Micah 3
English Standard Version
Rulers and Prophets Denounced
3 And I said:
(A)Hear, you heads of Jacob
and rulers of the house of Israel!
(B)Is it not for you to know justice?—
2 you (C)who hate the good and love the evil,
(D)who tear the skin from off my people[a]
and their flesh from off their bones,
3 (E)who eat the flesh of my people,
and flay their skin from off them,
and break their bones in pieces
and chop them up like meat in a pot,
like flesh in a cauldron.
4 (F)Then they will cry to the Lord,
but he will not answer them;
(G)he will hide his face from them at that time,
because they have made their deeds evil.
5 Thus says the Lord concerning (H)the prophets
who lead my people astray,
(I)who cry “Peace”
when they have something to eat,
but declare war against him
who puts nothing into their mouths.
6 Therefore (J)it shall be night to you, without vision,
and darkness to you, without divination.
(K)The sun shall go down on the prophets,
and the day shall be black over them;
7 (L)the seers shall be disgraced,
and the diviners put to shame;
(M)they shall all cover their lips,
for (N)there is no answer from God.
8 But as for me, (O)I am filled with power,
with the Spirit of the Lord,
and with justice and might,
to declare to Jacob (P)his transgression
and to Israel his sin.
9 (Q)Hear this, you heads of the house of Jacob
and rulers of the house of Israel,
(R)who detest justice
and make crooked all that is straight,
10 (S)who build Zion with blood
and Jerusalem with iniquity.
11 (T)Its heads give judgment for a bribe;
(U)its priests teach for a price;
(V)its prophets practice divination for money;
(W)yet they lean on the Lord and (X)say,
“Is not the Lord in the midst of us?
(Y)No disaster shall come upon us.”
12 Therefore because of you
(Z)Zion shall be plowed as a field;
Jerusalem (AA)shall become a heap of ruins,
and (AB)the mountain of the house (AC)a wooded height.
Footnotes
- Micah 3:2 Hebrew from off them
Micah 3
The Message
Haters of Good, Lovers of Evil
3 1-3 Then I said:
“Listen, leaders of Jacob, leaders of Israel:
Don’t you know anything of justice?
Haters of good, lovers of evil:
Isn’t justice in your job description?
But you skin my people alive.
You rip the meat off their bones.
You break up the bones, chop the meat,
and throw it in a pot for cannibal stew.”
4 The time’s coming, though, when these same leaders
will cry out for help to God, but he won’t listen.
He’ll turn his face the other way
because of their history of evil.
* * *
5-7 Here is God’s Message to the prophets,
the preachers who lie to my people:
“For as long as they’re well paid and well fed,
the prophets preach, ‘Isn’t life wonderful! Peace to all!’
But if you don’t pay up and jump on their bandwagon,
their ‘God bless you’ turns into ‘God damn you.’
Therefore, you’re going blind. You’ll see nothing.
You’ll live in deep shadows and know nothing.
The sun has set on the prophets.
They’ve had their day; from now on it’s night.
Visionaries will be confused,
experts will be all mixed up.
They’ll hide behind their reputations and make lame excuses
to cover up their God-ignorance.”
* * *
8 But me—I’m filled with God’s power,
filled with God’s Spirit of justice and strength,
Ready to confront Jacob’s crime
and Israel’s sin.
9-12 The leaders of Jacob and
the leaders of Israel are
Leaders contemptuous of justice,
who twist and distort right living,
Leaders who build Zion by killing people,
who expand Jerusalem by committing crimes.
Judges sell verdicts to the highest bidder,
priests mass-market their teaching,
prophets preach for high fees,
All the while posturing and pretending
dependence on God:
“We’ve got God on our side.
He’ll protect us from disaster.”
Because of people like you,
Zion will be turned back into farmland,
Jerusalem end up as a pile of rubble,
and instead of the Temple on the mountain,
a few scraggly scrub pines.
The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.
Copyright © 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson