¹And I said,

“Hear, I beseech you, O heads of Jacob,

And leaders of the house of Israel.

Is it not incumbent on you to know judgment?

²You are haters of good

And lovers of evil.

You flay their skin off them

And remove their flesh off their bones.”

³And what they eat is the flesh of my people,

And they flay their skin off them

And break their bones,

And they chop them up for cooking in a pot,

Or as meat for stewing in a cauldron.

⁴Then they will cry out to the Lord,

But he will not answer them,

And he will hide his face from them at that time,

According to how they have done wrong in their works.

⁵This is what the Lord says

Concerning the prophets who are leading my people astray,

Biting with their teeth,

And who call, “Peace”,

(And whoever does not deliver according to their speech,

They prepare a holy war against him):

⁶“Therefore you will have a night blackout from visions,

And darkness from divining,

And the sun will set on the prophets,

And daylight will grow dim on them.

⁷And the seers will be ashamed,

And the diviners will blush,

And they will all cover their mouth,

For there will be no answer from God.”

⁸But truly, I am full of power

With the spirit of the Lord,

And of judgment and of courage

To tell Jacob of his transgression

And Israel of his sin.

⁹Hear this, I beseech you,

You heads of the house of Jacob,

And you leaders of the house of Israel,

Who exercise judgment abominably

And pervert everything that is upright,

¹⁰And you who build Zion with blood,

And Jerusalem with iniquity.

¹¹Its leaders judge by bribery,

And its priests teach for a fee,

And its prophets divine for money.

Yet they lean on the Lord, saying,

“Is not the Lord among us?

No evil shall come upon us.”

¹²Therefore, on your account,

Zion will be ploughed to a field,

And Jerusalem will become ruins,

And the Temple Mount will become woodland heights.