Rulers Who Oppress the People

1 I said, “Listen, leaders of Jacob and rulers of Israel’s house! Shouldn’t you understand justice? 2 You hate doing good and love doing evil. You⁠a seize My people’s possessions and take away their precious wealth. 3 You plunder My people’s possessions and take away their precious wealth, using up whatever remains. You divide them again, like someone breaking limbs into a pot, pieces into a cauldron.

4 “Then they will pray before the Lord, but He will not accept their prayer. At that time He will⁠b withdraw His Shekinah from them, because they have acted wickedly.”

False Prophets

5 The Lord says this about the false prophets who mislead My people. For someone who feeds them a feast of meat, they prophesy peace. Against someone who does not feed them, they prepare war.

6 So you will be ashamed to prophesy and⁠c humiliated to teach. Trouble like darkness will cover the false prophets, and their time will grow dark.

7 The false prophets will be ashamed, and the teachers humiliated. All will cover their upper lips like mourners, for they have no spirit of prophecy from the Lord.

8 But I am filled with the strength of the prophetic spirit from the Lord, with true judgment and courage, to tell Jacob his offenses and Israel his sins.

Judgment on Jerusalem

9 Listen to this, leaders of Jacob’s house and rulers of Israel’s house! You corrupt the ways of justice and twist everything that is right. 10 You build⁠d your houses in Zion through bloodshed, and Jerusalem through deceit.

11 Her leaders judge for bribes, her priests instruct for payment, and her prophets teach for silver. Yet they rely on the Lord’s Memra, saying, “Isn’t the Lord’s Shekinah among us? No disaster will come upon us,” they say.

12 So because of your sins Zion will be plowed like a field. Jerusalem will become heaps of rubble, and the mountain of the sanctuary a wooded thicket.