I am surrounded by these fierce and brutal men. They are like lions just wanting to tear me to shreds. Why must I continue to live among these seething terrorists, breathing out their angry threats and insults against me?
But you who are known as the Pharisees are rotten to the core like venomous snakes. How can your words be good if you are rotten within? For what has been stored up in your hearts will be heard in the overflow of your words!
“Have you heard that these people are saying, ‘Yahweh has forsaken Judah and Israel, whom he chose for himself’? They despise my people and no longer consider them as a nation.
Listen to them bragging among themselves, big in their own eyes, all because of the crimes they’ve committed against your people! See how they’re crushing those who love you, God, cruelly oppressing those who belong to you.