Yehezkiel 22:27

22:27 Her officials are like wolves in her midst rending their prey – shedding blood and destroying lives – so they can get dishonest profit.

Nehemia 9:34

9:34 Our kings, our leaders, our priests, and our ancestors have not kept your law. They have not paid attention to your commandments or your testimonies by which you have solemnly admonished them.

Yesaya 1:23

1:23 Your officials are rebels, ¹ 

they associate with ²  thieves.

All of them love bribery,

and look for ³  payoffs. ⁴ 

They do not take up the cause of the orphan, ⁵ 

or defend the rights of the widow. ⁶ 

Yeremia 2:26-27

2:26 Just as a thief has to suffer dishonor when he is caught,

so the people of Israel ⁷  will suffer dishonor for what they have done. ⁸ 

So will their kings and officials,

their priests and their prophets.

2:27 They say to a wooden idol, ⁹  ‘You are my father.’

They say to a stone image, ‘You gave birth to me.’ ¹⁰ 

Yes, they have turned away from me instead of turning to me. ¹¹ 

Yet when they are in trouble, they say, ‘Come and save us!’

Yeremia 5:5

5:5 I will go to the leaders ¹² 

and speak with them.

Surely they know what the Lord demands. ¹³ 

Surely they know what their God requires of them.” ¹⁴ 

Yet all of them, too, have rejected his authority

and refuse to submit to him. ¹⁵ 

Yeremia 32:32

32:32 I am determined to do so because the people of Israel and Judah have made me angry with all their wickedness – they, their kings, their officials, their priests, their prophets, and especially the people of Judah and the citizens of Jerusalem ¹⁶  have done this wickedness. ¹⁷ 

Daniel 9:8

9:8 O LORD, we have been humiliated ¹⁸  – our kings, our leaders, and our ancestors – because we have sinned against you.

Mikha 3:1-3

God Will Judge Judah’s Sinful Leaders

3:1 I said,

“Listen, you leaders ¹⁹  of Jacob,

you rulers of the nation ²⁰  of Israel!

You ought to know what is just, ²¹ 

3:2 yet you ²²  hate what is good, ²³ 

and love what is evil. ²⁴ 

You flay my people’s skin ²⁵ 

and rip the flesh from their bones. ²⁶ 

3:3 You ²⁷  devour my people’s flesh,

strip off their skin,

and crush their bones.

You chop them up like flesh in a pot ²⁸  –

like meat in a kettle.

Mikha 3:9-11

3:9 Listen to this, you leaders of the family ²⁹  of Jacob,

you rulers of the nation ³⁰  of Israel!

You ³¹  hate justice

and pervert all that is right.

3:10 You ³²  build Zion through bloody crimes, ³³ 

Jerusalem ³⁴  through unjust violence.

3:11 Her ³⁵  leaders take bribes when they decide legal cases, ³⁶ 

her priests proclaim rulings for profit,

and her prophets read omens for pay.

Yet they claim to trust ³⁷  the Lord and say,

“The Lord is among us. ³⁸ 

Disaster will not overtake ³⁹  us!”

Zakharia 3:3

3:3 Now Joshua was dressed in filthy clothes ⁴⁰  as he stood there before the angel.

[1:23]  ¹ tn Or “stubborn”; CEV “have rejected me.”

[1:23]  ² tn Heb “and companions of” (so KJV, NASB); CEV “friends of crooks.”

[1:23]  ³ tn Heb “pursue”; NIV “chase after gifts.”

[1:23]  ⁴ sn Isaiah may have chosen the word for gifts (שַׁלְמוֹנִים, shalmonim; a hapax legomena here), as a sarcastic pun on what these rulers should have been doing. Instead of attending to peace and wholeness (שָׁלוֹם, shalom), they sought after payoffs (שַׁלְמוֹנִים).

[1:23]  ⁵ sn See the note at v. 17.

[1:23]  ⁶ sn The rich oppressors referred to in Isaiah and the other eighth century prophets were not rich capitalists in the modern sense of the word. They were members of the royal military and judicial bureaucracies in Israel and Judah. As these bureaucracies grew, they acquired more and more land and gradually commandeered the economy and legal system. At various administrative levels bribery and graft become commonplace. The common people outside the urban administrative centers were vulnerable to exploitation in such a system, especially those, like widows and orphans, who had lost their family provider through death. Through confiscatory taxation, conscription, excessive interest rates, and other oppressive governmental measures and policies, they were gradually disenfranchised and lost their landed property, and with it, their rights as citizens. The socio-economic equilibrium envisioned in the law of Moses was radically disturbed.

[2:26]  ⁷ tn Heb “house of Israel.”

[2:26]  ⁸ tn The words “for what they have done” are implicit in the comparison and are supplied in the translation for clarification.

[2:27]  ⁹ tn Heb “wood…stone…”

[2:27]  ¹⁰ sn The reference to wood and stone is, of course, a pejorative reference to idols made by human hands. See the next verse where reference is made to “the gods you have made.”

[2:27]  ¹¹ tn Heb “they have turned [their] backs to me, not [their] faces.”

[5:5]  ¹² tn Or “people in power”; Heb “the great ones.”

[5:5]  ¹³ tn Heb “the way of the Lord.”

[5:5]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “the judgment [or ordinance] of their God.”

[5:5]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “have broken the yoke and torn off the yoke ropes.” Compare Jer 2:20 and the note there.

[32:32]  ¹⁶ map For location see Map5 B1; Map6 F3; Map7 E2; Map8 F2; Map10 B3; JP1 F4; JP2 F4; JP3 F4; JP4 F4.

[32:32]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “remove it from my sight 32:33 because of all the wickedness of the children of Israel and the children of Judah which they have done to make me angry, they, their kings, their officials, their priests, and their prophets, and the men of Judah, and the inhabitants of Jerusalem.” The sentence has been broken up in conformity with contemporary English style and an attempt has been made to preserve the causal connections.

[9:8]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “to us (belongs) shame of face.”

[3:1]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “heads.”

[3:1]  ²⁰ tn Heb “house.”

[3:1]  ²¹ tn Heb “Should you not know justice?” The rhetorical question expects the answer, “Of course you should!”

[3:2]  ²² tn Heb “the ones who.”

[3:2]  ²³ tn Or “good.”

[3:2]  ²⁴ tn Or “evil.”

[3:2]  ²⁵ tn Heb “their skin from upon them.” The referent of the pronoun (“my people,” referring to Jacob and/or the house of Israel, with the Lord as the speaker) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[3:2]  ²⁶ tn Heb “and their flesh from their bones.”

[3:2]  sn Micah compares the social injustice perpetrated by the house of Jacob/Israel to cannibalism, because it threatens the very lives of the oppressed.

[3:3]  ²⁷ tn Heb “who.”

[3:3]  ²⁸ tc The MT reads “and they chop up as in a pot.” The translation assumes an emendation of כַּאֲשֶׁר (ka’asher, “as”) to כִּשְׁאֵר (kish’er, “like flesh”).

[3:9]  ²⁹ tn Heb “house.”

[3:9]  ³⁰ tn Heb “house.”

[3:9]  ³¹ tn Heb “who.” A new sentence was begun here in the translation for stylistic reasons (also at the beginning of v. 10).

[3:10]  ³² tn Heb “who.”

[3:10]  ³³ tn Heb “bloodshed” (so NAB, NASB, NIV); NLT “murder.”

[3:10]  ³⁴ map For location see Map5 B1; Map6 F3; Map7 E2; Map8 F2; Map10 B3; JP1 F4; JP2 F4; JP3 F4; JP4 F4.

[3:11]  ³⁵ sn The pronoun Her refers to Jerusalem (note the previous line).

[3:11]  ³⁶ tn Heb “judge for a bribe.”

[3:11]  ³⁷ tn Heb “they lean upon” (so KJV, NIV, NRSV); NAB “rely on.”

[3:11]  ³⁸ tn Heb “Is not the Lord in our midst?” The rhetorical question expects the answer, “Of course he is!”

[3:11]  ³⁹ tn Or “come upon” (so many English versions); NCV “happen to us”; CEV “come to us.”

[3:3]  ⁴⁰ sn The Hebrew word צוֹאִים (tso’im) means “excrement.” This disgusting figure of speech suggests Joshua’s absolute disqualification for priestly service in the flesh, but v. 2 speaks of his having been rescued from that deplorable state by God’s grace. He is like a burning stick pulled out of the fire before it is consumed. This is a picture of cleansing, saving grace.