Micah 2 in plain modern English. New Ground English Translation.

Grief is coming to the ones who lie in bed working out how to do harm, planning the damage in the dark. At first light they get up and do it, because they have the power in their hands.

They want fields, so they take them. They want houses, so they carry them off. They squeeze a man out of his home, a family out of the land handed down to them.

So Yahweh says this: I am working out a disaster of my own against this family, and you will not slip your necks out of it. You will not walk around with your heads up. The time coming is a hard one.

On that day people will make up a song about you, and sing your funeral over you: "We are stripped bare. He measures out my people's share to somebody else. How he takes it from me. He hands our fields to the men who turned on us."

So when the measuring line goes out and the land is divided again by lot, there will be nobody there to hold your rope in the assembly of Yahweh.

"Stop dripping words at us," they drip. "Nobody should be saying things like that. The disgrace will never catch us."

Should anyone say this, house of Jacob: Has the Breath of Yahweh run short of patience? Is this the kind of thing he does? My words treat well the one who walks straight.

Lately my own people have set themselves up as the enemy. You pull the coat off the back of a man walking by, a man with no fear in him, coming home from the war.

You throw the women of my people out of the homes they loved. You take from their children the good gift I gave them, and you take it for good.

Get up and go. This is not your resting place anymore. You have fouled it, and it will break apart, a bitter breaking.

If a man came along full of wind and lies and said, "I will drip you a word about wine and strong beer," that man would be the preacher this people wants.

I am going to gather you, Jacob, every last one. I am going to bring in what is left of Israel. I will put them together like sheep in a pen, like a flock in the middle of its pasture, and the noise of a crowd will fill the place.

The one who breaks the wall goes up ahead of them. They break out, they pass through the gate, they are gone through it. Their king walks through in front of them, and Yahweh is at the head of the line.