Was God angry with Israel for its lack of social justice?  No doubt God was angry with Israel and through His prophets He warned them.  The Bible, including the Minor Prophets, doesn’t mention “social justice.”  It mentions just “justice.”  Those who point out social justice in the Minor Prophets, or “The Prophets” as the Hebrews referred to it, say that God punished Israel for its social injustice.  What they most often don’t say is that social justice itself is injustice according to its definition:

Social justice refers to a fair and equitable division of resources, opportunities, and privileges in society. Originally a religious concept, it has come to be conceptualized more loosely as the just organization of social institutions that deliver access to economic benefits.

Many different factors change the economic and social outcome of individuals.  Scripture and, therefore, God doesn’t guarantee equality of resources or privileges.  God doesn’t ensure equal opportunity.  Bringing social justice into the Minor Prophets alters the meaning of justice, reads something corrupt into scripture.

When I say, “justice,” I’m speaking of the Hebrew word mishpot, found 421 times in the Old Testament.   Translators translate mishpot both “justice” and “judgment.”

Evangelical social justice warriors use a prophet like Amos, where in 5:7 he says,

Ye who turn judgment to wormwood, and leave off righteousness in the earth.

“Righteousness” (tsidaqa) in the second half relates to “judgment” (mishpot) in the first half.  A warning occurs later in verse 15:

Hate the evil, and love the good, and establish judgment in the gate: it may be that the LORD God of hosts will be gracious unto the remnant of Joseph.

“Establish judgment” (mishpot) and the “LORD God of hosts will be gracious.”  Same chapter, verse 25, was a common refrain from civil rights leaders, used according to what became called “liberation theology,” which spiritualizes these Old Testament passages with a form of amillennialism.

But let judgment run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream.

Social justice advocates now use these verses in a wide ranging manner, that is hardly justice.  The “judgment,” that is mishpot, is the judgment of God.  How does God judge what occurs?  Israel doesn’t follow God’s laws, which are His righteousness.  Israel falls short of the glory of God.

Micah is another prophet who confronts the same theme as Amos in such verses like 3:9:

Hear this, I pray you, ye heads of the house of Jacob, and princes of the house of Israel, that abhor judgment, and pervert all equity.

“Equity” at the very end isn’t a contemporary understanding.  The Hebrew word means “straight, right, level, or pleasing,” as in pleasing to God.  Israel was making crooked what was straight.  That’s injustice.

When some people get away with lawbreaking because they’re rich, that is injustice.  It’s not judging like God does.  When that occurs, the straight becomes crooked.  It’s also allowing people to get away with such activity.

Today the social justice warriors are championed by the rich, who get off the hook for their injustice.  They cover for criminal evidence on a laptop of the President’s son.  They tear up public property in Seattle and Portland without arrest.  Illegals flow across the border.  A homeless man urinates on the street without justice.  Yet, all of this is “social justice.”

A verse in Micah equal in fame to Amos 5:25 is Micah 6:8:

He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?

People “do justly” or they don’t.  In other words, they characteristically do what pleases God or they don’t.  Justice relates to God.  Doing justice means no one gets away with unrighteousness, which is what God says it is.  If he does break God’s law, he repents.  When a boy dresses like a girl or a girl dresses like a boy, that’s not mishpot.  Abortion violates mishpot too.  I can keep going a long time with such examples of the transgression of God’s law.

Calling the contents of the preaching of the Minor Prophets “social justice” perverts the point and meaning of the Minor Prophets.  It sounds like impressive exegesis to a woke audience.  It panders to that group.  However, it corrupts justice.  It makes the straight crooked in contradiction to Micah 3:9.  It promotes redistribution of wealth, taking from those who earned it and giving it to those who didn’t, a form of thievery.  This corresponds to a now famous statement by President Obama when he ran for reelection in 2012, speaking of small business owners, “You didn’t build it.”

The prophets preach repentance too.  Amos 5:4 says, “Seek ye me, and ye shall live.”  5:6, “Seek the LORD, and ye shall live.”  5:9, “Seek him that maketh the seven stars and Orion.”  5:14, “Seek good, and not evil, that ye may live: and so the LORD, the God of hosts, shall be with you, as ye have spoken.”  The road to justice starts with personal repentance, seeking the LORD and, therefore, His ways.

Perhaps the greatest abuse of justice is idolatry, elevating man’s lust above God.  False worship.  Rather than loving God, loving your self.  None of this is mishpot.  This isn’t justice.  This isn’t seeking after God.