THE SIN OF THE SCANT MEASURE
Mic 6:9-16; Mic 7:1-6
THE state of the text of Mic 6:9-16; Mic 7:1-6 is
as confused as the condition of society which it describes: it is
difficult to get reason, and impossible to get rhyme, out of the
separate clauses. We had best give it as it stands, and afterwards
state the substance of its doctrine, which, in spite of the
obscurity of details, is, as so often happens in similar cases,
perfectly clear and forcible. The passage consists of two portions,
which may not originally have belonged to each other, but which seem
to reflect the same disorder of civic life, with the judgment that
impends upon it. In the first of them, Mic 7:9-16, the prophet calls
for attention to the voice of God, which describes the fraudulent
life of Jerusalem, and the evils He is bringing on her. In the
second, Mic 7:1-6, Jerusalem bemoans her corrupt society; but
perhaps we hear her voice only in Mic 7:1, and thereafter the
prophet’s.
The prophet speaks:-
"Hark! Jehovah crieth to the city! (‘Tis salvation to fear Thy
name!) Hear ye, O tribe and council of the city!"
God speaks:-
"… in the house of the wicked treasures of wickedness, And the scant
measure accursed? Can she be pure with the evil balances, And with
the bag of false weights, Whose rich men are full of violence, And
her citizens speak falsehood, And their tongue is deceit in their
mouth? But I on my part have begun to plague thee, To lay thee in
ruin because of thy sins. Thou eatest and art not filled,"
"But thy famine is in the very midst of thee! And but try to remove,
thou canst not bring off And what thou bringest off, I give to the
sword. Thou sowest, but never reapest; Treadest olives, but never
anointest with oil, And must, but not to drink wine! So thou keepest
the statutes of Omri, And the habits of the house of Ahab, And
walkest in their principles, Only that I may give thee to ruin, And
her inhabitants for sport-Yea, the reproach of the Gentiles shall ye
bear!"
Jerusalem speaks:-
"Woe, woe is me, for I am become like sweepings of harvest, Like
gleanings of the vintage-Not a cluster to eat, not a fig that my
soul lusteth after. Perished are the leal from the land, Of the
upright among men there is none: All of them are lurking for blood;
Every man takes his brother in a net. Their hands are on evil to do
it thoroughly. The prince makes requisition, The judge judgeth for
payment, And the great man he speaketh his lust; So together they
weave it out. The best of them is but a thorn thicket, {cf. Pro
15:19} The most upright worse than a prickly hedge. The day that thy
sentinels saw, thy visitation, draweth on; Now is their havoc {cf.
Isa 22:5} come! Trust not any friend! Rely on no confidant! From her
that lies in thy bosom guard the gates of thy mouth. For son
insulteth father, daughter is risen against her mother, daughter-in-
law against her mother-in-law; And the enemies of a man are the men
of his house."
Micah, though the prophet of the country and stern critic of its
life, characterized Jerusalem herself as the center of the nation’s
sins. He did not refer to idolatry alone, but also to the irreligion
of the politicians, and the Cruel injustice of the rich in the
capital. The poison which weakened the nation’s blood had found its
entrance to their veins at the very heart. There had the evil
gathered which was shaking the state to a rapid dissolution.
This section of the Book of Micah, whether it be by that prophet or
not, describes no features of Jerusalem’s life which were not
present in the eighth century; and it may be considered as the more
detailed picture of the evils he summarily denounced. It is one of
the most poignant criticisms of a commercial community which have
ever appeared in literature. In equal relief we see the meanest
instruments and the most prominent agents of covetousness and
cruelty the scant measure, the false weights, the unscrupulous
prince, and the venal judge. And although there are some sins
denounced which are impossible in our civilization, yet falsehood,
squalid fraud, pitilessness of the everlasting struggle for life are
exposed exactly as we see them about us today. Through the prophet’s
ancient and often obscure eloquence we feel just those shocks and
sharp edges which still break everywhere through our Christian
civilization. Let us remember, too, that the community addressed by
the prophet was, like our own, professedly religious.
The most widespread sin with which the prophet charges Jerusalem in
these days of her commercial activity is falsehood: "Her inhabitants
speak lies, and their tongue is deceit in their mouth." In Mr.
Lecky’s "History of European Morals" we find the opinion that "the
one respect in which the growth of industrial life has exercised a
favorable influence on morals has been in the promotion of truth."
The tribute is just, but there is another side to it. The exigencies
of commerce and industry are fatal to most of the conventional
pretences, insincerities, and flatteries which tend to grow up in
all kinds of society. In commercial life, more perhaps than in any
other, a man is taken, and has to be taken, in his inherent worth.
Business, the life which is called par excellence Busyness, wears
off every mask, all false veneer and unction, and leaves no time for
the cant and parade which are so prone to increase in all other
professions. Moreover the soul of commerce is credit. Men have to
show that they can be trusted before other men will traffic with
them, at least upon that large and lavish scale on which alone the
great undertakings of commerce can be conducted. When we look back
upon the history of trade and industry, and see how they have
created an atmosphere in which men must ultimately seem what they
really are; how they have of their needs replaced the jealousies,
subterfuges, intrigues which were once deemed indispensable to the
relations of men of different peoples, by large international credit
and trust; how they break through the false conventions that divide
class from class, we must do homage to them, as among the greatest
instruments of the truth which maketh free.
But to all this there is another side. If commerce has exploded so
much conventional insincerity, it has developed a species of the
genus which is quite its own. In our days nothing can lie like an
advertisement. The saying, "the tricks of the trade" has become
proverbial. Everyone knows that the awful strain and harassing of
commercial life are largely due to the very amount of falseness that
exists. The haste to be rich, the pitiless rivalry and competition,
have developed a carelessness of the rights of others to the truth
from ourselves, with a capacity for subterfuge and intrigue, which
reminds one of no, thing so much as that state of barbarian war out
of which it was the ancient glory of commerce to have assisted
mankind to rise. Are the prophet’s words about Jerusalem too strong
for large portions of our own commercial communities? Men who know
these best will not say that they are. But let us cherish rather the
powers of commerce which make for truth. Let us tell men who engage
in trade that there are none for whom it is more easy to be clean
and straight; that lies, whether of action or of speech, only
increase the mental expense and the moral strain of life; and that
the health, the capacity, the foresight, the opportunities of a
great merchant depend ultimately on his resolve to be true and on
the courage with which he sticks to the truth.
One habit of falseness on which the prophet dwells is the use of
unjust scales and short measures. The "stores" or fortunes of his
day are "scores of wickedness," because they have been accumulated
by the use of the 'lean ephah,' the balances of wrong," and "the bag
of false weights." These are evils more common in the East than with
us: modern government makes them almost impossible. But, all the
same, ours is the sin of the scant measure, and the more so in
proportion to the greater speed and rivalry of our commercial life.
The prophet’s name for it, "measure of leanness," of "consumption"
or "shrinkage," is a proper symbol of all those duties and offices
of man to man, the full and generous discharge of which is
diminished by the haste and the grudge of a prevalent selfishness.
The speed of modern life tends to shorten, the time expended on
every piece of work, and to turn it out untempered and incomplete.
The struggle for life in commerce, the organized rivalry between
labor and capital, not only puts every man on his guard against
giving any other more than his due, but tempts him to use every
opportunity to scamp and curtail his own service and output. You
will hear men defend this parsimony as if it were a law. They say
that business is impossible without the temper which they call
"sharpness" or the habit which they call "cutting it fine." But such
character and conduct are the very decay of society. The shrinkage
of the units must always and everywhere mean the disintegration of
the mass. A society whose members strive to keep within their duties
is a society which cannot continue to cohere. Selfishness may be
firmness, but it is the firmness of frost, the rigor of death. Only
the unselfish excess of duty, only the generous loyalty to others,
give to society the compactness and indissolubleness of life. Who is
responsible for the enmity of classes, and the distrust which exists
between capital and labor? It is the workman whose one aim is to
secure the largest amount of wages for the smallest amount of work,
and who will, in his blind pursuit of that, wreck the whole trade of
a town or a district; it is the employer who believes he has no
duties to his men beyond paying them for their work the least that
he can induce them to take; it is the customer who only and ever
looks to the cheapness of an article-procurer in that prostitution
of talent to the work of stamping which is fast killing art, and
joy, and all pity for the bodies and souls of our brothers. These
are the true anarchists and breakers-up of society. On their methods
social coherence and harmony are impossible. Life itself is
impossible. No organism can thrive whose various limbs are ever
shrinking in upon themselves. There is no life except by living to
others.
But the prophet covers the whole evil when he says that the "pious
are perished out of the land." "Pious" is a translation of despair.
The original means the man distinguished by "hesedh," that word
which we have on several occasions translated "real love," because
it implies not only an affection but loyalty to a relation. And, as
the use of the word frequently reminds us, "hesedh" is love and
loyalty both to God and to our fellowmen. We need not dissociate
these: they are one. But here it is the human direction in which the
word looks. It means a character which fulfills all the relations of
society with the fidelity, generosity, and grace which are the
proper affections of man to man. Such a character, says the prophet,
is perished from the land. Every man now lives for himself, and as a
consequence preys upon his brother. "They all lie in wait for blood;
they hunt every man his brother with a net." This is not murder
which the prophet describes: it is the reckless, pitiless
competition of the new conditions of life developed in Judah by the
long peace and commerce of the eighth century. And he carries this
selfishness into a very striking figure in Mic 7:4 : "The best of
them is as a thorn thicket, the most upright" worse "than a prickly
hedge." He realizes exactly what we mean by sharpness and
sharp-dealing: bristling self-interest, all points; splendid in its
own defense, but barren of fruit, and without nest or covert for any
life.
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