The Use and Abuse of Micah 6:8 as a Supporting Text for Social Justice

"He has shown thee, O man, what is good and what the Lord requires of thee, but to do eisegesis and to love misapplication and to walk arrogantly with your misguided dogmatism."

One would think this is actually what the verse says given the way it is mishandled by layman and preacher alike. The actual verse reads:

הגיד לך אדם מה טוב ומה יהוה דורש ממך כי אם עשׁות משפט ואהבת חסד והצנע לכת עם אלהיך 

He has revealed to you, O man, what is good,

and what the Lord seeks from you: 

That you do justice, you love hesed, and you live carefully with your God.

There are numerous issues here, but the first thing we should talk about is that this is not talking about what you do with unbelievers or is in any way a justification for activity that seeks to make the world more just apart from its reconciliation to God through the gospel of Christ. 

In fact, God is telling Israel how they are to destroy the wicked world, to crush the nations and their enemies. Their doing justice will bring about the destruction of the secular world, not its living in peace and harmony apart from YHWH.

Here are a few passages in Micah that display the result of Israel being just. 

"Rise and thresh, Daughter Zion, for I will make your horns iron and your hooves bronze so you can crush many peoples. Then you will set apart their plunder for the LORD, their wealth for the Lord of the whole earth." (4:13)

"Then the remnant of Jacob will be among the nations, among many peoples, like a lion among animals of the forest, like a young lion among flocks of sheep, which tramples and tears as it passes through, and there is no one to rescue them. Your hand will be lifted up against your adversaries, and all your enemies will be destroyed." (5:8-9)

"Then my enemy will see, and she will be covered with shame, the one who said to me, “Where is the LORD your God? ” My eyes will look at her in triumph; at that time she will be trampled like mud in the streets. " (7:10)

Second to this, the phrase is עשׁות משפט "do justice," not "make the world just." So the command would be for believers to do what is right, not whine about unbelievers not doing what is right.

Third to this, משפט "justice" is referring to right judgments one makes in terms of acting out what is right, and what is right according to Micah is to destroy all of the false religions in our midst and all who do what is wrong. In the biblical context of the Torah, justice means that those who worship other gods or have a syncretism of Yahwistic and pagan religions are to be executed. Furthermore, all criminals of a violent nature would be executed in order to do justice. That would mean that any violent criminal should actually be killed by the police if they were doing justice as believers in the context of Old Testament Israel. 

Fourth, this is to the covenant community about the covenant community. In other words, this is how some in the community of God are doing evil to others in the community of God, as well as the world that is doing evil to the covenant community. Justice means that all of these are removed from among them and destroyed. No peace and harmony and working together with unbelievers who are agents of chaos and followers of other gods to build a better society.

Fifth, terms like "good," "hesed," "humbly" all have covenant connotations to them. "Good" refers to that which is ordered and creational. "Hesed" refers to the love one has for God's people that goes above and beyond what is required and is often translated "covenant faithfulness" by many scholars. "Humbly" has to do with being careful to pay attention to what God has said and the phrase "to walk humbly with your God" refers to the idea that the covenant community is to pay attention and live out what God has said rather than take it out of context and do something else, as many here are doing.

Sixth, (I posted something to this effect on fb earlier), if all Christians, as spiritual Israel, follow Micah 6:8 in context, we should excommunicate everyone from the church who is of another religion or has syncretized Christianity with a false religion like Enlightenment inclusivism or religious ideas like social justice and egalitarianism (1:7; 3:5-7; 6:16) and anyone taking away the possessions of both poor and rich believers or harming or speaking against them for merely being poor or rich (2:2, 8). In other words, remove the wicked and save the godly. That’s what justice means in this text. The spiritual equivalent for the church is to remove all unrepentant “believers” from it in church discipline. So I expect a lot of Christians posting this to stop talking about justice for unbelievers and start cleaning up their churches. Try posting that on your wall and see how many people still think you’re woke. 

Hence, Micah has nothing to do with social justice issues among the pagans. The Bible does not tell us to right the wrongs of the world by preaching the law to them, but rather calls the church to call them out of the world through the gospel and into the glorious kingdom of the Savior. It further calls us to clean our own house from false religion and unbiblical ethics as the holy nation we are supposed to be.