Woe
I've been doing a lot of reading in the Old Testament prophets lately, specifically I've been studying the sections you might label "To Whom it May Concern". You'll find it, usually in the first handful of chapters or right at the beginning of any of those books, calling out all the people being specifically addressed and what their sins are - what it is that begs their repentance and why....
There is a very consistent theme among them:
The religious and political elite, the wealthy, the inhumane, the warmonger, the greedy, and those who aspire to be like and idolize any of the former.
I think a lot of people in Christendom find the Old Testament intimidating - stiff and confusing rules for which we have no cultural context, interesting but disconnected stories which have largely been washed of their most significant details in our tellings, and years of habitual proof-texting from the pulpits make it seem distant - like it wasn’t meant for us. Maybe there’s something to that, but maybe there’s also some real value in understanding it so that you might can have a better grasp on what Jesus believed and was talking about when he quoted the prophets.
There’s a lot of talk about fields and wheat in the Bible. Often, fields represent societies or groups, while the wheat berry itself is representative of the individual. Any former theo-bro can tell you how good the Bible is at providing analogies that can be broken down as you wrestle with them - this one is no different:
Wheat serves very little human purpose until it has been ground into grain and a single particle of grain serves very little purpose to anyone unless it is accompanied by a field full of equally pulverized particles of grain. Millstones work best at a slow, quiet pace - so as to not burn the end product with too much friction and heat. Individual berries (or kernels) of wheat are slowly cracked between stones and rubbed against one another into a final, uniform product that gently falls out of the side of the mill.
If we aren’t wheat, I don’t know what we are - thrust here under the weight of the millstone together.
There are a number of rules surrounding the use of land and the treatment of the poor in the Bible. Leviticus 19:9-10 refers to the practice of “The Gleanings” - wherein the farmer or landowner is required to leave the edges of their fields and/or the leftovers from harvest for the poor to collect. It is the collective violation of this law and others like it regarding the use of the land which brings forth the prophet Isaiah to warn of coming catastrophe:
Isaiah 5:8-10Woe to you who add house to house
and join field to field
till no space is left
and you live alone in the land.The Lord Almighty has declared in my hearing:
“Surely the great houses will become desolate,
the fine mansions left without occupants.
A ten-acre vineyard will produce only a bath of wine;
a homer of seed will yield only an ephah of grain.”
I think I’ve recently come to recognize that to understand the prophets is to understand what enrages the G-d of the Bible. They all point to the same thing; inhumanity, the refusal to Love, failing to see the Light in every person - these are the very real offenses against the Law which brought calamity and war - or as the prophet continues:
Isaiah 5: 13-15
Therefore my people will go into exile
for lack of understanding;
those of high rank will die of hunger
and the common people will be parched with thirst.
Therefore Death expands its jaws,
opening wide its mouth;
into it will descend their nobles and masses
with all their brawlers and revelers.
So people will be brought low
the eyes of the arrogant humbled.
17
Then sheep will graze as in their own pasture;
lambs will feed among the ruins of the rich.
20
Woe to those who call evil good
and good evil,
who put darkness for light
and light for darkness,
who put bitter for sweet
and sweet for bitter
23
who acquit the guilty for a bribe,
but deny justice to the innocent.
You can keep reading through the chapter to see what happens when the G-d of the Bible is enraged.
Ezekial flatly described Sodom and Gomorrah as the end result of a people who treat outsiders poorly, yet somehow a narrative about queerness is the dominant conclusion among most evangelicals. Jeremiah warns against corrupt kings and government, their greed and thirst for blood. The average believer only knows Jeremiah for one misused reference to conception.
There are reasons for the walls that have been built around this scripture, it serves a purpose for those who try to gatekeep the undesirable from the Kingdom and props up the kingdoms of this world - to have us focused on minutiae instead of that which is endemic ensures that the Kingdom does not come to pass.
For now.
Jesus and Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekial and all of the others who observed their society found them lacking, then called those societies to repentance before the wages of sin caught up to them. They all called us toward care, toward love, toward communion and finding compassion for those on the edges. They all called us to be wheat, slowly being ground by the weight of the millstone - and they all, every single one of them, made their condemnations based on the actions and attitudes of their collective societies - which, like our own, often reflect an envy of those who have been most condemned by the Gospel. We celebrate the cruelty and extravagance of the rulers of the world thru mimicry, jealousy, and worship.
What we’ve been taught about the prophets more than anything is that they are mouthpieces for a cruel and petty G-d, on the contrary, the prophets are calling you to care - to halt the great blasphemy that is refusal so that you might hold back the consequences of inaction.
Are the elite in your society leading you down the path to destruction?
Woe.
Have their wars desensitized you to suffering?
Woe.
Do you seek to accumulate for your own security, neglecting the security of others?
Woe.
Do you fail to rescue those being dragged off to death?
Woe.
Repent. The Kingdom is near.
References:
Leviticus 19:9-10
Proverbs 24
Isaiah 5
Ezekial 16
Matthew 21:33-46