Great Britain -- History -- Anglo-Saxon period, 449-1066; Middle Ages -- Sources
§ 86. Let holy Micah also pierce your ears, who like a heavenly trumpet
soundeth loudly forth against the deceitful princes of the people,
saying, "Hearken now ye princes of the house of Jacob, Is it not for you
to know judgment, who hate goodness, and seek after mischief, who pluck
their skins from off men, and their flesh from their bones? Even as they
have eaten the flesh of my people, and flayed their skins from them,
broken their bones to pieces, and hewed them small as meat to the pot,
they shall cry to God, and he will not hear them, and in that season
turn his face away from them, even as they before have wickedly behaved
themselves in their inventions. Thus speaketh our Lord of the prophets
who seduce my people, who bite with their teeth, and preach against them
peace, and if a man giveth nothing to stop their mouths, they raise and
sanctify a war upon him. Night shall therefore be unto you in place of a
vision, and darkness unto you in lieu of divination, and the sun shall
set upon your prophets, and the day shall wax dark upon them, and seeing
dreams they shall be confounded, and the diviners shall be derided, and
they shall speak ill against all men, because there shall not be any one
that will hear them, but that I myself shall do mine uttermost and
strongest endeavour in the spirit of our Lord, in judgment and in power,
that I may declare unto the house of Jacob their impieties, and to
Israel their offences. Hearken, therefore, unto these words, ye captains
of the house of Jacob, and ye remnants of the house of Israel, who abhor
judgment, and overthrow all righteousness, who build up Sion in blood,
and Jerusalem in iniquities: her rulers did judge for rewards, and her
priests answered for hire, and her prophets did for money divine, and
rested on our Lord, saying, And is not the Lord among us? Evils shall
not fall upon us. For your cause, therefore, shall Sion be ploughed up
as a field, and Jerusalem as the watch-house of a garden, and the
mountain of the house as the place of a woody wilderness." And after
some words ensuing: "Woe is me for that I am become as he that gathereth
stubble in the harvest, and a cluster of grapes in the vintage, when the
principal branch is not left to be eaten. Woe is me that a soul hath
perished through earthly actions, the reverence of sinners ariseth even
with reverence from the earth, and he appeareth not that shall use
correction among men. All contend in judgment for blood, and every one
with tribulation afflicteth his neighbour, for mischief he prepareth his
hands."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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