Micah 6:12, commentary and pictures

The charge is that the rich men are full of violence and the inhabitants have spoken lies with a deceitful tongue in their mouth, exposing their wickedness. In its setting those sins belong with treasures of wickedness, the scant measure, wicked balances and the bag of deceitful weights, with wicked gains and dishonest weights that bring God's judgment. The prophecy describes the world's condition before the second coming, when people persist in transgressing God's law and breaking the everlasting covenant.

The wider rebuke is to people who received great light and opportunities but failed to understand God's dealings or come into right relation with Him, though they could have reasoned from cause to effect. They stubbornly ignored His warnings, reproofs and corrections, and those who dismiss His punishments will face His judgments when it will be too late to repent. The verse exposes a departure from God that brings the Lord's controversy and rod upon His professed people, showing they have left Him, and the rebuke belongs to God's people now.

The violence, lies and deceit mean fraud in trade — a common sin of a grasping, selfish spirit and sharp dealing that God abhors — including every act of injustice however small and all iniquity practiced in trade. It condemns scheming to deny others a fair opportunity, to make merchandise of them, and to profit from them. It applies to dishonest trade and unjust dealings of brother with brother that weaken faith and trust and destroy confidence in justice and equity, corrupting whole communities and religious institutions, so that whole conferences become leavened with perverted principles.

It condemns unfair dealing, falsehood and robbery in trade, especially real estate speculation and institutional mismanagement that takes money from men and women, makes them poor and causes human suffering. It cries against carrying forward medical missionary work in Battle Creek through deception, by taking counsel with men who do not walk in the counsel of the Lord and following a leading man filling the mind with sophistries and deceptions, which is not acceptable to God. Instead the call is to deal justly, love mercy and walk humbly with God. The rebuke requires every institution among God's people to stand on the highest vantage ground, and especially charges those who claim to be in control to be themselves controlled by the Lord God of heaven, to take counsel of Him in every movement and to copy Christ's character instead of moving in their own counsel and acting sharp and severe when crossed.

Because of these sins God makes His people sick in smiting them and makes them desolate, so they eat but are not satisfied and cannot deliver what they take hold of. He will turn aside any advantage gained by unjust dealing and bring sure punishment. God expresses His displeasure at this iniquity in the most positive language and will work to purify His church, turning and overturning in the institutions called by His name. The refining will begin without long delay, when Christ whose fan is in His hand will cleanse His temple of moral defilement and thoroughly purge His floor.

Those who practice such business ruin their own souls, reject the authority of God, and imperil their interest in the atonement and redemption Christ has undertaken for every son and daughter of Adam. A course abhorrent to God will not pay, and by continuing they unfit themselves to enter the city whose builder and maker is God, must renounce that kind of speculation to be placed in church membership, and such unjust dealing must never be brought into any line of His work because it misrepresents His character. Every such transaction is told in the record book in heaven, and to do injustice to one soul in this way is to do it to Christ Himself. The guilty workers are sick and need healing from a Physician higher than earthly skill.