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CHAPTER XXVI

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;⁸⁴⁰⁸⁴⁰   Isa. v. 8. 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.387⁸⁴¹⁸⁴¹   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. 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 the388 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.⁸⁴²⁸⁴²   See above, pp. 32 ff. 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.⁸⁴³⁸⁴³   Isa. v. 8. 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:—

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:—

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:—

So the rich, in their immoral confidence that Jehovah was neither weakened nor could permit such a disaster391 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:—

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 and392 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 grys⁸⁵¹⁸⁵¹   Little pigs. · his gadelynges⁸⁵²⁸⁵²   Fellows. feccheth;
I dar noughte for fere of hym · fyghte ne chyde.
He borwed of me bayard⁸⁵³⁸⁵³   A horse. · he broughte hym home nevre,
Ne no ferthynge ther-fore · for naughte I couthe plede.
He meynteneth his men · to marther myne hewen,⁸⁵⁴⁸⁵⁴   Servants.
Forstalleth my feyres⁸⁵⁵⁸⁵⁵   Fairs, markets. · and fighteth in my chepynge,
And breketh up my bernes dore · and bereth aweye my whete,
And taketh me but a taile⁸⁵⁶⁸⁵⁶   A tally. · for ten quarters of otes,
And yet he bet me ther-to · and lyth bi my mayde,
I nam⁸⁵⁷⁸⁵⁷   Am not. noughte hardy for hym · uneth⁸⁵⁸⁸⁵⁸   Scarcely. 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 agreed393 do not belong to it, and for which we must find another place.⁸⁵⁹⁸⁵⁹    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. 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
394And 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 in395 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 been396 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 conspiracy397 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,⁸⁶⁰⁸⁶⁰   See above, p. 33. 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.

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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."⁸⁶¹⁸⁶¹   Nöldeke, Sketches from Eastern History, translated by Black, pp. 134 f. 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."⁸⁶²⁸⁶²   Arabia Deserta, I. 607. 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."⁸⁶³⁸⁶³   Id., II. 20. Nothing marks the difference of Western government more than the absence of all this, especially from our courts of justice. Yet the improvement has399 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,⁸⁶⁴⁸⁶⁴   Ruins.
And lith⁸⁶⁵⁸⁶⁵   Lieth. agein the lawe · and letteth hym the gate,
That feith may noughte have his forth⁸⁶⁶⁸⁶⁶   Course. · 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 mase⁸⁶⁷⁸⁶⁷   Confusion. for a mene man · though he mote⁸⁶⁸⁸⁶⁸   Summon. hir eure.
Law is so lordeliche · and loth to make ende,
Without presentz or pens⁸⁶⁹⁸⁶⁹   Pence. · she pleseth wel fewe.

For pore men mowe⁸⁷⁰⁸⁷⁰   May. have no powere · to pleyne⁸⁷¹⁸⁷¹   Complain. hem though thei smerte;
Suche a maistre is Mede · amonge men of gode."⁸⁷²⁸⁷²   Substance or property.