Micah 3

¹ Then I said: Listen now, you princes of the House of Jacob, rulers of the House of Israel. Are you not the ones who should know what is right,

² you, enemies of good and friends of evil?

³ When they have devoured the flesh of my people and torn off their skin and crushed their bones; when they have shredded them like flesh in a pot and like meat in a cauldron,

⁴ then they will cry out to Yahweh. But he will not answer them. He will hide his face at that time because of all 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 the night will come to you: an end of vision; darkness for you: an end of divination. The sun will set for the prophets, the day will go black for them.

⁷ Then the seers will be covered with shame, the diviners with confusion; they will all cover their lips, because no answer comes from God.

⁸ Not so with me, I am full of strength (of the breath of Yahweh), of justice and courage to declare Jacob’s crime to his face and Israel’s to his.

⁹ Now listen to this, you princes of the House of Jacob, rulers of the House of Israel, you who loathe justice and pervert all that is right,

¹⁰ you who build Zion with blood, Jerusalem with crime.

¹¹ Her princes pronounce their verdict for bribes, her priests take a fee for their rulings, her prophets make divinations for money. And yet they rely on Yahweh. They say, ‘Is not Yahweh in our midst? No evil is going to overtake us.’

¹² Because of this, since the fault is yours, Zion will become ploughland, Jerusalem a heap of rubble, and the mountain of the Temple a wooded height.