They do not know how to do right, declares the LORD, those who store up violence and robbery in their strongholds. The diagnosis is devastating: Israel's ruling class has lost the moral capacity to do justice. The phrase 'do not know how to do right' is not ignorance but trained incapacity — they have so habitually practiced oppression that righteousness has become foreign to them. 'Violence and robbery stored in strongholds' pictures the accumulated wealth of the elite as literally constituted by what they have seized from the poor. The fortress, meant to protect the city, has become a warehouse of stolen goods.

COMMUNITY REFLECTIONS

Publish a note on this verse