Hear - O heads of Jacob - The metaphor of the flock is still carried on. The chiefs of Jacob, and the princes of Israel, instead of taking care of the flocks, defending them, and finding them pasture, oppressed them in various ways. They are like wolves, who tear the skin of the sheep, and the flesh off their bones. This applies to all unjust and oppressive rulers.

Suetonius tells us, in his Life of Tiberius, that when the governors of provinces wrote to the emperor, entreating him to increase the tributes, he wrote back: "It is the property of a good shepherd to shear his sheep, not to skin them." Praesidibus onerandas tributo provincias suadentibus rescripsit: Boni Pastoris esse Tondere pecus, non Deglubebe. This is a maxim which many rulers of the earth do not seem to understand.

hate.

1 Kings 21:20 And Ahab said to Elijah, Have you found me, O my enemy? And he answered, I have found you...

1 Kings 22:6-8 Then the king of Israel gathered the prophets together, about four hundred men, and said to them...

Amos 5:10-14 They hate him that rebukes in the gate, and they abhor him that speaks uprightly...

Luke 19:14 But his citizens hated him, and sent a message after him, saying, We will not have this man to reign over us.

John 7:7 The world cannot hate you; but me it hates, because I testify of it, that the works thereof are evil.

John 15:18,19,23,24 If the world hate you, you know that it hated me before it hated you...

Acts 7:51,52 You stiff necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, you do always resist the Holy Ghost: as your fathers did, so do you...

Romans 12:9 Let love be without dissimulation. Abhor that which is evil; hold to that which is good.

2 Timothy 3:3 Without natural affection, truce breakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good,

love.

2 Chronicles 19:2 And Jehu the son of Hanani the seer went out to meet him, and said to king Jehoshaphat, Should you help the ungodly...

Psalm 15:4 In whose eyes a vile person is contemned; but he honors them that fear the LORD. He that swears to his own hurt, and changes not.

Psalm 139:21,22 Do not I hate them, O LORD, that hate you? and am not I grieved with those that rise up against you...

Proverbs 28:4 They that forsake the law praise the wicked: but such as keep the law contend with them.

John 18:40 Then cried they all again, saying, Not this man, but Barabbas. Now Barabbas was a robber.

Romans 1:32 Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same...

pluck.

Psalm 53:4 Have the workers of iniquity no knowledge? who eat up my people as they eat bread: they have not called on God.

Isaiah 3:15 What mean you that you beat my people to pieces, and grind the faces of the poor? said the Lord GOD of hosts.

Ezekiel 22:27 Her princes in the middle thereof are like wolves ravening the prey, to shed blood, and to destroy souls, to get dishonest gain.

Ezekiel 34:3 You eat the fat, and you clothe you with the wool, you kill them that are fed: but you feed not the flock.

Amos 8:4-6 Hear this, O you that swallow up the needy, even to make the poor of the land to fail...

Zephaniah 3:3 Her princes within her are roaring lions; her judges are evening wolves; they gnaw not the bones till the morrow.

Zechariah 11:4,5 Thus said the LORD my God; Feed the flock of the slaughter...

Of Councils and their Authority.
1. The true nature of Councils. 2. Whence the authority of Councils is derived. What meant by assembling in the name of Christ. 3. Objection, that no truth remains in the Church if it be not in Pastors and Councils. Answer, showing by passages from the Old Testament that Pastors were often devoid of the spirit of knowledge and truth. 4. Passages from the New Testament showing that our times were to be subject to the same evil. This confirmed by the example of almost all ages. 5. All not Pastors who …
John Calvin—The Institutes of the Christian Religion