Rulers and Prophets Condemned
1 I said,
“Please listen, you heads of Jacob
and rulers of the house of Israel.
Should you not know justice?
2 You who hate good and love evil,
who tear off their skin,
and their flesh from their bones,
3 who also eat the flesh of my people,
and peel their skin off of them,
and break their bones,
and chop them in pieces, as if for cooking,
and as meat in the cooking pot.
4 Then they will cry to the Lord,
but he will not answer them.
Yes, he will hide his face from them at that time,
because of their evil deeds.”
5 The Lord says concerning the prophets
who lead my people astray,
for those who put food in their mouths,
they proclaim, “Peace!”
and whoever does not provide food for their mouths,
they declare war against him:
6 “Therefore night is over you, with no vision,
and it is dark to you, without divination;
and the sun will go down on the prophets,
and the day will be black over them.
7 The seers shall be ashamed
and the diviners humiliated.
Yes, they shall all cover their lips,
for there is no answer from God.”
8 But as for me, I am full of the Spirit of the Lord’s power
and of judgment and of might,
to declare to Jacob his disobedience
and to Israel his sin.
9 Please listen to this, you heads of the house of Jacob
and rulers of the house of Israel,
who abhor justice
and pervert all equity.
10 They build up Zion with blood
and Jerusalem with iniquity.
11 Her leaders judge for bribes,
and her priests teach for a price,
and her prophets tell fortunes for money,
yet they lean on the Lord, and say,
“Isn’t the Lord among us?
No disaster will come upon us.”
12 Therefore Zion, for your sake, will be plowed like a field,
and Jerusalem will become heaps of rubble,
and the mountain of the temple like the high places of a forest.