Micah 3

¹A Psalm of Asaph. God presides in the divine assembly; He renders judgment among the gods:

²“How long will you judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked? Selah

¹⁰Hear the word of the Lord, you rulers of Sodom; listen to the instruction of our God, you people of Gomorrah!

⁴Then I said, “They are only the poor; they have played the fool, for they do not know the way of the Lord, the justice of their God.

⁵I will go to the powerful and speak to them. Surely they know the way of the Lord, the justice of their God.” But they too, with one accord, had broken the yoke and torn off the chains.

¹“Hear this, O priests! Take heed, O house of Israel! Give ear, O royal house! For this judgment is against you because you have been a snare at Mizpah, a net spread out on Tabor.

⁵I say this to your shame. Is there really no one among you wise enough to arbitrate between his brothers?

⁹Now hear this, O leaders of the house of Jacob and rulers of the house of Israel, who despise justice and pervert all that is right,

¹⁰who build Zion with bloodshed and Jerusalem with iniquity.

²⁷Her officials within her are like wolves tearing their prey, shedding blood, and destroying lives for dishonest gain.

⁴Will the workers of iniquity never learn? They devour my people like bread; they refuse to call upon God.

⁴Those who forsake the law praise the wicked, but those who keep the law resist them.

²⁰When Elijah arrived, Ahab said to him, “So you have found me out, my enemy.” He replied, “I have found you out because you have sold yourself to do evil in the sight of the Lord.

²Jehu son of Hanani the seer went out to confront him and said to King Jehoshaphat, “Should you help the wicked and love those who hate the Lord? Because of this, the wrath of the Lord is upon you.

⁶So the king of Israel assembled the prophets, about four hundred men, and asked them, “Should I go to war against Ramoth-gilead, or should I refrain?” “Go up,” they replied, “and the Lord will deliver it into the hand of the king.”

⁷But Jehoshaphat asked, “Is there not still a prophet of the Lord here of whom we can inquire?”

⁴Will the workers of iniquity never learn? They devour my people like bread; they refuse to call upon the Lord.

³They are saying, ‘Is not the time near to build houses? The city is the cooking pot, and we are the meat.’

⁶You have multiplied those you killed in this city and filled its streets with the dead.

⁷Therefore this is what the Lord God says: The slain you have laid within this city are the meat, and the city is the pot; but I will remove you from it.

³Her princes are roaring lions; her judges are evening wolves, leaving nothing for the morning.

¹⁵When you spread out your hands in prayer, I will hide My eyes from you; even though you multiply your prayers, I will not listen. Your hands are covered with blood.

²⁸Then they will call on me, but I will not answer; they will earnestly seek me, but will not find me.

¹⁸Therefore I will respond with wrath. I will not look on them with pity, nor will I spare them. Although they shout loudly in My ears, I will not listen to them.”

⁴¹They cried for help, but there was no one to save them—to the Lord, but He did not answer.

¹⁹When the Lord saw this, He rejected them, provoked to anger by His sons and daughters.

²⁰He said: “I will hide My face from them; I will see what will be their end. For they are a perverse generation—children of unfaithfulness.

²²Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?’

¹⁴“The prophets are prophesying lies in My name,” replied the Lord. “I did not send them or appoint them or speak to them. They are prophesying to you a false vision, a worthless divination, the futility and delusion of their own minds.

¹⁵Therefore this is what the Lord says about the prophets who prophesy in My name: I did not send them, yet they say, ‘No sword or famine will touch this land.’ By sword and famine these very prophets will meet their end!

¹⁴They dress the wound of My people with very little care, saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace at all.

²⁵The conspiracy of the princes in her midst is like a roaring lion tearing its prey. They devour the people, seize the treasures and precious things, and multiply the widows within her.

²⁶Her priests do violence to My law and profane My holy things. They make no distinction between the holy and the common, and they fail to distinguish between the clean and the unclean. They disregard My Sabbaths, so that I am profaned among them.

¹⁰Because they have led My people astray, saying, ‘Peace,’ when there is no peace, and whitewashing any flimsy wall that is built,

¹¹tell those whitewashing the wall that it will fall. Rain will come in torrents, I will send hailstones plunging down, and a windstorm will burst forth.

³²“Indeed,” declares the Lord, “I am against those who prophesy false dreams and retell them to lead My people astray with their reckless lies. It was not I who sent them or commanded them, and they are of no benefit at all to these people,” declares the Lord.

¹⁵The head is the elder and honorable man, and the tail is the prophet who teaches lies.

¹⁶For those who guide this people mislead them, and those they mislead are swallowed up.

²⁰To the law and to the testimony! If they do not speak according to this word, they have no light of dawn.

²¹They will roam the land, dejected and hungry. When they are famished, they will become enraged; and looking upward, they will curse their king and their God.

¹⁰For the Lord has poured out on you a spirit of deep sleep. He has shut your eyes, O prophets; He has covered your heads, O seers.

⁹And in that day, declares the Lord God, I will make the sun go down at noon, and I will darken the earth in the daytime.

¹⁰I will turn your feasts into mourning and all your songs into lamentation. I will cause everyone to wear sackcloth and every head to be shaved. I will make it like a time of mourning for an only son, and its outcome like a bitter day.

¹⁰Like the blind, we feel our way along the wall, groping like those without eyes. We stumble at midday as in the twilight; among the vigorous we are like the dead.

¹⁶Give glory to the Lord your God before He brings darkness, before your feet stumble on the dusky mountains. You wait for light, but He turns it into deep gloom and thick darkness.

²And on that day, declares the Lord of Hosts, I will erase the names of the idols from the land, and they will no longer be remembered. I will also remove the prophets and the spirit of impurity from the land.

³And if anyone still prophesies, his father and mother who bore him will say to him, ‘You shall not remain alive, because you have spoken falsely in the name of the Lord.’ When he prophesies, his father and mother who bore him will pierce him through.

²⁵who foils the signs of false prophets and makes fools of diviners, who confounds the wise and turns their knowledge into nonsense,

⁴And on that day every prophet who prophesies will be ashamed of his vision, and he will not put on a hairy cloak in order to deceive.

⁶He inquired of the Lord, but the Lord did not answer him by dreams or Urim or prophets.

¹¹Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord God, when I will send a famine on the land—not a famine of bread or a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the words of the Lord.

⁴⁵A diseased person must wear torn clothes and let his hair hang loose, and he must cover his mouth and cry out, ‘Unclean, unclean!’

¹²So take your stand with your spells and with your many sorceries, with which you have wearied yourself from your youth. Perhaps you will succeed; perhaps you will inspire terror!

¹³You are wearied by your many counselors; let them come forward now and save you—your astrologers who observe the stars, who monthly predict your fate.

¹“Cry aloud, do not hold back! Raise your voice like a ram’s horn. Declare to My people their transgression and to the house of Jacob their sins.

¹²We have not received the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us.

¹³And this is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom, but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words.

⁴My message and my preaching were not with persuasive words of wisdom, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power,

²The Spirit of the Lord will rest on Him—the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and strength, the Spirit of knowledge and fear of the Lord.

³And He will delight in the fear of the Lord. He will not judge by what His eyes see, and He will not decide by what His ears hear,

⁸Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, “Rulers and elders of the people!

⁹If we are being examined today about a kind service to a man who was lame, to determine how he was healed,

⁹One night the Lord spoke to Paul in a vision: “Do not be afraid; keep on speaking; do not be silent.

¹⁰For I am with you and no one will lay a hand on you, because I have many people in this city.”

²³Your rulers are rebels, friends of thieves. They all love bribes and chasing after rewards. They do not defend the fatherless, and the plea of the widow never comes before them.

¹For the choirmaster. To the tune of “Do Not Destroy.” A Miktam of David. Do you indeed speak justly, O rulers? Do you judge uprightly, O sons of men?

²No, in your hearts you devise injustice; with your hands you mete out violence on the earth.

¹⁵Acquitting the guilty and condemning the righteous—both are detestable to the Lord.

¹⁹‘Cursed is he who withholds justice from the foreigner, the fatherless, or the widow.’ And let all the people say, ‘Amen!’

¹“Hear this, O priests! Take heed, O house of Israel! Give ear, O royal house! For this judgment is against you because you have been a snare at Mizpah, a net spread out on Tabor.

¹Then I said: “Hear now, O leaders of Jacob, you rulers of the house of Israel. Should you not know justice?

⁹Woe to him who builds his house by unjust gain, to place his nest on high and escape the hand of disaster!

¹⁰You have plotted shame for your house by cutting off many peoples and forfeiting your life.

¹³“Woe to him who builds his palace by unrighteousness, and his upper rooms without justice, who makes his countrymen serve without pay, and fails to pay their wages,

¹⁴who says, ‘I will build myself a great palace, with spacious upper rooms.’ So he cuts windows in it, panels it with cedar, and paints it with vermilion.

²⁵All the people answered, “His blood be on us and on our children!”

³Her princes are roaring lions; her judges are evening wolves, leaving nothing for the morning.

²⁵The conspiracy of the princes in her midst is like a roaring lion tearing its prey. They devour the people, seize the treasures and precious things, and multiply the widows within her.

²⁶Her priests do violence to My law and profane My holy things. They make no distinction between the holy and the common, and they fail to distinguish between the clean and the unclean. They disregard My Sabbaths, so that I am profaned among them.

⁵⁰You do not realize that it is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish.”

¹³“For from the least of them to the greatest, all are greedy for gain; from prophet to priest, all practice deceit.

²³Your rulers are rebels, friends of thieves. They all love bribes and chasing after rewards. They do not defend the fatherless, and the plea of the widow never comes before them.

⁵This is what the Lord says: “As for the prophets who lead My people astray, who proclaim peace while they chew with their teeth, but declare war against one who puts nothing in their mouths:

¹¹who must be silenced. For the sake of dishonorable gain, they undermine entire households and teach things they should not.

⁴Do not trust in deceptive words, saying: ‘This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord.’

¹⁸When Simon saw that the Spirit was given through the laying on of the apostles’ hands, he offered them money.

¹⁹“Give me this power as well,” he said, “so that everyone on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit.”

¹⁸“Micah the Moreshite prophesied in the days of Hezekiah king of Judah and told all the people of Judah that this is what the Lord of Hosts says: ‘Zion will be plowed like a field, Jerusalem will become a heap of rubble, and the temple mount a wooded ridge.’

¹A Psalm of Asaph. The nations, O God, have invaded Your inheritance; they have defiled Your holy temple and reduced Jerusalem to rubble.

¹In the last days the mountain of the house of the Lord will be established as the chief of the mountains; it will be raised above the hills, and the peoples will stream to it.

²And many nations will come and say: “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob. He will teach us His ways, so that we may walk in His paths.” For the law will go forth from Zion and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.

²“Do you see all these things?” He replied. “Truly I tell you, not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.”

³⁴and fruitful land into fields of salt, because of the wickedness of its dwellers.

⁶Therefore I will make Samaria a heap of rubble in the open field, a planting area for a vineyard. I will pour her stones into the valley and expose her foundations.