Bible Verses About Rulers

You don't strengthen the weak, heal the sick, bandage the broken, bring back the outcasts or seek the lost; on the contrary, you tyrannize them with crushing force.

"'Therefore, shepherds, hear the word of ADONAI:

"As I live," Adonai ELOHIM swears, "because my sheep have become prey, my sheep have become food for every wild animal, since there was no shepherd, since my shepherds didn't look for my sheep, and instead my shepherds fed themselves but not my sheep,"

therefore, shepherds, hear the word of ADONAI!

Adonai ELOHIM says, "I am against the shepherds. I demand that they hand my sheep back to me. I will not allow them to feed the sheep, and they won't feed themselves either. I will rescue my sheep from their mouths; they will be food for them no longer."

Adonai ELOHIM says this: 'Princes of Isra'el, that should be enough for you! Get rid of violence and looting, do what is right and just, and stop evicting my people from their land!' says Adonai ELOHIM.

The leaders of Y'hudah are like men who move boundary stones; I will pour my fury out upon them like water.

They make the king glad with their wickedness, and the leaders with their lies.

Shomron's king will perish like foam on the surface of the water.

For they don't know how to do right," says ADONAI. "They store up violence and robbery in their palaces."

Therefore, here is what Adonai ELOHIM says: "An enemy will surround the land. He will strip you of your strength, and plunder your palaces."

"Listen, you [lovely] cows of Bashan, who live on Mount Shomron, who oppress the poor and grind down the needy, who say to their husbands, 'Bring something to drink':

Adonai ELOHIM has sworn by his holiness that your time is surely coming. "You will be dragged away with hooks, the last of you with fishhooks.

Therefore, because you trample on the poor and extort from them levies of grain; although you have built houses of cut stone, you will not live in them; and though you have planted pleasant vineyards, you will not drink their wine.

For I know how numerous are your crimes and how outrageous your sins - bullying the innocent, extorting ransoms pushing the poor aside at the gate.

Do horses run on rock? Does one plow there with oxen? Yet you have turned justice into poison and the fruit of righteousness into bitter wormwood.

You take pleasure in worthless things. You think your power comes from your own strength.

"I said, 'Please listen, leaders of Ya'akov, rulers of the house of Isra'el: Shouldn't you know what justice is?

Yet you hate what is good and love what is bad. You strip off their skin from them and their flesh from their bones,

you eat the flesh of my people, skin them alive, break their bones; yes, they chop them in pieces, like flesh in a caldron, like meat in a pot.'"

Hear this, please, leaders of the house of Ya'akov, rulers of the house of Isra'el, you who abhor what is just and pervert anything that is right,

who build up Tziyon with blood and Yerushalayim with wickedness.

Her leaders sell verdicts for bribes, her cohanim teach for a price, her prophets divine for money - yet they claim to rely on ADONAI! "Isn't ADONAI here with us?" they say. "No evil can come upon us."

Their hands do evil well. The prince makes his request, the judge grants it for a price, and the great man expresses his evil desires - thus they weave it together.

The best of them is a briar, the most upright worse than a thorn hedge. The time of your watchmen - of your punishment - has come; now they will be confused.