_THE PROPHET OF THE POOR_
MICAH ii., iii.
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 satirises 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;[840] 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.[841] 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 centres, but the first springs of the social revolt are
nearly always found among 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 organised; 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 labourer'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 favourable
to its growth.[842] 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 fewer.[843] 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!_[844]
_In that day shall they raise a taunt-song against you,_
_And wail out the wailing_ ("_It is done_");[845] _and say,_
_"We be utterly undone:_
_My people's estate is measured off!_[846]
_How they take it away from me!_[847]
_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 lands 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 clamour 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,_[848]
_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!_[849]
_Women of My people ye tear from their happy homes,_[850]
_From their children ye take My glory for ever._
_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[851] · his gadelynges[852] feccheth;
I dar noughte for fere of hym · fyghte ne chyde.
He borwed of me bayard[853] · he broughte hym home nevre,
Ne no ferthynge ther-fore · for naughte I couthe plede.
He meynteneth his men · to marther myne hewen,[854]
Forstalleth my feyres[855] · and fighteth in my chepynge,
And breketh up my bernes dore · and bereth aweye my whete,
And taketh me but a taile[856] · for ten quarters of otes,
And yet he bet me ther-to · and lyth bi my mayde,
I nam[857] noughte hardy for hym · uneth[858] 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 chap. ii. there have somehow slipped into the text
two verses (12, 13), which all are agreed do not belong to it, and
for which we must find another place.[859] They speak of a return
from the Exile, and interrupt the connection between ver. 11 and
the first verse of chap. iii. 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
satirising. 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 civilisations 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 to-day 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 employés 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 employés 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
labour, who was complaining that his employés, 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 levelled down, the Belgians were
levelled 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 chap. iii., 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 inspiration.
The prophet speaks:--
_Thus saith Jehovah against the prophets who lead my people astray,_
_Who while they have ought 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--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,[860] 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."[861] 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 Hâyil 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 neighbour Turkish governments."[862] The bribes
of the ruler of Hâyil "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."[863] 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 realise 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,[864]
And lith[865] agein the lawe · and letteth hym the gate,
That feith may noughte have his forth[866] · 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[867] for a mene man · though he mote[868] hir eure.
Law is so lordeliche · and loth to make ende,
Without presentz or pens[869] · she pleseth wel fewe.
* * * * *
For pore men mowe[870] have no powere · to pleyne[871] hem though
thei smerte;
Suche a maistre is Mede · amonge men of gode."[872]
FOOTNOTES:
[840] Isa. v. 8.
[841] Mr. Congreve, in his Essay on Slavery appended to his edition
of Aristotle's _Politics_, p. 496, points out that all the servile
wars from which Rome suffered arose, not in the capital, but in the
provinces, notably in Sicily.
[842] See above, pp. 32 ff.
[843] Isa. v. 8.
[844] Cf. Amos v. 13.
[845] "Fuit." But whether this is a gloss, as of the name of the
dirge or of the tune, or a part of the text, is uncertain. Query:
ואמר ינהה ונחה.
[846] So LXX., and adds: "with the measuring rope."
[847] Or (after the LXX.) _there is none to give it back to me_.
[848] Uncertain. "Is the house of Jacob...?" (Wellhausen). "What a
saying, O house of Jacob?" (Ewald and Guthe). In the latter case the
interruption of the rich ceases with the previous line, and this one
is the beginning of the prophet's answer to them.
[849] So we may conjecture the very obscure details of a verse whose
general meaning, however, is evident. For ואתמול read ל ואתם. The LXX.
takes שלמה as _peace_ and not as _cloak_, for which there seems to be
no place beside אדר (or אדרת). Wellhausen with further alterations
renders: "But ye come forward as enemies against My people; from good
friends ye rob their ..., from peaceful wanderers war-booty."
[850] Wellhausen reads בני for בית, "tenderly bred children," another
of the many emendations which he proposes in the interests of
complete parallelism. See the Preface to this volume.
[851] Little pigs.
[852] Fellows.
[853] A horse.
[854] Servants.
[855] Fairs, markets.
[856] A tally.
[857] Am not.
[858] Scarcely.
[859]
_I will gather, gather thee, O Jacob, in mass,_
_I will bring, bring together the Remnant of Israel!_
_I will set them like sheep in a fold,_
_Like a flock in the midst of the pasture._
_They shall hum with men!_
_The breach-breaker hath gone up before them:_
_They have broken the breach, have carried the gate, and are gone out
by it;_
_And their king hath passed on before them, and Jehovah at their
head._
[860] See above, p. 33.
[861] Nöldeke, _Sketches from Eastern History_, translated by Black,
pp. 134 f.
[862] _Arabia Deserta_, I. 607.
[863] _Id._, II. 20.
[864] Ruins.
[865] Lieth.
[866] Course.
[867] Confusion.
[868] Summon.
[869] Pence.
[870] May.
[871] Complain.
[872] Substance or property.