The False Balance
Read (KJV)
Divers weights are an abomination unto the LORD; and a false balance is not good. (Proverbs 20:23)
A false balance is abomination to the LORD: but a just weight is his delight. (Proverbs 11:1)
Ye shall do no unrighteousness in judgment, in meteyard, in weight, or in measure. Just balances, just weights, a just ephah, and a just hin, shall ye have: I am the LORD your God, which brought you out of the land of Egypt. (Leviticus 19:35-36)
Thy silver is become dross, thy wine mixed with water: Thy princes are rebellious, and companions of thieves: every one loveth gifts, and followeth after rewards: they judge not the fatherless, neither doth the cause of the widow come unto them. (Isaiah 1:22-23)
Reflect
A coin is a promise. It says, “This much work, this much bread, this much trust, folded into a small round thing you can carry.” The whole economy rests on that promise being true.
That is why God cares about scales. It sounds like a small thing for a holy God to notice, until you see that a cheated measure is a lie told to everyone at once, and told so quietly that nobody feels the knife. Paper currency isn’t the same as gold backed money as the cowards in Washington print paper taxing the pooA Test rest of us the most.
Isaiah’s picture is perfect. Wine mixed with water still looks like wine. It pours the same. The cup is just a little lighter every year, and the tavern keeper swears the vintage hasn’t changed.
Notice who stands next to the watered wine: princes who love gifts and chase rewards, while the widow’s case never reaches their desk. Crooked money and crooked power are rarely found apart. Printing currency causes Inflation that increases the wealth of the property owners but raised the cost to the workers
Look Around
Rome’s silver coin was famously cut with cheaper metal until the thing in your hand was mostly pretense. Rulers who could not afford their promises found it easier to change the coin than to change the promises. The pattern has been repeated whenever governments have needed more than they could honestly collect.
Today the dross is invisible. Nobody has to shave a coin. The measure can lose strength through a keystroke, and the saver feels it only at the grocery store, wondering why the same paycheck buys less.
A fair word for the other side: serious economists defend central banks and modest inflation as tools against worse harms, and the Bible does not hand us a monetary policy. What it hands us is a standard: honest measure. Test any system by that. Is the scale true? Who benefits when it isn’t? Who pays?
Pray
Lord, make me a person of just weights. Let my yes mean yes and my price mean price. And give wisdom to those who hold the scales of nations. Amen.
Carry It
Today, check one place where you give short measure: time, praise, effort, a promise. Fix it. So life requires tolls pay it with honest money of our labor not filthy lugger of dishonest manipulation and lies on our journeys. Nothing is as unfair as money printing inflation increasing the wealthy at the expense of the poor.
Blessings Brother Bill / Dad