Leviticus 19 · Passage · Justice
Just Weights
Leviticus, Deuteronomy, Proverbs and four prophets treat the weight and the measure of the market as matters of justice.
Amos heard the grain traders of Israel wish the Sabbath over so that they could cheat with dishonest scales.
You shall maintain honest scales and weights, an honest ephah, and an honest hin. I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt.
- The passage
- Leviticus 19:35, Leviticus 19:36, Proverbs 11:1
- Books
- Leviticus, Proverbs
- Hold in memory
- Proverbs 11:1
Summary
The law of Moses commands Israel to keep honest scales, honest weights and honest measures, and it closes the command with the name of the LORD who brought them out of Egypt. Deuteronomy adds a promise of long life in the land to the same command. Proverbs calls dishonest scales an abomination to the LORD and the accurate weight His delight, and the prophets later charged Israel's traders and princes with the scales the law forbade.
- In Hebrew, Leviticus 19:35 sets the measures inside the law's word for judgment, mishpat.
- Leviticus 19:36 calls each of the four measures righteous in its Hebrew.
- Hosea, Amos, Micah and Ezekiel each name the false scale in their charge against Israel.
The Law of the Honest Scale
The command stands at the close of Leviticus 19, among the laws of holiness.
The honest scale is one of the plainest forms of justice in Scripture. It belongs to justice, the value Scripture first names in God and then requires of His people in the court and in the market. A buyer who cannot weigh the goods himself trusts the seller's weights, and a false weight robs him while he watches.
The question this study answers is why Scripture treats a dishonest weight as a sin against the LORD. It sets the texts side by side in a table, follows the command into the market, and gives the readings of teachers who carried it from the market to the court.
You must not use dishonest measures of length, weight, or volume.This verse is the first line of the command, before the honest measures are named one by one.
You shall not have two differing weights in your bag, one heavy and one light. You shall not have two differing measures in your house, one large and one small.Moses gives the command again at the end of his law, now as a rule for the bag and the house.
Eight Texts from Moses to Ezekiel
The table gives the Hebrew word each text uses and the people it speaks to.
Three of the eight texts speak to Israel as a people, two to the reader of Proverbs and three to the traders and rulers the prophets accused.
| Text | The Berean words | The Hebrew word | Addressed to |
|---|---|---|---|
| Leviticus 19:35 | You must not use dishonest measures of length, weight, or volume. | mishpat, judgment | Israel |
| Leviticus 19:36 | You shall maintain honest scales and weights, an honest ephah, and an honest hin. | tsedeq, righteousness, four times | Israel |
| Deuteronomy 25:15 | You must maintain accurate and honest weights and measures | shelemah, full, with tsedeq | Israel |
| Proverbs 11:1 | Dishonest scales are an abomination to the LORD | mirmah, deceit, against a full weight | The reader of Proverbs |
| Proverbs 16:11 | Honest scales and balances are from the LORD | mishpat, scales of justice | The reader of Proverbs |
| Hosea 12:7 | A merchant loves to defraud with dishonest scales in his hands. | mozenayim, scales | Ephraim |
| Amos 8:5 | let us cheat with dishonest scales | mozenayim, scales | The traders of Israel |
| Ezekiel 45:10 | You must use honest scales, a just ephah, and a just bath. | mozenayim, scales | The princes of Israel |
Amos 8:5, Ezekiel 45:10
From the Law to the Market
The proverbs teach the rule to the young, and Amos and Micah hear it broken in the city.
Proverbs comes back to the scale in later chapters: “Honest scales and balances are from the LORD” (Proverbs 16:11), and “Unequal weights are detestable to the LORD, and dishonest scales are no good” (Proverbs 20:23).
Let us buy the poor with silver and the needy for a pair of sandals, selling even the chaff with the wheat!”The cheating at the scale ends in people sold, the charge Amos made against Israel from his first chapters.
Why a Scale Is Justice
A people freed from slavery were not to rob one another, and the rule reached the tax collectors who came to John.
At the scale a freed people kept faith with the God who had freed them.
When tax collectors came to be baptized and asked John what they should do, he gave them a rule of measure.
“Collect no more than you are authorized,” he answered.The rule comes from the prophet who prepared the way for Jesus, so it carries into the New Testament.
Teachers on the Scale
Two teachers, of the fourth century and the eighteenth, read the false weight as theft and as injustice.
died 397 · Ambrose of Milan
On the Duties of the Clergy 3.9.65
The quotation1 quotation
“Every kind of unfair action is shameful. Even in common things, false weights and unjust measures are accursed. And if fraud in the market or in business is punished, can it seem free from reproach if found in the midst of the performance of the duties of virtue?”
Ambrose of Milan · On the Duties of the Clergy 3.9.65 · on Proverbs 20:10Patristic
1662 to 1714 · Matthew Henry
Commentary on the Whole Bible
The quotation1 quotation
“In weighing and measuring, we pretend a design to give all those their own whom we deal with; but, if the weights and measures be false, it is like a corruption in judgment, it cheats under colour of justice; and thus to deceive a man to his damage is worse than picking his pocket or robbing him on the highway.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible · on Leviticus 19:36Puritan
The Scale of the Market or the Scale of the Court
Commentators read the honest-scale texts either as a rule of trade or as a picture of all judgment.
A rule of trade for a people whose commerce was growingAlbert Barnes, Notes on the Old Testament, on Proverbs 11:1
Albert Barnes read Proverbs 11:1 as “perhaps a trace of the danger of dishonesty incidental to the growing commerce of the Israelites”.
Against this reading stands the law's own wording, which joined measure and judgment before any growth of trade.
A balance held in judgment as well as in the marketBede, Commentary on Proverbs, on Proverbs 11:1
Bede wrote in his Commentary on Proverbs that a deceitful balance is held “in judicial discretion” as well as in the measurement of money.
Against this reading stand the ephah, the hin and the shekel, the measures of the market that the law and the prophets name.
One Weight for Buyer and Seller
The honest weight is justice at the size of a market stall.
A merchant with one weight in his bag cannot favour the rich buyer or cheat the poor one, and so the scale keeps the rule of the court that forbids partiality.
Sources
Scripture is the Berean Standard Bible.
- STEP Bible TBESH, Tyndale House, CC BY 4.0.
- Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible (1710), on Leviticus 19:36.
- Ambrose of Milan, On the Duties of the Clergy, book 3, chapter 9, section 65.
- Bede, Commentary on Proverbs, on Proverbs 11:1.
- Albert Barnes, Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old Testament, on Proverbs 11:1.
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