Deuteronomy 28:43-45 English Standard Version

⁴³ The sojourner who is among you shall rise higher and higher above you, and you shall come down lower and lower. ⁴⁴ He shall lend to you, and you shall not lend to him. He shall be the head, and you shall be the tail. ⁴⁵ “All these curses shall come upon you and pursue you and overtake you till you are destroyed, because you did not obey the voice of the Lord your God, to keep his commandments and his statutes that he commanded you.

Continuing with the issues of the word covet, we move on from worst case to a bad case. The cause of this bad case is simple. The Lord tells us how to live and be at peace with one another and we do not harken to His Word.

Key to this bad case scenario is the word lend. What is the most used legal recourse in this country? We might say divorce but we should be thinking bankruptcy. We live beyond or means, we do not heed the word of the Lord and we find ourselves in debt. In 2019 there were 757,634 US bankruptcies declared. That does not include the number of financial restructures and selling off of assets to cover losses. Those are pure bankruptcy statistics.

That leaves a black mark on our name, our reputation, our dependability and our credit rating. It can take years to overcome. Once corrected, if old behaviors are not corrected, it only takes a minute to fall back into trouble. The most common cause of this lifestyle is wanting what we cannot afford.

Churches today now offer seminars on how to manage our money according to God’s word and sound financial strategies. Classes are filling fast and with good reason.

Micah 2:1-3 English Standard Version

Woe to the Oppressors

¹ Woe to those who devise wickedness and work evil on their beds! When the morning dawns, they perform it, because it is in the power of their hand.
² They covet fields and seize them, and houses, and take them away; they oppress a man and his house, a man and his inheritance.
³ Therefore thus says the Lord: behold, against this family I am devising disaster,from which you cannot remove your necks, and you shall not walk haughtily, for it will be a time of disaster.

Consider the word covet. It is multifaceted. Rather than confusing the issues, it is best to take one aspect at a time. This is worst case. In this case covet has dominated the mind of the oppressor to the point where they lay in bed at night thinking of ways to take what they want.

It is one thing to want a thing you do not deserve, it is another to devise mischief to obtain it. In this worst case scenario a word comes into play as a warning to those who act in this manner. That word is recompense.

Isaiah 59:18 King James Version (KJV) According to their deeds, accordingly he will repay, fury to his adversaries, recompence to his enemies; to the islands he will repay recompence.

Granted, those who do not believe in the Lord do not consider this to be an earnest threat. Their motto may well be “might makes right”. We who trust in the Lord have our instructions. We are not to repay evil with evil. While that might sound trite, we must remind ourselves that the Lord God all Mighty has the power to extract eternal punishments far worse than anything we might render.

There are lesser covets which are to be avoided.