THE MAJOR PROPHETS ON ECONOMIC JUSTICE

ISAIAH

Isaiah's rebukes to princes who side-stepped economic justice sting by contrast. He writes more of the goodness, mercy, and compassion of God than of His severity, as did Ezekiel and Jeremiah. His book has been called "The Gospel of Isaiah."

He wastes no time in preliminaries. He plunges into the heart of the difficulty, for his hearers assiduously maintained formal religions observances as a blind for their Corrupt economic practices.

SPECIFIC CHARGES

The multitude of their sacrifices were purposeless; their oblations, vain; their incense-burning, an abomination; their assemblies and solemn meetings, iniquity; their religious feasts, God-hated; their prayers, unheard; their religious acts, unseen of God, for He hid His eyes from them.

"Why," they asked Isaiah, "does God repudiate our worship?"

"You have neglected what precedes acceptable devotion to God," Isaiah retorted, "Your hands arc full of blood" (Isa. 1:15);

"Seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow" (Isa. 1:17);

"Thy princes are rebellious, and companions of thieves; EVERY ONE loveth GIFTS, and followeth after rewards: they judge not the fatherless, neither does the cause of the widow come unto them" (Isa. 1:23).

Rulers never do evil so effectively as when patronizingly, formally, heartlessly, they externally worship God and thus claim His sanction in a wrong course. Isaiah was expert at tearing off such pretentious masks. The four kings (Isa. 1:1) during whose reign he prophesied, by clamoring for the reform of every one but themselves put themselves on a "hot spot":

"The Lord will enter into judgment with the ancients of his people, AND THE PRINCES THEREOF" (Isa. 3:14).

Isaiah charged these princes with appropriating the fruit of the vineyards:

"For ye have eaten up the vineyard" (3:14).

He drives home what disposition they made of their unlawful conscriptions:

"The spoil of the poor is in your houses" (3:14).

Evidently, under Isaiah's observation, the rulers conscripted grapes in payment for the excess taxations they inequitably imposed, just as under the observation of Amos they arbitrarily took from the poor farmers BURDENS of WHEAT to feed into their greedy tax-maw, so insatiable it could "never have enough" (Isa. 56:11).

Such appalling oppression calls from God, through Isaiah, a heart-break-cry of indignation against the spoiler-rulers:

"What mean ye that ye beat my people to pieces, and grind the faces of the poor? saith the Lord God of hosts" (Isa. 3:15).

The writer is sure, were Isaiah here today, he would utter a similar cry in the interests of "the new poor" -- the poor bewildered rich!

THE "BRAIN-TRUSTERS" ENTER THE PICTURE: THEIR REPUDIATION

They are represented as "turning of things upside down," which, Isaiah said should "be esteemed as the potter's clay" for instability.

These ancient "Brain-Trusters" were "wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight" (Isa. 5:21).

They also were drunken and staggered; but not from wine, or strong drink (Isa. 29:9), but with egotism because of their own wisdom. Drunken upon authority, power, and conceit of human wisdom, these arrogant rulers and wise men were driven into a realm which always denudes sham, presumptuously teaching the people a vain form of worship of God, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men, magnifying their petty human traditions, rejecting the commandments of God.

Isaiah bears down on these self-styled learned men, shows that they were, to the wisdom that comes from God, in a deep sleep; their eyes closed; His wisdom covered, hidden from them, sealed:

"Wherefore the Lord said, Forasmuch as this people draw near me with their mouth, and with their lips do honor me, but have removed their heart far from me, and their fear toward me is taught by the precept of men:

"Therefore, behold, I will proceed to do a marvellous work among this people, even a marvellous work and a wonder: for the wisdom of their wise men shall perish, and the understanding of their prudent men shall be hid" (Isa. 29:13, 14).

Isaiah pronounced a woe upon these wise men despite their efforts to hide deep their counsels from the Lord; their cover of the darkness and their arrogant vaunting in their false security: "Who seeth us? and who knoweth us?" (Isa. 29:15). He prophesied that they should be brought down, low in the dust -- "Visited by the Lord of hosts with thunder, and with earthquake, and great noise, with storm and tempest, and the flame of devouring fire" (Isa. 29:6); by Him who abounds in resources to "destroy the wisdom of the wise, and... bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent" (I Cor. 1:19), when they exalt themselves above the Most High.

Whenever one group dominates another, whether it be a forcing of will as absolute monarchies, dictators, through communistic or socialistic theories of government, or by intellectual superiority, so-called, of a minority of scholars or learned men, class bitterness always results. Not so where the Economics of the Bible prevails, for its subjects more really share their wealth than do the professional and politically-ambitious share-the-wealth-ers, but it is all through the creation of a voluntary disposition in them; its only constraint love from, of, and for Christ, the Author, Pattern and Power of equitable economic practice.

NO REDEMPTION BY, NOR ACCEPTABLE WORSHIP OF GOD, WITHOUT JUST ECONOMIC PRACTICE

Isaiah continues his tilts with the religious but morally insensible rulers. They should be faithful shepherds of the people, alert watchmen. Instead, Isaiah charges, they were,

"Blind: ignorant; dumb; sleeping."

He presses the figure of a faithful shepherd, ever accompanied by a faithful dog. But, faithless shepherds that they were, their very dogs took their characters from that of their masters:

"They are all dumb dogs, they cannot bark; sleeping; lying down, loving to slumber" (Isa. 56:10).

Isaiah drives home the figure to its climax -- there was one part of them which was never asleep to self-interest, but was blind to every interest except their own-

THEIR GREEDY TAX-MAWS, WHICH WERE INSATIABLE, FILLED WITH THE INIQUITY OF THEIR COVETOUSNESS (Isa. 57:17):

"Yea, they are greedy dogs which can NEVER HAVE ENOUGH, and they are shepherds that cannot understand: THEY ALL LOOK TO THEIR OWN WAY, every one FOR HIS GAIN, from HIS QUARTER" (Isa. 56:11).

Next, Isaiah pictures the fruitage of their carnival of tax-graft and plunder:

"Come ye, say they, I will fetch wine, and we will fill ourselves with strong drink" -the while, planning greater tax-exactions which the pitiful poor must stagger under to finance more wantonly extravagant expenditures, which they also planned between their cups -"and tomorrow shall be as this day, and much more abundant" (Isa. 56:12).

Perhaps, to modernize it, their bankers advised that seventy billions was the saturation point of the people's tax-endurance.

Instead of restraining national pillage, these reprehensible princes winked the eye in approval, and reached the hand for a lion's share of the loot, a practice which the Psalmist, King David, incisively describes:

"When thou sawest a thief, then thou consentedst with him" (Ps. 50:18).

Of these ruler-robbers Isaiah demanded reform; consistency; sincere patriotism; service to the people-that they exemplify Bible Economics justice.

Isaiah's charge that the rulers were greedy tax-hounds should have stung them to reform. Yet, seeking the impossible, self-justification, they prate of delight in approaching to God: of seeking Him daily; of delight in knowing His ways; of asking of Him the ordinances of justice (Isa. 58:2).

Specifically, they ask:

"Wherefore have we fasted... and Thou seest not?" (As if the silent heavens could ever be the fault of God who longs to bless). "Wherefore have we afflicted our soul, and Thou takest no knowledge?" (Isa. 58:3).

Isaiah answers that fasting was vain while economic practice was perverted:

"Behold, in the day of your fast ye find pleasure, and exact all your labors."

In the very midst of it their hearts went out after their covetousness:

"Behold, ye fast for strife and debate [use it as a blind] and to smite with the fist of wickedness" (Isa. 58:4).

He further enlightens them. The position of the body during a fast, denial of food, or pretended affliction and sorrow of soul, is nothing -- "to bow down his head as a bulrush, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him," but the sincerity of the heart, proved by right economic practice, is the fast acceptable to the Lord (Isa. 58:5).

Isaiah next describes the true fast God had chosen for them, minutely listing its equitable economic elements:

"To loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke" (Isa. 58:6).

He added: "Feed the hungry; shelter the poor; clothe the naked" (Isa. 58:7).

It must be remembered that paramount among the "burdens," the "yokes," the "oppressions," the "bands," which the rulers must "undo," was the exaction of excess taxes from the people; and that Isaiah is not pleading for charity, for the poor, but justice which would make relief unnecessary.

Isaiah charged that the multiplication of "crooked paths" made national peace and prosperity impossible-

"Therefore is judgment far from us, neither doth justice overtake us: we wait for light, but behold obscurity; for brightness, but we walk in darkness.

"We grope for the wall like the blind... as if we had no eyes: we stumble at noonday as in the night" (Isa. 59:9, 10).

He personifies Justice, Judgment, Truth, Equity, because their presence (or absence) calls for human incarnations of these abstract ideas:

"Judgment is turned away backward, and justice standeth afar off: for truth is fallen in the street, and equity cannot enter" (Isa. 59:14).

Isaiah was a thorn to the oppressive rulers who instead of incorruptibility condoned dishonesty in high places; who conscripted life, work, property, liberty, ostensibly under the pretext of emergent taxation for legitimate legislative expenses, actually to fill their own private caches, secret strong boxes and palaces with the spoil of their piracy.

He was not deterred by patriotic platitudes, cliches, shibboleths or "party-cries," nor by externally devout worship of God followed by unrighteous economic practices in judgment, weights, and measures and oppressive legislation against the widow, the fatherless, the hired servant, and the needy brother. With the people, he too was oppressed by the rulers' tax-thievery which financed wanton extravagance, sinful luxury, selfish ambition, and the quest of personal glory.

He vigorously protests. Their throne was indeed a throne of iniquity, which framed mischief by law. God could not have fellowship with such rulers, or sanction their policies, for His habitation is justice, His throne, righteousness.

Isaiah had smarted the princes by his whiplash reproofs.

Beating God's people to pieces and grinding the faces of His poor to the dust of the earth, himself among them, forced his charges against the faithless princes of Israel:

"The spoil of the poor is in your houses" (Isa. 3:14).

He paid the penalty for freedom of speech, ever repugnant to evil rulers. He was made, he said, "an offender for a word," and that word a plea for that economic justice their own law so clearly set forth. Henceforth his life was as that of a hunter's prey. Speaking for God he said: "He looked for judgment, but behold oppression; for righteousness, but behold a CRY" (Isa. 5:7).

The rulers were bent on increasing their own fortunes by robbing the people through tax-exactions:

"Woe unto them that join house to house, that lay field to field, till there be no place, that they may be placed alone in the midst of the earth" (Isa. 5:8).

Later Isaiah discloses their method:

"Woe unto them that decree unrighteous decrees, and that write grevousness which they have prescribed;

"To turn aside the needy from judgment, and to take away the right from the poor of my people, that widows may be their prey, and that they may rob the fatherless" (Isa. 10:1, 2).

CRASSLY MATERIAL PRINCES PUNISHED

Soon he visions desolation, God employing the Assyrians as the rod of His anger against them, with no allies to help them, their very stolen glory a handicap. (Isa. 3:6.)

And, more applicable to us than to the Jews, he pictures the world punished for evil, the wicked for iniquity, the arrogancy of the proud caused to cease. (Isa. 13:11.) And, speed the day, when "I will make a man more precious than fine gold: even a man than the golden wedge of Ophir" (Isa. 13:12).

It is unthinkable that He who giveth wealth to whomsoever he will should condemn its legitimate expansion, retention and use. He encourages fidelity to God and man in its stewardship.

Wealth fraudulently gotten is another story, particularly when exacted by rulers under the guise of lawful and necessary taxation from an already oppressed people staggering under mountainous tax-loads to finance extravagance and personal ambition. Such rulers, in the Bible Economics message are termed the enemies of God:

"Thy princes are rebellious, and companions of thieves: every one loveth gifts, and followeth rewards: they judge not the fatherless, neither doth the cause of the widow come unto them...

"Therefore saith the mighty One of Israel, Ah, I will ease me of mine adversaries, and avenge me of mine enemies" (Isa. 1:23, 24).

Anon the economic prophet Isaiah forecasts a happier time, a Golden Age of economic justice, when there shall be:

"A covert... from the face of the spoiler: for the EXTORTIONER is at an end, the SPOILER ceaseth, the OPPRESSORS are consumed out of the land" (Isa. 16:4).

REPUDIATING THE OLD PATHS -- JEREMIAH

The weeping economic prophet, Jeremiah, charges the rulers with having a revolting and rebellious heart; they lay wait; set snares and traps to catch men; their houses were full of deceit; on the misery of the people they had become great and waxen rich; in their gluttony they waxed fat until they shone and their eyes stuck out with fatness; they justified the wicked for reward; instead of justice to the poor of the land was wickedness, violence, spoil, grief, wounds; among them there could not be found a man that executed judgment and sought the truth:

"From the least of them even unto the greatest of them every one is GIVEN to covetousness; and... dealeth falsely" (Jer. 6:13).

THE MASK TORN OFF

These grievous revolters, corrupters, walking with slanderers, tried to cover their crookedness by offering incense, sacrifices, and worship in the Temple to the God whom their course mocked:

"Trust ye not in lying words, SAYING, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord" (Jer. 7:4).

These vain repetitions would not answer for ways unamended, for judgment unadministered:

"Behold ye trust in lying words, that cannot profit" (Jer. 7:8).

Jeremiah's rebuke apprehends the words of Christ:

"Why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?" (LUKE 6:46).

Formal Temple attendance, Jeremiah charged, could never substitute for the absence of just economic legislation and practice:

"Will ye steal, murder, and commit adultery, and swear falsely, and burn incense unto Baal...

"And come and stand before me in THIS HOUSE which is called by my name, and say, We are delivered to do all these abominations? Is THIS HOUSE... become a den of robbers in your eyes?" (Jer. 7:9-11).

EZEKIEL

Another seer of visions of just economics utters a heart cry:

"Oh princes of Israel: remove violence and spoil, and execute judgment and justice, TAKE A WAY YOUR EXACTIONS from my people, saith the Lord God" (Ezek. 45:9).

This Major Economic prophet paints corrupt rulers in unlovely colors. He accused them of having taken gifts, usury, increase and having greedily gained of their neighbors by extortion" (Ezek. 22:12).

He warned that God must smite such dishonest gain. He addresses the prince of Israel on the inevitable day of reckoning:

"And thou, profane wicked prince of Israel, whose day is come, when iniquity shall have an end...

"Remove the diadem, and take off the crown... exalt him that is low, and abase him that is high...

"Her princes in the midst thereof are like wolves ravening the prey, to shed blood, and to destroy souls, to GET DISHONEST GAIN" (See Ezek. 21 and 22).

"It Cannot Happen Here?" Alas, our vaunted greatness, isolation, smug complacency, cannot prevent the day of recompense unless we return to national righteousness in fact instead of pretense.

"Moreover the prince shall not take of the peoples' inheritance by oppression, to thrust them out of their possession; but he shall give his sons for his henchmen] inheritance out of his own possessions: that my people be not scattered every man from his possession" (Ezek. 46:18).

From a broken heart Ezekiel utters a climactic cry to the princes to lighten the peoples' tax-load by establishing economic justice:

"O princes of Israel: remove violence and spoil, and execute judgment and justice, TAKE A WAY YOUR EXACTIONS from my people, saith the Lord God" (Ezek. 45:9).