Jeremiah 20:8
20:8 For whenever I prophesy, I must cry out,
“Violence and destruction are coming!”
This message from the Lord has made me
an object of continual insults and derision.
Psalms 55:9-11
55:9 Confuse them, O Lord!
Frustrate their plans!
For I see violence and conflict in the city.
55:10 Day and night they walk around on its walls,
while wickedness and destruction are within it.
55:11 Disaster is within it;
violence and deceit do not depart from its public square.
Ezekiel 7:11
7:11 Violence
has grown into a staff that supports wickedness. Not one of them will be left
– not from their crowd, not from their wealth, not from their prominence.
Ezekiel 7:23
7:23 (Make the chain,
because the land is full of murder
and the city is full of violence.)
Ezekiel 22:3-12
22:3 Then say, ‘This is what the sovereign
Lord says: O city, who spills blood within herself (which brings on her doom),
and who makes herself idols (which results in impurity),
22:4 you are guilty because of the blood you shed and defiled by the idols you made. You have hastened the day of your doom;
the end of your years has come.
Therefore I will make
you an object of scorn to the nations, an object to be mocked by all lands.
22:5 Those both near and far from you will mock you, you with your bad reputation,
full of turmoil.
22:6 “‘See how each of the princes of Israel living within you has used his authority to shed blood.
22:7 They have treated father and mother with contempt within you; they have oppressed the foreigner among you; they have wronged the orphan and the widow within you.
22:8 You have despised my holy things and desecrated my Sabbaths!
22:9 Slanderous men shed blood within you. Those who live within you eat pagan sacrifices on the mountains; they commit obscene acts among you.
22:10 They have sex with their father’s wife within you; they violate women during their menstrual period within you.
22:11 One commits an abominable act with his neighbor’s wife; another obscenely defiles his daughter-in-law; another violates his sister – his father’s daughter – within you.
22:12 They take bribes within you to shed blood. You engage in usury and charge interest; you extort money from your neighbors. You have forgotten me, declares the sovereign Lord.
Ezekiel 24:7
24:7 For her blood was in it;
she poured it on an exposed rock;
she did not pour it on the ground to cover it up with dust.
Micah 2:1-2
Land Robbers Will Lose their Land
2:1 Those who devise sinful plans are as good as dead,
those who dream about doing evil as they lie in bed.
As soon as morning dawns they carry out their plans,
because they have the power to do so.
2:2 They confiscate the fields they desire,
and seize the houses they want.
They defraud people of their homes,
and deprive people of the land they have inherited.
Micah 2:8-10
2:8 but you rise up as an enemy against my people.
You steal a robe from a friend,
from those who pass by peacefully as if returning from a war.
2:9 You wrongly evict widows among my people from their cherished homes.
You defraud their children of their prized inheritance.
2:10 But you are the ones who will be forced to leave!
For this land is not secure!
Sin will thoroughly destroy it!
Micah 3:1-3
God Will Judge Judah’s Sinful Leaders
3:1 I said,
“Listen, you leaders of Jacob,
you rulers of the nation of Israel!
You ought to know what is just,
3:2 yet you hate what is good,
and love what is evil.
You flay my people’s skin
and rip the flesh from their bones.
3:3 You devour my people’s flesh,
strip off their skin,
and crush their bones.
You chop them up like flesh in a pot –
like meat in a kettle.
Micah 3:9-12
3:9 Listen to this, you leaders of the family of Jacob,
you rulers of the nation of Israel!
You hate justice
and pervert all that is right.
3:10 You build Zion through bloody crimes,
Jerusalem through unjust violence.
3:11 Her leaders take bribes when they decide legal cases,
her priests proclaim rulings for profit,
and her prophets read omens for pay.
Yet they claim to trust the Lord and say,
“The Lord is among us.
Disaster will not overtake us!”
3:12 Therefore, because of you, Zion will be plowed up like a field,
Jerusalem will become a heap of ruins,
and the Temple Mount will become a hill overgrown with brush!
Micah 7:2-3
7:2 Faithful men have disappeared from the land;
there are no godly men left.
They all wait in ambush so they can shed blood;
they hunt their own brother with a net.
7:3 They are determined to be experts at doing evil;
government officials and judges take bribes,
prominent men make demands,
and they all do what is necessary to satisfy them.