From the Top Down

Micah 3:9 Hear this, you heads of the house of Jacob and rulers of the house of Israel,
who detest justice and make crooked all that is straight,
10 who build Zion with blood and Jerusalem with iniquity.
11 Its heads give judgment for a bribe; its priests teach for a price;
its prophets practice divination for money; yet they lean on the Lord and say,
“Is not the Lord in the midst of us? No disaster shall come upon us.”
12 Therefore because of you Zion shall be plowed as a field;
Jerusalem shall become a heap of ruins, and the mountain of the house a wooded height.

This chapter begins with a rebuke of the leaders of Israel:  they were the ones who should have known better.  The civil heads should have known and enforced the laws of God and the justice they contained. The priests should have led the people in righteousness but instead endorsed injustice. And the prophets, who were to be the last line of defense, were to stand up and speak out against the injustice, immorality, and idolatry of the land. All the leaders had failed at their posts, and the whole land was suffering for it. The whole nation would be punished from the top down, with the palace and the temple, the places of the leaders, leveled. God holds us all accountable, but especially those placed in leadership.