You don’t want to hear this (but you need to)

You’re not going to want to hear this. It’s going to shake us up, but don’t shut down out of fear, frustration, or fatigue. God’s way is that restoration comes through rebuke. This is how reality works. And that’s how, for instance, the book of Micah works. In Micah, restoration will follow rebuke. But rebuke has to be heard first. And in Micah 2 (which is not a part of Micah we often consider, perhaps because we don’t like what it says!), he addresses the topic of oppression.

Oppression Is Real

Oppression is real. Micah 2:1 speaks of “those who devise wickedness and work evil on their beds.” When we think about oppression, our minds typically drift towards those who calculate wickedness—they “work evil on their beds.” But there is more. This passage describes all kinds of oppression that may be implicit rather than explicit, and subtle rather than obvious. “They covet fields and seize them,” says Micah (v 2). This was an agrarian society. So a person’s fields were the means of opportunity and how you made a living and a life for yourself and your family. If someone’s field was seized, even if not out of malice and explicit ill intent, they would be severely crippled and put at a disadvantage.

We are not so distant from Micah’s day as we might like to think.

In today’s culture, there are similar dynamics at play that create the same disparities of opportunity, in which “The women of my people you drive out from their delightful houses; from their young children you take away my splendor forever” (v 9). That happens in our societies. We are not so distant from Micah’s day as we might like to think. Women and the children of the poor still suffer great disadvantages. Women are more likely to live in poverty than men are. The causes are never simple, but nonetheless, there are
certain structural realities in life that allow both obvious and subtle forms of oppression to exist.

The Powerlessness of Poverty

When you are poor, you do not have much power. For the poor, the little that they do have just keeps getting taken away. That is God’s charge in verse 8, which pictures how his people see everything others have as potential plunder: “My people have risen up as an enemy; you strip the rich robe from those who pass by trustingly with no thought of war.”

In that context, verse 10—“Arise and go, for this is no place to rest, because of uncleanness that destroys with a grievous destruction”—speaks clearly of the destructive nature of lacking opportunities and stability. No matter where you turn, you cannot rest.

Again, we have to confront the truth that those kinds of dynamics, that kind of systemic oppression, have not passed away with the ancient world. Of course, many of the advantages and luxuries that many of us have are achieved legally, fair and square. However, the acquisitions that Micah is describing here were also obtained legally; but not in a way that was (as Micah would say) oppression-free.

In ancient times, it was perfectly legal to take someone’s field if they defaulted on a loan—or their robe, or house, or whatever. So verse 1 says that, “When the morning dawns, they perform it.” These “repossessions” happened when the morning dawned—in broad daylight. No one was sneaking around in the shadows, because all this was perfectly within the lines of law—and yet Micah still chose to call it oppression. Micah’s unpacking of oppression is much more comprehensive (and therefore confrontational for us) than we may like to think. Our possessions often come at the expense of someone who lacks the advantages that we do have—even the fair ones that can be celebrated. We can easily oppress someone else without an ounce of malice in our hearts. It can be very subtle and yet it can be very real.

The American Dream and God’s Vision

Maybe you’re thinking, Don’t talk about this. God is not that concerned about this stuff. I’m not doing anything wrong. Doesn’t he just really want me to be happy? Micah deals with that thought in verse 7: “Should this be said, O house of Jacob? Has the LORD grown impatient? Are these his deeds? Do not my words do good to him who walks uprightly?” If we think that God does not care about these issues, then we do not really know much about him, his words, or his deeds.

For Americans, this really is difficult to understand; because so often the “American dream” gets equated with God’s vision for mankind. The pursuit of happiness is not his will for our lives and those things that contribute to our happiness (for which, so often, we can simply read “wealth”) are not necessarily his deeds. One of the biggest mistakes we have made in attempting to understand God and his will for us is to equate the market with the will of God. We have to remember that Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” is not God’s hand.

We can easily oppress someone else without an ounce of malice in our hearts. It can be very subtle and yet it can be very real.

Oppression is real whether or not we talk about it, whether or not we’ve found ways to ignore it. We can either choose to be real with it or just close our eyes and ignore the reality that constantly surrounds us. None of this is easy to hear and none of this has easy answers. But what we need is not ease; we need truth. We are called to wrestle with the questions: What do we do about our neighbors who experience silent oppression each and every single day? Do our hearts truly break because of the reality of oppression, or would we rather turn a blind eye for our own peace of mind?

Only once you get to grips with these kinds of questions are you ready to hear of and appreciate fully the restoration that God promises through Micah and to see what a life of worship really looks like. Restoration follows rebuke. And we sometimes need to hear that rebuke afresh.

Stephen Um is the author of Micah For You, an expositional guide which takes you verse by verse through the text in an accessible and applied way. Discover how God’s call to his people then is God’s call to his people now.