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No, in your hearts you devise wrongs;
    your hands deal out violence on earth.(A)

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20 Can wicked rulers be allied with you,
    those who contrive mischief by statute?(A)

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10 Woe to those who make iniquitous decrees,
    who write oppressive statutes,(A)

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47 So the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the council and said, “What are we to do? This man is performing many signs.(A) 48 If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place[a] and our nation.” 49 But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, “You know nothing at all!(B) 50 You do not understand that it is better for you to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed.”(C) 51 He did not say this on his own, but being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus was about to die for the nation, 52 and not for the nation only, but to gather into one the dispersed children of God. 53 So from that day on they planned to put him to death.(D)

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Footnotes

  1. 11.48 Or our temple; Gk our place

15 Now we count the arrogant happy; evildoers not only prosper, but when they put God to the test they escape.”(A)

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Hear this, you rulers of the house of Jacob
    and chiefs of the house of Israel,
who abhor justice
    and pervert all equity,(A)
10 who build Zion with blood
    and Jerusalem with wrong!(B)
11 Its rulers give judgment for a bribe;
    its priests teach for a price;
    its prophets give oracles for money;
yet they lean upon the Lord and say,
    “Surely the Lord is with us!
    No harm shall come upon us.”(C)
12 Therefore because of you
    Zion shall be plowed as a field;
Jerusalem shall become a heap of ruins,
    and the mountain of the temple a wooded height.(D)

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Wicked Rulers and Prophets

And I said:
Listen, you heads of Jacob
    and rulers of the house of Israel!
Should you not know justice?—(A)
    you who hate the good and love the evil,
who tear the skin off my people[a]
    and the flesh off their bones,(B)
who eat the flesh of my people,
    flay their skin off them,
break their bones in pieces,
    and chop them up like meat[b] in a kettle,
    like flesh in a caldron.(C)

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Footnotes

  1. 3.2 Heb from them
  2. 3.3 Gk: Heb as

27 Its officials within it are like wolves tearing the prey, shedding blood, destroying lives to get dishonest gain.(A)

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12 In you, they take bribes to shed blood; you take both advance interest and accrued interest and make gain of your neighbors by extortion, and you have forgotten me, says the Lord God.(A)

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16 He judged the cause of the poor and needy;
    then it was well.
Is not this to know me?
    says the Lord.(A)
17 But your eyes and heart
    are only on your dishonest gain,
for shedding innocent blood,
    and for practicing oppression and violence.(B)

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No one brings suit justly;
    no one goes to law honestly;
they rely on empty pleas; they speak lies,
    conceiving mischief and bearing iniquity.(A)
They hatch adders’ eggs
    and weave the spider’s web;
whoever eats their eggs dies,
    and the crushed egg hatches out a viper.(B)
Their webs cannot serve as clothing;
    they cannot cover themselves with what they make.
Their works are works of iniquity,
    and deeds of violence are in their hands.(C)

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The way of the righteous is level;
    straight is the path of the righteous that you clear.(A)

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Judgment and the Future Belong to God

16 Moreover, I saw under the sun that, in the place of justice, wickedness was there, and in the place of righteousness, wickedness was there as well.

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11 If they plan evil against you,
    if they devise mischief, they will not succeed.(A)

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