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3. Leaders and Prophets Rebuked

¹ Then I said,

   “Listen, you leaders of Jacob,
   you rulers of Israel.
Should you not embrace justice,
    ² you who hate good and love evil;
who tear the skin from my people
   and the flesh from their bones;
³ who eat my people’s flesh,
   strip off their skin
   and break their bones in pieces;
who chop them up like meat for the pan,
   like flesh for the pot?”

    ⁴ Then they will cry out to the LORD,
   but he will not answer them.
At that time he will hide his face from them
   because of the evil they have done.

⁵ This is what the LORD says:

   “As for the prophets
   who lead my people astray,
they proclaim ‘peace’
   if they have something to eat,
but prepare to wage war against anyone
   who refuses to feed them.
⁶ Therefore night will come over you, without visions,
   and darkness, without divination.
The sun will set for the prophets,
   and the day will go dark for them.
⁷ The seers will be ashamed
   and the diviners disgraced.
They will all cover their faces
   because there is no answer from God.”
⁸ But as for me, I am filled with power,
   with the Spirit of the LORD,
   and with justice and might,
to declare to Jacob his transgression,
   to Israel his sin.

    ⁹ Hear this, you leaders of Jacob,
   you rulers of Israel,
who despise justice
   and distort all that is right;
¹⁰ who build Zion with bloodshed,
   and Jerusalem with wickedness.
¹¹ Her leaders judge for a bribe,
   her priests teach for a price,
   and her prophets tell fortunes for money.
Yet they look for the LORD’s support and say,
   “Is not the LORD among us?
   No disaster will come upon us.”
¹² Therefore because of you,
   Zion will be plowed like a field,
Jerusalem will become a heap of rubble,
   the temple hill a mound overgrown with thickets.

He afterwards subjoins, But they hate good, and love evil, and pull off the skin ⁹⁴⁹⁴     Their skin, literally. The antecedent (which is not unusual in Hebrew) is mentioned afterwards: it is the word, people, which follows.
   The idea of sheep or flock, to which the people are compared in the last chapter, is still retained here. Adam Clarke quotes from Suetonius a striking answer of Tiberius, the Emperor, to some governors, who solicited him to increase the taxes, — “It is the property of a good shepherd to shear his sheep, not to skin them” — Boni pastoris esse tondere pectus, non deglubere
   To “hate good, and to love evil,” in the former sentence, betokens a character dreadful in the extreme; for good here, טוב means kindness, benevolence, the doing of good to others; this they hated: and evil, רעה, means wrong, mischief, injury, the doing of harm, of wrong, and of injustice to others; and this they loved. How transmuted they were in their spirit into that of very fiends! “They hate to do good, hate to have any good done, and hate those that are good; and they love the evil, delight in mischief, and in those that do mischief.” These words of Henry, no doubt, convey a correct view of the sentence. It might therefore be rendered, “Haters of benevolence, and lovers of mischief.” — Ed. from my people, the flesh from their bones; that is, they leave nothing, he says, sound and safe, their rapacity being so furious. The Prophet conveys first a general reproof, — that they not only perverted justice, but were also given to wickedness and hated good. He means then that they were openly wicked and ungodly, and also that they with a fixed purpose carried on war against every thing just and right. We hence learn how great and how abominable was the corruption of the people, when they were still the peculiar possession and heritage of God. Inasmuch then as the state of this ancient people had become so degenerated, let us learn to walk in solicitude and fear, while the Lord governs us by pious magistrates and faithful pastors: for what happened to the Jews might soon happen to us, so that wolves might bear rule over us, as indeed experience has proved even in this our city. The Prophet afterwards adds the kinds of cruelty which prevailed; of which he speaks in hyperbolical terms, though no doubt he sets before our eyes the state of things as it was. He compares the judges to wolves or to lions, or to other savage beasts. He says not that they sought the property of the people, or pillaged their houses; but he says that they devoured their flesh even to the very bones; he says that they pulled off their skin: and this he confirms in the next verse.