Economic piracy and land confiscation (Micah 2:1–5) : Micah’s portrayal of evil-doers, evil-doing, and Yahweh’s action

Abstract

The struggle over land and its socio-economic relatedness, power, loss, and restoration ignites prophetic oracles represented in different clusters of prophetic activities in the Prophetic Books. While prophetic indictments against injustice have attracted the attention of many readers and interpreters, they have, however, presented contextual complexity and ambiguity. Since the text does not allow readers to easily contextualise these oracles in terms of any particular historical narrative or metanarrative about an event, this article attempts to understand the dynamics of injustice in society within the textual window of Micah 2:1–5, as it relates to evil-doers, evil-doing, and Yahweh’s action. The text does not give the identity of the evil-doers, but it does present a graphic picture of evil-doing (of economic piracy and land confiscation) and Yahweh’s intervention to correct evil-doing. The theological proposition of this article is that in situations of socio-economic transgressions in which covenant community members are denied their symbolic and material possessions, such ethical violations will never go unaddressed. Although this portrait of Yahweh’s intervention to correct evil-doing in the context of socio-economic transgression conflicts with the hard realities of a world populated by evil men and plagued with unjust dealings, it is consistent with Yahweh’s concern for justice and reflects his just decrees and deeds, especially as revealed to and experienced by his covenant people.