Micah - The Old Testament

¹ Then I said, 'Kindly listen, you leaders of the House of Jacob, you princes of the House of Israel. Surely you are the ones who ought to know what is right,

² and yet you hate what is good and love what is evil, skinning people alive, pulling the flesh off their bones,

³ eating my people's flesh, stripping off their skin, breaking up their bones, chopping them up small like flesh for the pot, like meat in the stew-pan?'

⁴ Then they will call to Yahweh, but he will not answer them. When the time comes he will hide his face from them because of the crimes they have committed.

⁵ Yahweh says this against the prophets who lead my people astray: So long as they have something to eat they cry 'Peace'. But on anyone who puts nothing into their mouths they declare war.

⁶ And so, for you, night will be without vision and for you the darkness without divination. The sun will set for the prophets, the daylight will go black above them.

⁷ Then the seers will be covered with shame, the diviners with confusion; they will all put their hands over their mouths because there is no answer from God.

⁸ Not so with me, I am full of strength (full of Yahweh's spirit), of the sense of right, of energy to accuse Jacob of his crime and Israel of his sin.

⁹ Kindly listen to this, you leaders of the House of Jacob, you princes of the House of Israel, who detest justice, wresting it from its honest course,

¹⁰ who build Zion with blood, and Jerusalem with iniquity!

¹¹ Her leaders give verdicts for presents, her priests take a fee for their rulings, her prophets divine for money and yet they rely on Yahweh! 'Isn't Yahweh among us?' they say, 'No disaster is going to overtake us.'

¹² That is why, thanks to you, Zion will become ploughland, Jerusalem a heap of rubble and the Temple Mount a wooded height.