THE PROPHET OF THE POOR
Micah 2,3
WE have proved Micah’s love for his countryside
in the effusion of his heart upon her villages with a grief for
their danger greater than his grief for Jerusalem. Now in his
treatment of the sins which give that danger its fatal significance,
he is inspired by the same partiality for the fields and the folk
about him. While Isaiah chiefly satirizes the fashions of the town
and the intrigues of the court, Micah scourges the avarice of the
landowner and the injustice which oppresses the peasant. He could
not, of course, help sharing Isaiah’s indignation for the fatal
politics of the capital, any more than Isaiah could help sharing his
sense of the economic dangers of the provinces; {Isa 5:8} but it is
the latter with which Micah is most familiar and on which he spends
his wrath. These so engross him, indeed, that he says almost nothing
about the idolatry, or the luxury, or the hideous vice, which,
according to Amos and Hosea, were now corrupting the nation.
Social wrongs are always felt most acutely, not in the town, but in
the country. It was so in the days of Rome, whose earliest social
revolts were agrarian. It was so in the Middle Ages: the fourteenth
century saw both the Jacquerie in France and the Peasants’ Rising in
England; Langland, who was equally familiar with town and country,
expends nearly all his sympathy upon the poverty of the latter, "the
poure folk in cotes." It was so after the Reformation, under the new
spirit of which the first social revolt was the Peasants’ War in
Germany. It was so at the French Revolution, which began with the
march of the starving peasants into Paris. And it is so still, for
our new era of social legislation has been forced open, not by the
poor of London and the large cities, but by the peasantry of Ireland
and the crofters of the Scottish Highlands. Political discontent and
religious heresy take their start among industrial and manufacturing
centers, but the first springs of the social revolt are nearly
always found among the rural populations.
Why the country should begin to feel the acuteness of social wrong
before the town is sufficiently obvious. In the town there are
mitigations, and there are escapes. If the conditions of one trade
become oppressive, it is easier to pass to another. The workers are
better educated and better organized; there is a middle class, and
the tyrant dare not bring matters to so high a crisis. The might, of
the wealthy, too, is divided; the poor man’s employer is seldom at
the same time his landlord. But in the country power easily gathers
into the hands of the few. The laborer’s opportunities and means of
work, his home, his very standing-ground, are often all of them the
property of one man. In the country the rich have a real power of
life and death, and are less hampered by competition with each other
and by the force of public opinion. One man cannot hold a city in
fee, but one man can affect for evil or for good almost as large a
population as a city’s, when it is scattered across a countryside.
This is precisely the state of wrong which Micah attacks. The social
changes of the eighth century in Israel were peculiarly favorable to
its growth. The enormous increase of money which had been produced
by the trade of Uzziah’s reign threatened to overwhelm the simple
economy under which every family had its croft. As in many another
land and period, the social problem was the descent of wealthy men,
land-hungry, upon the rural districts. They made the poor their
debtors, and bought out the peasant proprietors. They absorbed into
their power numbers of homes, and had at their individual disposal
the lives and the happiness of thousands of their fellow-countrymen.
Isaiah had cried. "Woe upon them that join house to house, that lay
field to field, till there be no room" for the common people, and
the inhabitants of the rural districts grow fewer and Isa 5:8. Micah
pictures the recklessness of those plutocrats - the fatal ease with
which their wealth enabled them to dispossess the yeomen of Judah.
The prophet speaks:-
"Woe to them that plan mischief, And on their beds work out evil! As
soon as morning breaks they put it into execution, For-it lies to
the power of their hands!"
"They covet fields and-seize them, Houses and-lift them up. So they
crush a good man and his home, A man and his heritage."
This is the evil-the ease with which wrong is done in the country!
"It lies to the power of their hands: they covet and seize." And
what is it that they get so easily-not merely field and house, so
much land and stone and lime: it is human life, with all that makes
up personal independence, and the security of home and of the
family. That these should be at the mercy of the passion or the
caprice of one man-this is what stirs the prophet’s indignation. We
shall presently see how the tyranny of wealth was aided by the
bribed and unjust judges of the country; and how, growing reckless,
the rich betook themselves, as the lords of the feudal system in
Europe continually did, to the basest of assaults upon the persons
of peaceful men and women. But meantime Micah feels that by
themselves the economic wrongs explain and justify the doom
impending on the nation. When this doom falls, by the Divine irony
of God it shall take the form of a conquest of the land by the
heathen, and the disposal of these great estates to the foreigner.
The prophet speaks:-
"Therefore thus saith Jehovah: Behold I am planning evil against
this race, From which ye shall not withdraw your necks, Nor walk
upright: For an evil time it is! In that day shall they raise a
taunt-song against you And wail out the wailing ("It is done"); and
say, We be utterly undone: My people’s estate is measured off! How
they take it away from me! To the rebel our fields are allotted. So
thou shalt have none to cast the line by lot In the congregation of
Jehovah."
No restoration at time of Jubilee for lauds taken away in this
fashion! There will be no congregation of Jehovah left!
At this point the prophet’s pessimist discourse, that must have
galled the rich, is interrupted by their clamor to him to stop.
The rich speak:-
"Prate not, they prate, let none prate of such things! Revilings
will never cease! O thou that speakest thus to the house of Jacob,
Is the spirit of Jehovah cut short? Or are such His doings? Shall
not His words mean well with him that walketh uprightly?"
So the rich, in their immoral confidence that Jehovah was neither
weakened nor could permit such a disaster to fall on His own people,
tell the prophet that his sentence of doom on the nation, and
especially on themselves, is absurd, impossible. They cry the
eternal cry of Respectability: "God can mean no harm to the like of
us! His words are good to them that walk uprightly-and we are
conscious of being such. What you, prophet, have charged us with are
nothing but natural transactions." The Lord Himself has His answer
ready. Upright indeed! They have been unprovoked plunderers!
God speaks:-
"But ye are the foes of My people, Rising against those that are
peaceful; The mantle ye strip from them that walk quietly by, Averse
to war! Women of My people ye tear from their happy homes, From
their children ye take My glory forever. Rise and begone-for this is
no resting-place! Because of the uncleanness that bringeth
destruction. Destruction incurable."
Of the outrages on the goods of honest men, and the persons of women
and children, which are possible in a time of peace, when the rich
are tyrannous and abetted by mercenary judges and prophets, we have
an illustration analogous to Micah’s in the complaint of Peace in
Langland’s vision of English society in the fourteenth century. The
parallel to our prophet’s words is very striking:-
"And thanne come Pees into parlement and put forth a bille, How
Wronge ageines his wille had his wyf taken. "Both my gees and my
grys his gadelynges feccheth; I dar noughte for fere of hym fyghte
ne chyde. He borwed of me bayard he broughte hym home nevre, Ne no
ferthynge therefore or naughte I couthe plede. He meynteneth his men
to marther myne hewen, Forstalleth my feyres and fighteth in my
chepynge, And breketh up my bernes dore and bereth aweye my whete,
And taketh me but a taile for ten quarters of ores, And yet he bet
me ther-to and lythbi my mayde, I nam noughte hardy for hym "uneth
to loke.’"
They pride themselves that all is stable and God is with them. How
can such a state of affairs be stable! They feel at ease, yet
injustice can never mean rest. God has spoken the final sentence,
but with a rare sarcasm the prophet adds his comment on the scene.
These rich men had been flattered into their religious security by
hireling prophets, who had opposed himself. As they leave the
presence of God, having heard their sentence, Micah looks after them
and muses in quiet prose.
The prophet speaks:-
"Yea, if one whose walk is wind and falsehood were to try to cozen
"thee, saying, "I will babble to thee of wine and strong drink, then
he might be the prophet of such a people."
At this point in chapter 2 there have somehow slipped into the text
two verses (Mic 2:12-13), which all are agreed do not belong to it,
and for which we must find another place. They speak of a return
from the Exile, and interrupt the connection between Mic 2:11 and
the first verse of chapter 3 (Mic 3:1). 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 satirizing. 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 civilizations 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. Is
there nothing of the same with ourselves?
While Micah spoke he had wasted lives and bent backs before him. His
speech is elliptic till you see his finger pointing at them. Pinched
peasant faces peer between all his words and fill the ellipses. And
among the living poor today are there not starved and bitten
faces-bodies with the blood sucked from them, with the Divine image
crushed out of them? Brothers, we cannot explain all of these by
vice. Drunkenness and unthrift do account for much; but how much
more is explicable only by the following facts! Many men among us
are able to live in fashionable streets and keep their families
comfortable only by paying their employs a wage upon which it is
impossible for men to be strong or women to be virtuous. Are those
not using these as their food? They tell us that if they are to give
higher wages they must close their business, and cease paying wages
at all; and they are right if they themselves continue to live on
the scale they do. As long as many families are maintained in
comfort by the profits of businesses in which some or all of the
employees work for less than they can nourish and repair their
bodies upon, the simple fact is that the one set are feeding upon
the other set. It may be inevitable, it may be the fault of the
system and not of the individual, it may be that to break up the
system would mean to make things worse than ever-but all the same
the truth is clear that many families of the middle class, and some
of the very wealthiest of the land, are nourished by the waste of
the lives of the poor. Now and again the fact is acknowledged with
as much shamelessness as was shown by any tyrant in the days of
Micah. To a large employer of labor who was complaining that his
employees, by refusing to live at the low scale of Belgian workmen,
were driving trade from this country, the present writer once said:
"Would it not meet your wishes if, instead of your workmen being
leveled down, the Belgians were leveled up? This would make the
competition fair between you and the employers in Belgium." His
answer was, "I care not so long as I get my profits." He was a
religious man, a liberal giver to his Church, and he died leaving
more than one hundred thousand pounds.
Micah’s tyrants, too, had religion to support them. A number of the
hireling prophets, whom we have seen both Amos and Hosea attack,
gave their blessing to this social system, which crushed the poor,
for they shared its profits. They lived upon the alms of the rich,
and flattered according as they were fed. To them Micah devotes the
second oracle of chapter 3, and we find confirmed by his words the
principle we laid down before, that in that age the one great
difference between the false and the true prophet was what it has
been in every age since then till now-an ethical difference; and not
a difference of dogma, or tradition, or ecclesiastical note. The
false prophet spoke, consciously or unconsciously, for himself and
his living. He sided with the rich; he shut his eyes to the social
condition of the people; he did not attack the sins of the day. This
made him false - robbed him of insight and the power of prediction.
But the true prophet exposed the sins of his people. Ethical insight
and courage, burning indignation of wrong, clear vision of the facts
of the day-this was what Jehovah’s spirit put into him, this was
what Micah felt to be respiration.
The prophet speaks:-
"Thus saith Jehovah against the prophets who lead my people astray,
Who while they have aught between their teeth proclaim peace, But
against him who will not lay to their mouths they sanctify war!
Wherefore night shall be yours without vision, And yours shall be
darkness without divination; And the sun shall go down on the
prophets, And the day shall darken about them; And the seers shall
be put to the blush, And the diviners be ashamed: All of them shall
cover the beard, For there shall be no answer from God. But I am
full of power by the spirit of Jehovah, and justice and might, To
declare to Jacob his transgressions and to Israel his sin."
In the third oracle of this chapter rulers and prophets are
combined-how close the conspiracy between them! It is remarkable
that, in harmony with Isaiah, Micah speaks no word against the king.
But evidently Hezekiah had not power to restrain the nobles and the
rich. When this oracle was uttered it was a time of peace, and the
lavish building, which we have seen to be so marked a characteristic
of Israel in the eighth century, was in process. Jerusalem was
larger and finer than ever. Ah, it was a building of God’s own city
in blood! Judges, priests, and prophets were all alike mercenary,
and the poor were oppressed for a reward. No walls, however sacred,
could stand on such foundations. Did they say that they built her so
grandly, for Jehovah’s sake? Did they believe her to be inviolate
because He was in her? They should see. Zion-yes, Zion-should be
ploughed like a field, and the Mountain of the Lord’s Temple become
desolate.
The prophet speaks:-
"Hear now this, O chiefs of the house of Jacob, And rulers of the
house of Israel, Who spurn justice and twist all that is straight,
Building Zion in blood, and Jerusalem with crime! Her chiefs give
judgment for a bribe,"
"And her priests oracles for a reward, And her prophets divine for
silver; And on Jehovah they lean, saying: ‘Is not Jehovah in the
midst of us? Evil cannot come at us.’ Therefore for your sakes shall
Zion be ploughed like a field, And Jerusalem become heaps, And the
Mount of the House mounds in a jungle."
It is extremely difficult for us to place ourselves in a state of
society in which bribery is prevalent, and the fingers both of
justice and of religion are gilded by their suitors. But this
corruption has always been common in the East. "An Oriental state
can never altogether prevent the abuse by which officials, small and
great, enrich themselves in illicit ways." The strongest government
takes the bribery for granted, and periodically prunes the rank
fortunes of its great officials. A weak government lets them alone.
But in either case the poor suffer from unjust taxation and from
laggard or perverted justice. Bribery has always been found, even in
the more primitive and puritan forms of Semitic life. Mr. Doughty
has borne testimony with regard to this among the austere Wahabees
of Central Arabia. "When I asked if there were no handling of bribes
at Hayil by those who are nigh the prince’s ear, it was answered,
‘Nay.’ The Byzantine corruption cannot enter into the eternal and
noble simplicity of this people’s (airy) life, in the poor nomad
country; but (we have seen) the art is not unknown to the
subtle-headed Shammar princes, who thereby help themselves with the
neighbor Turkish governments." The bribes of the ruler of Hayil
"are, according to the shifting weather of the world, to great
Ottoman government men; and now on account of Kheybar, he was
gilding some of their crooked fingers in Medina." Nothing marks the
difference of Western government more than the absence of all this,
especially from our courts of justice. Yet the improvement has only
come about within comparatively recent centuries. What a large
space, for instance, does Langland give to the arraigning of "Mede,"
the corrupter of all authorities and influences in the society of
his day! Let us quote his words, for again they provide a most exact
parallel to Micah’s, and may enable us to realize a state of life so
contrary to our own. It is Conscience who arraigns Mede before the
King:-
"By ihesus with here jeweles youre justices she shendeth, And lith
agein the lawe and letteth hym the gate, That leith may noughte have
his forth here floreines go so thikke, She ledeth the lawe as hire
list and lovedays maketh And doth men lese thorw hire love that law
myghte wynne, The mase for a mene man though he mote hit cure. Law
is so lordeliche and loth to make ende, Without presentz or pens she
pleseth wel fewe. For pore men mowe have no powere to pleyne hem
though the smerte; Suche a maistre is Mede amonge men of gode"
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