Bible Verses About Rulers

You haven’t strengthened the diseased, neither have you healed that which was sick, neither have you bound up that which was broken, neither have you brought back that which was driven away, neither have you sought that which was lost; but with force and with rigor you have ruled over them.

Therefore, you shepherds, hear the LORD’s word:

As I live, says the Lord GOD, surely because my sheep became a prey, and my sheep became food to all the animals of the field, because there was no shepherd, neither did my shepherds search for my sheep, but the shepherds fed themselves, and didn’t feed my sheep;

therefore, you shepherds, hear the LORD’s word:

Thus says the Lord GOD: Behold, I am against the shepherds; and I will require my sheep at their hand, and cause them to cease from feeding the sheep; neither shall the shepherds feed themselves any more; and I will deliver my sheep from their mouth, that they may not be food for them.

Thus says the Lord GOD: Let it suffice you, princes of Israel: remove violence and plunder, and execute justice and righteousness; dispossessing my people, says the Lord GOD.

The princes of Judah are like those who remove a landmark. I will pour out my wrath on them like water.

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

Samaria and her king float away, like a twig on the water.

“Indeed they don’t know to do right,” says the LORD, “Who hoard plunder and loot in their palaces.”

Therefore thus says the Lord GOD: “An adversary will overrun the land; and he will pull down your strongholds, and your fortresses will be plundered.”

Listen to this word, you cows of Bashan, who are on the mountain of Samaria, who oppress the poor, who crush the needy, who tell their husbands, “Bring us drinks!”

The Lord GOD has sworn by his holiness that behold, “The days shall come on you that they will take you away with hooks, and the last of you with fish hooks.

Therefore, because you trample on the poor, and take taxes from him of wheat: You have built houses of cut stone, but you will not dwell in them. You have planted pleasant vineyards, but you shall not drink their wine.

For I know how many your offenses, and how great are your sins— you who afflict the just, who take a bribe, and who turn aside the needy in the courts.

Do horses run on the rocky crags? Does one plow there with oxen? But you have turned justice into poison, and the fruit of righteousness into bitterness;

you who rejoice in a thing of nothing, who say, ‘Haven’t we taken for ourselves horns by our own strength?’

I said, “Please listen, you heads of Jacob, and rulers of the house of Israel: Isn’t it for you to know justice?

You who hate the good, and love the evil; who tear off their skin, and their flesh from off their bones;

who also eat the flesh of my people, and flay their skin from off them, and break their bones, and chop them in pieces, as for the pot, and as flesh within the cauldron.

Please listen to this, you heads of the house of Jacob, and rulers of the house of Israel, who abhor justice, and pervert all equity.

They build up Zion with blood, and Jerusalem with iniquity.

Her leaders judge for bribes, and her priests teach for a price, and her prophets of it tell fortunes for money: yet they lean on the LORD, and say, “Isn’t the LORD in the midst of us? No disaster will come on us.”

Their hands are on that which is evil to do it diligently. The ruler and judge ask for a bribe; and the powerful man dictates the evil desire of his soul. Thus they conspire together.

The best of them is like a brier. The most upright is worse than a thorn hedge. The day of your watchmen, even your visitation, has come; now is the time of their confusion.