Micah 3:1-12

Then I said, “Listen, you leaders of the tribes of Jacob, you princes among the people of Israel. Is it not your duty to see that justice prevails? Yet you hate what is good and love what is evil. You skin my people alive, pulling the flesh off their bones. Like butchers, you tear the skin off my people. You break their bones and chop them up like stew meat for the pot. Like wild animals, you rip the flesh off their bones and devour my people. Then you will cry out to him, but he will not answer your prayers. YAHWEH will hide his face from you rulers because you have totally misused your power.” Here is what YAHWEH says against the prophets who lead my people so far from the truth: “So long as they pay you, you prophesy peace. But if they don’t, you threaten war. So, darkness will close in around you, and you will receive no prophetic visions. A shroud of darkness will bring your predictions to an end. The sun will set for the prophets, and the daylight will go dark for them. Then shame will silence the seers. Confusion will cover those who predict the future. Humiliated, they will all put their hands over their mouths because there is no word from God.” Not so with me, for I am full of power! YAHWEH’s breath fills me with a sense of justice and courage to expose the rebellion of Jacob’s tribes and the sin of the people of Israel. Now hear this, you leaders of the tribes of Jacob, you princes of the people of Israel: You hate justice and distort right into wrong. Indeed, you build up Zion and Jerusalem but upon an immoral foundation of murder and malice. Her judges render verdicts for the highest bidder, her priests preach for a price, her prophets prophesy for a fee, and yet they pretend to depend upon YAHWEH. “Isn’t YAHWEH on our side?” they say. “How could any disaster come upon us?” That is why, thanks to you, Zion will return to farmland, Jerusalem to a pile of rubble, and the Temple Mount will be deserted— overgrown with thickets.