3:1 I said,
“Listen, you leaders 1 of Jacob,
you rulers of the nation 2 of Israel!
You ought to know what is just, 3
3:2 yet you 4 hate what is good, 5
and love what is evil. 6
You flay my people’s skin 7
and rip the flesh from their bones. 8
3:3 You 9 devour my people’s flesh,
strip off their skin,
and crush their bones.
You chop them up like flesh in a pot 10 –
like meat in a kettle.
3:9 Listen to this, you leaders of the family 11 of Jacob,
you rulers of the nation 12 of Israel!
You 13 hate justice
and pervert all that is right.
3:10 You 14 build Zion through bloody crimes, 15
Jerusalem 16 through unjust violence.
3:11 Her 17 leaders take bribes when they decide legal cases, 18
her priests proclaim rulings for profit,
and her prophets read omens for pay.
Yet they claim to trust 19 the Lord and say,
“The Lord is among us. 20
Disaster will not overtake 21 us!”
1 tn Heb “heads.”
2 tn Heb “house.”
3 tn Heb “Should you not know justice?” The rhetorical question expects the answer, “Of course you should!”
4 tn Heb “the ones who.”
5 tn Or “good.”
6 tn Or “evil.”
7 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
8 tn Heb “and their flesh from their bones.”
sn Micah compares the social injustice perpetrated by the house of Jacob/Israel to cannibalism, because it threatens the very lives of the oppressed.
9 tn Heb “who.”
10 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”).
11 tn Heb “house.”
12 tn Heb “house.”
13 tn Heb “who.” A new sentence was begun here in the translation for stylistic reasons (also at the beginning of v. 10).
14 tn Heb “who.”
15 tn Heb “bloodshed” (so NAB, NASB, NIV); NLT “murder.”
16 map For location see Map5-B1; Map6-F3; Map7-E2; Map8-F2; Map10-B3; JP1-F4; JP2-F4; JP3-F4; JP4-F4.
17 sn The pronoun Her refers to Jerusalem (note the previous line).
18 tn Heb “judge for a bribe.”
19 tn Heb “they lean upon” (so KJV, NIV, NRSV); NAB “rely on.”
20 tn Heb “Is not the
21 tn Or “come upon” (so many English versions); NCV “happen to us”; CEV “come to us.”