¹ Hear, O ye heads of the house of Jacob, and ye leaders of the house of Israel: Should not ye know, what were lawful and right? ² But ye hate the good, and love the evil: ye pluck off men's skins, and the flesh from their bones; ³ ye eat the flesh of my people, and flay of their skin; ye break their bones, ye chop them in pieces as it were into a cauldron, and as flesh into a pot. ⁴ Now the time shall come, that when they call unto the LORD, he shall not hear them, but hide his face from them, because that through their own Imaginations they have dealt so wickedly.

⁵ And as concerning the prophets that deceive my people, thus the LORD sayeth against them: When they have any thing to bite upon, then they preach that all shall be well. But if a man put not some thing in to their mouths, they preach of war against him. ⁶ Therefore your vision shall be turned to night, and your prophesying to darkness. The Sun shall go down over those prophets, and the day shall be dark unto them. ⁷ Then shall the vision seers be ashamed, and the soothsayers confounded: yea they shall be fain, all the pack of them, to stop their mouths: for they have not God's word.

⁸ As for me, I am full of strength, and of the spirit of the LORD; full of judgment and boldness, to show the house of Jacob their wickedness, and the house of Israel their sin.

⁹ O hear this, ye rulers of the house of Jacob, and ye judges of the house of Israel: ye that abhor the thing that is lawful, and wrest aside the thing that is straight; ¹⁰ Ye that build up Zion with blood, and Jerusalem with doing wrong. ¹¹ O ye judges, ye give sentence for gifts; O ye priests, ye teach for lucre; O ye prophets, ye prophesy for money. Yet will they be taken as those that hold upon God, and say, "Is not the LORD among us? Tush, there can no misfortune happen us." ¹² Therefore shall Zion, for your sakes, be plowed like a field: Jerusalem shall become a heap of stones, and the hill of the temple shall be turned to a high wood.