Hear, of mountains, the case of the LORD, and you mighty pillars of the earth. For the LORD has a case against His people, and with Israel He would dispute [Micah 6:2, THE HEBREW BIBLE, tr. by Robert Alter].
Dusting off some old notes related to this week’s Old Testament reading, Micah 6:1-8 [Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany, Revised Common Lectionary, Year A], I’m reminded that in these verses the prophet is describing what my Divinity School professors called a “covenant lawsuit,” a rare type of biblical narrative found only in scattered portions of Holy Scripture (e.g., within the writings of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Amos). It’s a scripture passage gift-wrapped for someone like me since, on the one hand—other than Jane and our progeny—there’s nothing I love more than reading and writing about Holy Scripture. And, on the other hand, I’ve made a living now for the past 36 years analyzing and writing about a relatively narrow range of legal disputes. With this unusual passage, I get to do both.
According to Micah, Yahweh has “filed” a lawsuit against Israel. What’s more, Yahweh has asked for a jury trial, only this is quite an unusual jury. Yahweh will plead His case before mountains and hills [6:1-2]. As with most lawsuits, Yahweh initial “pleading” is “a complaint.” I’m now borrowing from the legal world here; Yahweh’s complaint “sounds” not so much in tort, but in contract. Israel has broken its covenant (i.e., its contract) with Yahweh. Yahweh was to be their sole God. They were to worship and glorify Him, not traipse off after other gods. They’ve failed to live according to that covenant. And yet, all this time, Yahweh has been faithful.
In earlier passages, Micah has signaled that disaster will result from Israel’s failure to abide by the terms of the covenant/contract. And so, if disaster flows from Israel’s disobedience, they have caused the disaster. Micah stresses that Yahweh cannot be characterized as unjust. Let the mountains and hills decide the case, declares Yahweh. After all, those hills and mountains have been around long enough to see all that Israel and her neighbors have done. The hills and mountains were present when the covenant was made; they may now pass on Israel’s breach thereof.
To me, the most interesting aspect about Yahweh’s “lawsuit” is the fact that Yahweh has chosen this sort of dispute resolution forum at all. That Yahweh would “complain,” rather than take some other, more forceful and direct action, says a great deal about Yahweh’s essential nature. After all, Yahweh is the Almighty. Yahweh is the Omnipotent One. As we read in the New Testament—Matthew 3:9—Yahweh could, if He so desired, “raise up” children for Abraham from the stones found on the ground. To be sure, Yahweh could have struck down all of Israel, for Israel deserved it. Indeed, Yahweh could strike down all who are alive today, for often our own disobedience is blatant and disrespectful. What is Yahweh’s standard?
He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? [Micah 6:8].
Alas, all too often, we seek only our own brands of justice. We disregard the weakest among us. We consent to their destruction. We pretend to love kindness, yet we mostly love displays of human power and strength. Rather than walk humbly with God, we presumptuously follow our own paths. We take “the road most traveled,” the road that leads to the unholy trinity: me, myself, and I.
One reason Yahweh chooses His lawsuit, instead of a quick swat from His all-powerful hand, is that Yahweh expected better from Israel; Yahweh expects better from us. What is more, we have the capacity to do better. When Yahweh fashioned Creation, he coupled two characteristics: (a) the freedom to act, and (b) the moral responsibility to turn from our wrongs and alter our own behavior. While Yahweh’s presence is constant and abiding, Yahweh chose not to be the helicopter parent, the one who constantly hovers over us in order that we might never fail. Instead, He gave us not only the power to sin, but also the power to turn away from that sin.
Yahweh’s choice of a lawsuit is curious for another interesting reason. One doesn’t lay out a complaint against someone who is incapable of responding appropriately. Within the legal world, there’s a phrase that refers to someone who has no assets, no hope of securing any assets, someone who has nothing in the way of an expectancy. When someone is incapable of an appropriate response, he or she is said to be “judgment proof.” One doesn’t file a complaint against those sorts of people; one doesn’t throw good resources after bad.
And yet, with humanity, Yahweh has a strange, alternative notion: that we aren’t judgment proof. That Yahweh is willing to judge us, to be disappointed in us, to chide and scold us, and yet to expect that we will turn from our wrongs and alter our own behavior—it means that Yahweh thinks that there is something within us, and about us, that is valuable and worth saving.
And yet it is at this moment—the moment in which Yahweh says we’re worth saving—that an unusual “contradiction” surfaces. Reviewing my notes from the decades-old OT class, I see something profound, yet almost crazy:
Yahweh has been wounded by the disobedience and treachery of the people that He has created in Love.
Our wrongs cause us harm. The deep Truth found in this passage from Micah is that our wrongs injure God as well. For unfathomable reasons, Yahweh was willing to create a world in which not only we, but He, is subjected to our short-sightedness, to our propensity to sin. The all-powerful, all-knowing, all-present, unfathomable God consents to be wounded by us.
When we are wounded, most of us lash out. Much of humanity favors a “disproportionate response” in these sorts of circumstances. According to that philosophy, the best way to redress the wrong done to us is to retaliate with an even stronger force. And yet, Yahweh’s reaction is not to obliterate us for our wrongs, but rather to meet with us. To be sure, His choice of a lawsuit format, His filing of a complaint, signals that this meeting—this discussion—is adversarial. But it also signals that we are not beyond salvation. We’re not judgment proof.
Yahweh gave Israel—He gives each us of—freedom of the will. It seems that in order for us to choose to live as Yahweh originally intended, Yahweh had to create within us the possibility that we might instead choose to live in a world bound not by His love and concern for us, but rather by our own selfish choices.
In His eternal wisdom, Yahweh chose a form of self-limiting “existence” with us. He did not seek to be bound up with a people who lacked the freedom to live alone, i.e., without Him. Because of Yahweh’s choice, a necessary level of tension must exist within Yahweh’s Kingdom. That tension: Yahweh is at once undeniably sovereign and yet, at the same time, self-limiting. Yahweh, who needs nothing, seeks relationship with a humanity that has been given the power to reject Him.
As the mountains and hills hear the complaint given by God, they recognize one powerful and undergirding Truth: that despite our sin, humanity remains in relationship with God. We, who do not deserve it, are in relationship with the all-powerful One who chooses some measure of self-limitation. God allows for our failures but does so without giving up control of the moral framework within which our failures persist.
And so, within the framework of His lawsuit against us, God reveals a powerful and humbling truth: Yahweh is a God whom we can wound. Ours is a God whom we can even nail to a cross and kill, but for Whom no wound or death is ever the final word. Thanks be to God.
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