At this point in chap. ii. there have somehow slipped into the text two verses (12, 13), which all are agreed do not belong to it, and for which we must find another place.[859] They speak of a return from the Exile, and interrupt the connection between ver. 11 and the first verse of chap. iii. With the latter Micah begins a series of three oracles, which give the substance of his own prophesying in contrast to that of the false prophets whom he has just been satirising. He has told us what they say, and he now begins the first of his own oracles with the words, _But I said_. It is an attack upon the authorities of the nation, whom the false prophets flatter. Micah speaks very plainly to them. Their business is to know justice, and yet they love wrong. They flay the people with their exactions; they cut up the people like meat. The prophet speaks:--_But I said,_ _Hear now, O chiefs Of Jacob,_ _And rulers of the house of Israel:_ _Is it not yours to know justice?--_ _Haters of good and lovers of evil,_ _Tearing their hide from upon them_ (he points to the people), _And their flesh from the bones of them;_ _And who devour the flesh of my people,_ _And their hide they have stripped from them_ _And their bones have they cleft,_ _And served it up as if from a pot,_ _Like meat from the thick of the caldron!_ _At that time shall they cry to Jehovah,_ _And He will not answer them;_ _But hide His face from them at that time,_ _Because they have aggravated their deeds._ These words of Micah are terribly strong, but there have been many other ages and civilisations than his own of which they have been no more than true. "They crop us," said a French peasant of the lords of the great Louis' time, "as the sheep crops grass." "They treat us like their food," said another on the eve of the Revolution.