3:9 Listen to this, you leaders of the family 1 of Jacob,
you rulers of the nation 2 of Israel!
You 3 hate justice
and pervert all that is right.
3:10 You 4 build Zion through bloody crimes, 5
Jerusalem 6 through unjust violence.
3:11 Her 7 leaders take bribes when they decide legal cases, 8
her priests proclaim rulings for profit,
and her prophets read omens for pay.
Yet they claim to trust 9 the Lord and say,
“The Lord is among us. 10
Disaster will not overtake 11 us!”
3:12 Therefore, because of you, 12 Zion will be plowed up like 13 a field,
Jerusalem will become a heap of ruins,
and the Temple Mount 14 will become a hill overgrown with brush! 15
1 tn Heb “house.”
2 tn Heb “house.”
3 tn Heb “who.” A new sentence was begun here in the translation for stylistic reasons (also at the beginning of v. 10).
4 tn Heb “who.”
5 tn Heb “bloodshed” (so NAB, NASB, NIV); NLT “murder.”
6 map For location see Map5-B1; Map6-F3; Map7-E2; Map8-F2; Map10-B3; JP1-F4; JP2-F4; JP3-F4; JP4-F4.
7 sn The pronoun Her refers to Jerusalem (note the previous line).
8 tn Heb “judge for a bribe.”
9 tn Heb “they lean upon” (so KJV, NIV, NRSV); NAB “rely on.”
10 tn Heb “Is not the
11 tn Or “come upon” (so many English versions); NCV “happen to us”; CEV “come to us.”
12 tn The plural pronoun refers to the leaders, priests, and prophets mentioned in the preceding verse.
13 tn Or “into” (an adverbial accusative of result).
14 tn Heb “the mountain of the house” (so KJV, ASV, NRSV).
15 tn Heb “a high place of overgrowth.”