I don’t think I’ve ever quoted a bible verse on this blog before, but I came across these passages today, having spent much of it reading about unjust decisions, people deprived of even the most meagre subsistence for months and even years for no sane reason. In the context of the things I’ve had to read, and to write about, lately they seem so apposite, so utterly appropriate, so evocative of melancholy, of weary grief and justified anger, that whatever your faith or if you have none at all, I think you’ll see their rightness. The first is from the book of Isaiah, chapter 10:
Woe to those who enact evil statutes, and to those who continually record unjust decisions, so as to deprive the needy of justice, and rob the poor of their rights… Now what will you do in the day of punishment, and in the devastation which will come from afar?The second from the book of Job, chapter 22:
Is not your wickedness great?
Are not your sins endless?
You stripped people of their clothing, leaving them naked.
You gave no water to the weary
and you withheld food from the hungry,
though you were a powerful man, owning land—
an honored man, living on it.
And you sent widows away empty-handed
and broke the strength of the fatherless.
Could anything fit the triumvirate of obscenity with which we’re currently burdened better than these words? I’m tired, very tired – but I’m more angry than I am tired. A lot more.
Shame on them.
