The faithful have been swept from the land; not one upright person remains. Everyone lies in wait to shed blood; they hunt each other with nets. – Micah 7:2

Today’s Scripture Reading (January 27, 2014): Micah 7

Diogenes of Sinope roamed around Athens during the fourth century B.C.E. He had been exiled from his home town of Sinope because of his economic beliefs (he was an advocate of the debasement or devaluing of currency. Surprisingly, his father was a minter of coins.) So Diogenes moved to Athens. Personally, Diogenes modeled himself after the example of Hercules, believing that true virtue is revealed by action rather than belief – or an emphasis on orthopraxy (right practice) over orthodoxy (right belief.) So Diogenes lived a very simple life and used that life to criticize the social values of his time. He voluntarily adopted a lifestyle of poverty, begging on the street for food and living in a large ceramic jar – probably similar to a barrel – in the marketplace. Diogenes was known for his acerbic nature. He embarrassed Plato, he disputed Socrates and was highly critical of Alexander the Great. And he was known for his stunts. One of his practices was to walk around Athens in the middle of the day with a lit lamp saying that “he was searching for an honest man.” Evidently, in Athens during the time of Diogenes, an honest man was hard to find.

Micah would have seemed to have fit in with Diogenes. Micah describes the society as being without a righteous person (or an honest man.) His description almost fits something out of a contemporary post-apocalyptic novel. It is a society where law is missing – and there is no one to take care of the needs of the poor. Everyone seeks to do what it is that they desire to do. As Micah prophecies towards the end of Kingdoms of Israel and Judah, His description of society is very similar to the description we have of the society of Israel during the days of the Judges - In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as they saw fit (Judges 21:23). Evidently the presence of a king had not changed the social situation of Israel. And it would seem that in Israel, Micah was also a prophet searching the streets, trying desperately to find an honest man.

But the words also reflect the reality of Israel at the time of the exile. When Babylon defeated Judah and took them into exile, they removed the best and brightest. But the process also continued. The purpose of the exile was to remove leaders from Judah, removing the ability of Judah to govern itself - and remove the ability of the nation to rebel against their Babylonian keepers. The result of the exile was a populace in Judah that would have spent all of their time and energy on simple survival. But even then, there would have been some who were upright that were left in the land.

Some have compared this description of Micah with our current society. Whenever brutal egotism (a sense that everything is about me) dominates a society, we would expect bribery to be rampant and the society itself to be in deep decline. And in that moment, both Micah and Diogenes would probably stress that what we need is to search for an honest man, one that lead us to something more than us – and lead us toward the essential community that great society is always based on.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Nahum 1