What is the context?
The warning continues the judgment announced in chapter 9, ending with the same refrain about the Lord’s anger and upraised hand. It now names people who write unjust laws and oppressive decrees.
Their decisions deny fair treatment to the poor and turn widows and orphans into people to be exploited. The problem is built into the way authority is exercised: those responsible for protecting others use their position to take from them.
The coming day of reckoning reverses their apparent security. They must answer where they will find help and leave their wealth when devastation arrives. Their power cannot save them from captivity or death, and the warning ends without announcing an end to God’s anger.
How is this passage commonly understood?
Henry applies the warning to both those who devise unjust decrees and the officials who put them into effect. Wesley similarly identifies rulers and judges who make unjust laws or hand down unjust decisions.
Their shared emphasis is that legal authority does not make injustice right. The people who deny others a fair hearing will themselves have to answer to God, and neither wealth nor office will provide an escape.
What is our position?
We don't have a position on this passage yet. When our study reaches a conclusion the text supports, it will appear here.