Isaiah 1:16-17
Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean;
remove your evil deeds from before my eyes;
cease to do evil; learn to do good;
seek justice; rescue the oppressed.
We started off a couple of weeks ago to discuss the concept of justice in the Hebrew Scriptures. We then got sidetracked for a week with the story of Cain and Abel. So now we are back where we should have been last week.
There are sixteen prophets over all in the Hebrew writings – four classified as Major, and 12 as Minor. The major and minor titles have nothing to do with their relative importance – they’re simply based on their length. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel are the longest and thereby classified as major, while Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi are shorter and so, classified as the minor prophets.
Almost all of the sixteen prophets are recorded as having preached against the common in-justices that were prevalent in their time, but some more than others. Dating the 16 is not easy. Joel is given as the first of the recorded prophets by some scholars, but others list Isaiah and Amos as the earliest, while Malachi is clearly viewed as the last – a time span of somewhere around 350 years, give or take.
I’ve chosen – somewhat randomly but not entirely – three of these, Amos, Micah, and Isaiah -- to use as examples for our discussion of Old Testament justice. Amos and Micah from the minor list, and Isaiah from the majors. Isaiah is probably the best known among all the prophets – major and minor – while Micah and Amos may be the most familiar to us since much of their writing was used in the civil rights struggle a generation or two ago and are often repeated today.
Isaiah was most recognized for his prophecies about the coming Messiah, that’s why we read him a lot at Advent. He either served 40 plus years as a prophet or there were three different Isaiahs over those years who have been conflated into one man. That has been argued for centuries. He prophesied before, during, and after the Babylonian exile – warning of suffering to come when the people drifted from God and then promising redemption when the people had returned their hearts where they belonged. This quote tells us Isaiah’s stand on justice and our role in making sure that it is available to all:
Is not this the fast that I choose?
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the straps of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?
Is it not to share your bread with the hungry
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them
and not to hide yourself from your own kin? (ISAIAH 58:6-7}
Amos was an older contemporary of Isaiah and was from the southern Kingdom of Judah yet preached in the northern Kingdom of Israel (Samaria).
The main message of Amos is that it is God who demands justice and righteousness, particularly towards the poor and vulnerable, and who will judge his people harshly if they continue to neglect social justice and exploit the marginalized, even if they perform all manner of religious rituals; essentially, true worship requires action to alleviate suffering in order to claim to live ethically.
I hate, I despise your festivals,
and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.
Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings,
I will not accept them,
and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals
I will not look upon.
Take away from me the noise of your songs;
I will not listen to the melody of your harps.
But let justice roll down like water
and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. (AMOS 5:21-24)
And lastly, we have Micah. Micah was active in the Kingdom of Judah (the southern kingdom) from before the fall of Israel in 722 BC and he personally experienced the devastation brought by Sennacherib's invasion of Judah in 701 BC. His prophesying overlapped both Isaiah and Amos timewise.
The primary message of the Book of Micah is a strong condemnation of the social in-justice and corruption of Israel's leaders, coupled with a promise of future restoration and redemption for a faithful remnant, as well as emphasizing that true worship involves acting justly, loving mercy, and walking humbly with God, rather than mere ritualistic sacrifices; essentially, a call to live righteously to receive God's favor and restoration.
In narratives that sound entirely familiar to us today, the rich and comfortable were living quite well in these times while the poor too often lost everything. The religious and political authorities cobbled together fake “laws” that allowed the rich to retain their comfort at the poor’s loss and to offer “sacrifices” that took the place of actual repentance.
These prophets would have none of it and spoke out long and loudly against the hypocrisy of their day, demanding honest change of greedy hearts, often to their own detriment. Some of their stories sound eerily similar to that recent experience of the female Episcopalian Bishop who dared to remind our current leaders of Jesus' constant calls for mercy for the poor and powerless and ended up being excoriated and threatened for doing so.
We can close this message with perhaps one of the most well-known quotes, from Micah. It tells us all we need to know:
With what shall I come before the Lord?
. . . . .
He has told you, O mortal, what is good,
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice and to love kindness
and to walk humbly with your God?
There are sixteen prophets over all in the Hebrew writings – four classified as Major, and 12 as Minor. The major and minor titles have nothing to do with their relative importance – they’re simply based on their length. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel are the longest and thereby classified as major, while Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi are shorter and so, classified as the minor prophets.
Almost all of the sixteen prophets are recorded as having preached against the common in-justices that were prevalent in their time, but some more than others. Dating the 16 is not easy. Joel is given as the first of the recorded prophets by some scholars, but others list Isaiah and Amos as the earliest, while Malachi is clearly viewed as the last – a time span of somewhere around 350 years, give or take.
I’ve chosen – somewhat randomly but not entirely – three of these, Amos, Micah, and Isaiah -- to use as examples for our discussion of Old Testament justice. Amos and Micah from the minor list, and Isaiah from the majors. Isaiah is probably the best known among all the prophets – major and minor – while Micah and Amos may be the most familiar to us since much of their writing was used in the civil rights struggle a generation or two ago and are often repeated today.
Isaiah was most recognized for his prophecies about the coming Messiah, that’s why we read him a lot at Advent. He either served 40 plus years as a prophet or there were three different Isaiahs over those years who have been conflated into one man. That has been argued for centuries. He prophesied before, during, and after the Babylonian exile – warning of suffering to come when the people drifted from God and then promising redemption when the people had returned their hearts where they belonged. This quote tells us Isaiah’s stand on justice and our role in making sure that it is available to all:
Is not this the fast that I choose?
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the straps of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?
Is it not to share your bread with the hungry
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them
and not to hide yourself from your own kin? (ISAIAH 58:6-7}
Amos was an older contemporary of Isaiah and was from the southern Kingdom of Judah yet preached in the northern Kingdom of Israel (Samaria).
The main message of Amos is that it is God who demands justice and righteousness, particularly towards the poor and vulnerable, and who will judge his people harshly if they continue to neglect social justice and exploit the marginalized, even if they perform all manner of religious rituals; essentially, true worship requires action to alleviate suffering in order to claim to live ethically.
I hate, I despise your festivals,
and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.
Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings,
I will not accept them,
and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals
I will not look upon.
Take away from me the noise of your songs;
I will not listen to the melody of your harps.
But let justice roll down like water
and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. (AMOS 5:21-24)
And lastly, we have Micah. Micah was active in the Kingdom of Judah (the southern kingdom) from before the fall of Israel in 722 BC and he personally experienced the devastation brought by Sennacherib's invasion of Judah in 701 BC. His prophesying overlapped both Isaiah and Amos timewise.
The primary message of the Book of Micah is a strong condemnation of the social in-justice and corruption of Israel's leaders, coupled with a promise of future restoration and redemption for a faithful remnant, as well as emphasizing that true worship involves acting justly, loving mercy, and walking humbly with God, rather than mere ritualistic sacrifices; essentially, a call to live righteously to receive God's favor and restoration.
In narratives that sound entirely familiar to us today, the rich and comfortable were living quite well in these times while the poor too often lost everything. The religious and political authorities cobbled together fake “laws” that allowed the rich to retain their comfort at the poor’s loss and to offer “sacrifices” that took the place of actual repentance.
These prophets would have none of it and spoke out long and loudly against the hypocrisy of their day, demanding honest change of greedy hearts, often to their own detriment. Some of their stories sound eerily similar to that recent experience of the female Episcopalian Bishop who dared to remind our current leaders of Jesus' constant calls for mercy for the poor and powerless and ended up being excoriated and threatened for doing so.
We can close this message with perhaps one of the most well-known quotes, from Micah. It tells us all we need to know:
With what shall I come before the Lord?
. . . . .
He has told you, O mortal, what is good,
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice and to love kindness
and to walk humbly with your God?
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