Bible Verses About Rulers

You have not strengthened the weak, healed the sick, bound up the injured, brought back the strays, or searched for the lost. Instead, you have ruled them with violence and cruelty.

Therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the LORD:

‘As surely as I live, declares the Lord GOD, because My flock lacks a shepherd and has become prey and food for every wild beast, and because My shepherds did not search for My flock but fed themselves instead,

therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the LORD!’

This is what the Lord GOD says: ‘Behold, I am against the shepherds, and I will demand from them My flock and remove them from tending the flock, so that they can no longer feed themselves. For I will deliver My flock from their mouths, and it will no longer be food for them.’

For this is what the Lord GOD says: ‘Enough, O princes of Israel! Cease your violence and oppression, and do what is just and right. Stop dispossessing My people, declares the Lord GOD.’

The princes of Judah are like those who move boundary stones; I will pour out My fury upon them like water.

They delight the king with their evil, and the princes with their lies.

Samaria will be carried off with her king like a twig on the surface of the water.

“For they know not how to do right,” declares the LORD. “They store up violence and destruction in their citadels.”

Therefore this is what the Lord GOD says: “An enemy will surround the land; he will pull down your strongholds and plunder your citadels.”

Hear this word, you cows of Bashan on Mount Samaria, you women who oppress the poor and crush the needy, who say to your husbands, “Bring us more to drink.”

The Lord GOD has sworn by His holiness: “Behold, the days are coming when you will be taken away with hooks, and your posterity with fishhooks.

Therefore, because you trample on the poor and exact from him a tax of grain, you will never live in the stone houses you have built; you will never drink the wine from the lush vineyards you have planted.

For I know that your transgressions are many and your sins are numerous. You oppress the righteous by taking bribes; you deprive the poor of justice in the gate.

“Do horses gallop on the cliffs? Does one plow the sea with oxen? But you have turned justice into poison and the fruit of righteousness into wormwood—

you who rejoice in Lo-debar and say, ‘Did we not take Karnaim by our own strength?’

Then I said: “Hear now, O leaders of Jacob, you rulers of the house of Israel. Should you not know justice?

You hate good and love evil. You tear the skin from my people and strip the flesh from their bones.

You eat the flesh of my people after stripping off their skin and breaking their bones. You chop them up like flesh for the cooking pot, like meat in a cauldron.”

Now hear this, O leaders of the house of Jacob and rulers of the house of Israel, who despise justice and pervert all that is right,

who build Zion with bloodshed and Jerusalem with iniquity.

Her leaders judge for a bribe, her priests teach for a price, and her prophets practice divination for money. Yet they lean upon the LORD, saying, “Is not the LORD among us? No disaster can come upon us.”

Both hands are skilled at evil; the prince and the judge demand a bribe. When the powerful utters his evil desire, they all conspire together.

The best of them is like a brier; the most upright is sharper than a hedge of thorns. The day for your watchmen has come, the day of your visitation. Now is the time of their confusion.