Daily Devotional For Friday, July 17, 2026
Good morning Southside and our daily devotion comes from Micah 2:1-5:
“What sorrow awaits you who lie awake at night, thinking up evil plans. You rise at dawn and hurry to carry them out, simply because you have the power to do so. (2) When you want a piece of land, you find a way to seize it. When you want someone’s house, you take it by fraud and violence. You cheat a man of his property, stealing his family’s inheritance. (3) But this is what the Lord says: ‘I will reward your evil with evil; you won’t be able to pull your neck out of the noose. You will no longer walk around proudly, for it will be a terrible time.’ (4) In that day your enemies will make fun of you by singing this song of despair about you: ‘We are finished, completely ruined! God has confiscated our land, taking it from us. He has given our fields to those who betrayed us.’ (5) Others will set your boundaries then, and the Lord’s people will have no say in how the land is divided” (NLT).
There is a scene in the film version of J. R. R. Tolkien’s, The Two Towers, in which the prophet Micah would seem at home. King Theoden has been released from the evil enchantment that had tormented his mind. His face regains its natural color and his sword arm recovers its strength to fight. His eyes begin to dart around the throne room, flashing with menace, vengeance and a desire for justice. He saw his chamberlain/Treasurer named Grima Wormtongue. It was this evil agent of the devil that took Theoden captive. Theoden rages, and soon Wormtongue is violently tossed out the palace doors, his body rolling down the hard steps below as punishment.
As we read Micah 2, we get the same feeling here as in The Two Towers with King Theoden and Grima Wormtongue. Micah 2 is a sad chapter where the wealthy take advantage of the poor. What we have is those with means leveraging their power, positions and prominence to take what was not theirs to take. They preyed upon the weak and helpless. The rich were getting richer and the powerful were becoming more powerful all through corruption and greed through state function permission.
The poor and the vulnerable in society were dehumanized and degraded as they were defrauded of their God-given inheritance and forced into servitude by the corrupt ruling class. These evil people lay on their beds working into the night scheming ways to dehumanize the poor and take what little they even had. They are intentional, using cunning intelligence and manipulation to get what they want. They have become so sinful and corrupt as a nation they no longer need to do this under the cloak of secrecy.
Old Testament scholar Smith Christopher writes this: “The “inheritance” in view refers not simply to those material possessions that a child inherits from his father when the father dies but to the divinely granted and divinely apportioned land that each tribe, clan, and family were freely given when Israel entered the promised land” (Source: Smith Christopher, Micah, p. 83). Fields, houses, and households are the inheritance of God’s people given by God alone who is the sole landowner in Israel (Lev. 25:23; Isaiah 5:8; and Deut. 5:21).
The land was given to clans and families by God as an eternal inheritance. So permanent was this land inheritance that when such land was forfeited for a time it would, by divine law, be returned to the original owner in the Year of Jubilee (Lev. 25:23-28). In Micah’s day, God’s anger is justified because the sin is not just the deprivation of material possessions, but the deprivation of those things that sustain life as God intended for His covenantal people. Also, these wealthy greedy people were destroying the family, the basic building block of any culture and society.
When we get to verse 3, God’s anger and punishment against such greedy, wealthy people is dispersed on them. There was coming a time when these wealthy, greedy people would be humiliated and humbled by God. Covetousness is a sin and it is mentioned in the Ten Commandments (Ex. 20:17). The poor who were able to provide for their families now found themselves dependent on the wealthy for mercy even to work their once possessed fields. It was extortion all in the name of the Lord.
What is the lesson here? Everything we have is given to us for the purpose of blessing God and blessing His image-bearers. It is all God’s and we are the stewards of it (see Ps. 24:1). And yet the human heart is so twisted and distorted by sin that we often use God’s good gifts for evil and the demonic. Any time we advance ourselves at the expense of others, we are just as guilty as the rich in Micah 2.
Reflection Assignment: Ask the Lord to bring to your memory where you have advanced your interests in a sinful way at the expense of those who are innocent. If Ps. 24:1 is right – everything on this planet is the Lord’s, not ours, why do you think we use the pronouns such as “my, mine” as if it is ours?
Scripture To Meditate On: 1 Corinthians 10:26, “For “the earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it” (NLT).
Prayer To Pray: “Dear Lord, please forgive when I have taken advantage of others, when I have advanced myself at the expense of others. Please reveal this to me so that I can repent as Zacchaeus said he would in Luke 19:1-10. I love You Lord. In Jesus’ name, Amen!”
I love you Southside! – Pastor Kelly