will make them suffer for their wrongs.

The LORD is coming from his heavenly dwelling place to punish the people of the earth for their sins. The murders that were secretly committed on the earth will be revealed, and the ground will no longer hide those who have been killed.

Shouldn't I punish them for these things and take revenge on a nation such as this?

"But I, the LORD, will punish them for these things; I will take revenge on this nation.

Will I not punish them for these things? Will I not take revenge on a nation like this? I, the LORD, have spoken."

The LORD says about these people, "They love to run away from me, and they will not control themselves. So I am not pleased with them. I will remember the wrongs they have done and punish them because of their sins."

This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says about the rulers who were supposed to take care of his people: "You have not taken care of my people; you have scattered them and driven them away. Now I am going to punish you for the evil you have done.

I will punish her for the times that she forgot me, when she burned incense to Baal and put on her jewelry to go chasing after her lovers. The LORD has spoken.

They offer sacrifices to me and eat the meat of the sacrifices. But I, the LORD, am not pleased with them, and now I will remember their sin and punish them for it; I will send them back to Egypt!

They are hopelessly evil in what they do, just as they were at Gibeah. God will remember their sin and punish them for it.

and then the land will not reject you, as it rejected the pagans who lived there before you.

The LORD said, "Keep all my laws and commands, so that you will not be rejected by the land of Canaan, into which I am bringing you.