Start here · day 12 of 14 · Justice, mercy, and the bad days
חֶסֶד
What is actually wanted
Micah 6
First, read it
Micah 6
Read it before the notes below. They are worth more once you have your own impression of it.
Open Micah 6Then, the idea
A prophet imagines someone trying to work out what God wants. More offerings? Thousands of rams? Rivers of oil? Something unthinkable?
And the answer comes back short enough to memorise: he has told you what is good, and what is required of you — to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.
That is the prophets' whole argument in one line. Not that ritual is bad, but that ritual which leaves the poor unpaid and the courts crooked is worth nothing.
One word of Hebrew
חֶסֶד
chesed — steady loving kindness
Hard to translate. It is loyalty and mercy at once — the kindness you show because of a relationship, not because it was earned or deserved.
And one question
Justice, mercy and humility. Which of the three is hardest for you, and why that one?
Nobody is marking this. Sit with it on the way to work.