Leaders and Prophets Judged

¹Then I said:

Listen now, heads of Jacob,

and rulers of the house of Israel.

Should you not know justice?

²You who hate good and love evil,

who tear the skin from My people

and the flesh from their bones;

³you who have eaten the flesh of My people,[#Ps 14:4]

and have flayed their skin from them,

and broken their bones in pieces;

who have chopped them up like meat in the pot,

and like flesh in the cauldron.

⁴Then they will cry out to the Lord ,

but He will not answer them;

He will hide His face from them at that time,

because they have wrought evil deeds.

⁵Thus says the Lord :

Regarding the prophets

who mislead My people —

the ones who have something to eat

proclaim “Peace,”

but if one does not feed them,

then they prepare for war against him.

⁶Therefore you will have night without vision,

and you will have darkness without divination;

the sun will set upon the prophets,

and black upon them will be the day.

⁷The seers will be shamed

and the diviners disgraced,

and they will all cover their beards,

for there is no answer from God.

⁸But as for me, I am filled with power,

with the Spirit of the Lord ,

and with justice and might,

to declare to Jacob his transgression

and to Israel his sin.

⁹Please hear this, heads of the house of Jacob

and rulers of the house of Israel,

who detest justice

and warp all that is straight,

¹⁰who build Zion with bloodguilt

and Jerusalem with wickedness.

¹¹Her leaders judge for a bribe,

her priests teach for a price,

and her prophets practice divination for money.

Yet upon the Lord they lean, saying,

“Is not the Lord in our midst?

Evil will not come upon us.”

¹²Therefore, because of you,

Zion will be plowed like a field,

Jerusalem will be mounds of ruins,

and the mountain of the house will become wooded heights.