Walk Humbly, Love Kindness, and Do Justice: A Queer Reading of Micah 6:8

Joseph Dearduff

Tattooed on forearms, adhered over family room windows, feverishly underlined in red ink on its dog-eared page, and etched into the minds of myriad believers of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and David is the beloved Micah 6:8, which reads: “[God] has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”[i]

Before exploring the inherently queer nature of this text and expounding upon how one might do a queering reading of Micah 6:8, it is important that I first establish my social location with the hope that, in so doing, my self-disclosure will inform you as the reader and myself as the author of how my own personal experience shapes how I approach this text. Aspects of my identity are founded in, but are by no means limited to or listed in any particular order: being a Christian, a Caucasian American, a cisgender straight male, a seminary student with a B.A. in Pastoral Ministry and Psychology, a tenant of a two-bedroom apartment and an owner of a car, the son of very loving and supportive parents who both have children from previous marriages, and a twenty-four-year-old young adult whose childhood was spent in a predominantly white and conservative-leaning suburban Chicagoland neighborhood.

 I approach Micah 6:8 from a position of immense blessing and comfort—from a position that might otherwise been understood as privilege. I approach the text with a desire to recognize my privilege and to be a traitor to the oppressive systems that have benefitted me. Likewise, I approach the text with a deep respect for the larger work in which it is situated—that is, the Bible. I understand the text of Scripture to be a divinely inspired work written by human hands; my personal hermeneutic is shaped by a reverence for the Word of God as infallible in containing the message God desires for us to receive from it, but also by a caution that it is not inerrant; in other words, in facets including but not limited to grammatical and literary structure, cultural acquisition, historical translation and presentation, and human interpretation, the Bible fails, by human hand, to portray that message which it infallibly contains. And so, in being the Word of God, the Bible demands intention and care when it is opened, read, received, and shared.

Herein I will attempt to offer a queer reading of Micah 6:8 by first synthesizing queer approaches from both queer voices and queer allies, such as those of Michael Carden, Professor of Biblical Studies and Comparative Religion at the University of Queensland, who has spent many years with LGBTQI2+ and HIV/Aids community organizations; Erin Runions, Professor and Chair of Religious Studies at Pomona College, who is a community activist for women’s prison justice and for feminism and queer organizing; and Rebecca T. Alpert, a lesbian Jew and a professor in the Departments of Religion and Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies at Temple University.[ii] I will then offer my own brief examination of the inherently queer nature of the text itself, drawing on notions presented by Teresa J. Hornsby and Ken Stone in the preface to Bible Trouble: Queer Reading at the Boundaries of Biblical Scholarship, who remind the queering interpreter that “we are not dealing here simply with ‘queer’ interpretation of the Bible; the Bible is always already queer.”[iii] In so doing, I hope to, in this short exegesis of Micah 6:8, reveal that the inherently queer call to walk humbly, love kindness, and do justice is one that establishes the true worship of God as living a life that accepts, affirms, and embraces the otherness of my neighbor.

We can first examine the queerness of Micah 6:8 by situating it within the literary, structural, and grammatical queerness of the larger book of Micah itself. Michael Carden, in his subsection on “The Book of the Twelve Minor Prophets” in The Queer Bible Commentary, suggests that “there is no clear narrative in Micah, and the book is noteworthy for its ambiguity and its sudden shifts in mood and voice, the latter shifting not only from prophetic to YHWH mode but also giving utterance to several other unidentified figures.”[iv] Structurally, the three subsections of the book queerly combine themes of denunciation and punishment (Micah 1:2-3:12) with visions of hope (Micah 4:1-5:14) all within its final scene (6:1-7:20), wherein we find the text of Micah 6:8 itself.[v] Furthermore, applying a grammatical-critical lens, Carden examines instances of male-female hybridity throughout the text, noting the rapid reversal of masculine to feminine depictions within the grammatical structure of the Hebrew words themselves in instances regarding the imperative pronominal form of the second person you.[vi] 

Erin Runions reiterates these ambiguities in Changing Subjects: Gender, Nation, and Future in Micah. The queerness of the text of Micah 6:8 is compounded by the obscurities that surround it, wherein “different Hebrew structures [including] ambiguous referents, odd and difficult phrases, and frequent switches in gender and person, addressor and addressee” are found.[vii] Gender hybridity abounds in the book, as is exemplified in Zion’s interchangeable “active male, triumphant ruler” and “passive, suffering female nation” identities.[viii] And, in Micah 6:8, another hybrid identity appears: Israel, as an oppressed-oppressing people, seeks to walk humbly, love kindness, and do justice as a nation under threat from or subjugated and scattered by the great power while also as a nation which, by the evocation of past events like the Exodus, is a conquering and colonizing power that will destroy the people of the land.[ix]

As an accompaniment to this literary and grammatical-critical work of the world within the text, Rebecca T. Alpert’s perspective as a Jewish lesbian, composed in “Do Justice, Love Mercy, Walk Humbly: Reflection on Micah and Gay Ethics,” provides an engagement-based approach for the world beyond the text. She begins first with “walking modestly with God (hatznea lechet im eloheha),” which she understands as how one is to live with and present oneself in the world. “As Jewish lesbians,” she suggests, “we begin with the assumption that we can only walk with God if we know and accept ourselves for who we are. Walking with God begins with self-acceptance and requires that we tell ourselves the truth about ourselves,” respecting the mysterious process that “makes [us] women who are erotically attracted to other women and who prefer to build [our] lives with them.”[x] Alpert expresses a strong opinion against her closeted friends, calling for them to break their “conspiracy of silence,” which is a detriment to their own lives as lesbians; she suggests that walking humbly with God requires that we accept of ourselves our sexual joys and pleasures, seeing our erotic lives not as cut off from the rest of ourselves but as integral to making our lives both rich and meaningful.[xi]

She queers the reading of Micah 6:8 by exegeting the final precept of walk humbly first, despite its tertiary placement within the three commands, because “it is only those who come to self acceptance [who] can begin to work towards creating a world of love and justice.”[xii] To love well (ahavat hesed), according to Alpert, is made manifest in how we establish social relationships. In order to love well, she suggests, we must honor our responsibilities to others and carefully consider what we can do to enable our community to thrive. And in order to ultimately love our community well, we must receive ahavat hesed from the community in return.[xiii] In a critique of feminist philosophers, Alpert connects ahavat hesed with doing justice (asot mishpat), which she understands as how one makes the world a better place: to dichotomize the feminine approach as one of intimate caring and the masculine approach as one that demands abstract justice is to falsely dichotomize love and justice, which instead must exist as connected parts of a singular call.[xiv]

Herein allow me to briefly insert my own queer reading of Micah 6:8, wherein which I draw from no academically reliable source but rather from the creative output of my own reflections which, the reader will do well to recall, are housed in a life of significant privilege. Hornsby and Stone might affirm this attempt, for “queer reading is characterized not simply by attention to diverse genders and sexualities but also by diversities of style, form, critical approach, and so forth.”[xv] Micah 6:8, by nature of its location in the biblical text and in what the actual text is itself, is in its very essence a queering of Scripture. Consider the two verses preceding this eighth verse: 

“With what shall I come before the LORD, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before [God] with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousand rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?” [xvi]

Through obvious hyperbole, the minor prophet Micah is drawing upon Old Testament Exodus illustrations of and Levitical laws pertaining to proper sacrifice to God. Each hyperbolic rhetorical suggestion he poses as the right sacrifice to be righteous before God is progressively more demanding than the previous, but all five possible material sacrifices are proven insufficient and simply incorrect offerings. 

Micah 6:8 answers—and queerly, at that—what one must do to live righteously and to act in a manner pleasing unto the Lord. It is in walking humbly, in loving kindness, and in doing justice that one presents to God what material offerings do not. And so, queering the Levitical precepts regarding proper sacrifice (as well as modernized legalistic mandates requiring certain daily practices, weekly habits, and other standardized behaviors whose apparent failure to perform elicits so-called anger, disapproval, or retribution from God), Micah 6:8 inherently reads against the text of Scripture itself, composed in a manner that does not contradict, but rather critiques, completes, and queers the larger text of Scripture as a whole.

And so, albeit with brevity, herein rests a queer reading of Micah 6:8 which, as is made clear in the literary, grammatical, and applicable elements of the text itself and the surrounding text in which it is situated, is inherently a reading against of the text of Scripture as a whole. Of course, in that I am one human person who has lived only one human experience, my understanding of Micah 6:8 is limited by my own social context. But, with reference to Runions’ interpretation, I as the biblical exegete find resonance with Micah’s depiction of a hybrid identity; that is, due to my social context, I experience a “wanting to do justice, [while] being part of a larger system that makes this difficult, [of] trying to ‘give things back,’ [while] being caught up in a system in which [I am] ultimately benefitting.”[xvii] 

Even so, my thesis is limited in that it is composed by a solitary individual who draws from only four other scholars to comment on a text written thousands of years ago that is meant for and read among stand interpreted by millions, if not billions, of others throughout history. Furthermore, in their preface, Hornsby and Stone reflect that “the production of heterosexuality is from the deep, appears briefly as a precisely formed entity, but moves, shifts, takes on new forms, and dissipates, dissolving back into queerness.”[xviii] However, before this production of heterosexuality dissolves back into queerness, allow me to close by returning to Rebecca Alpert, who does the hard work of establishing the implications of this queer reading of Micah 6:8 when she warns us that walking humbly, loving kindness, and doing justice are not mutually exclusive but rather intrinsically interconnected. We cannot make a choice “between accepting ourselves, caring for our circle of loved ones, and doing justice in the world.” These efforts must be woven into one framework.[xix] That framework begins with self-acceptance, continues into a love for our close communities, and ultimately reaches beyond ourselves to create a world wherein justice can be found for everyone.

Works Cited 

Alpert, Rebecca T. “Do Justice, Love Mercy, Walk Humbly: Reflection on Micah and Gay Ethics.” Take Back the Word: A Queer Reading of the Bible. Eds. Robert E. Goss and Mona West. Cleveland: The Pilgrim Press, 2000. 170-182.

Carden, Michael. “The Book of the Twelve Minor Prophets.” The Queer Bible Commentary. Eds. Deryn Guest, Robert E. Goss, Mona West, and Thomas Bohache. London: SCMN Press, 2006. 468-471.

Hornsby, Teresa J. and Ken Stone. “Already Queer: A Preface.” Bible Trouble: Queer Reading at the Boundaries of Biblical Scholarship. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2011. ix-xiv.

New Revised Standard Version. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2008.

Runions, Erin. Changing Subjects: Gender, Nation and Future in Micah. London: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001.

Notes

[i] All Scripture references are from the New Revised Standard Version (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2008).

[ii] The LGBTQI2+ acronym is adapted from Patrick S. Cheng’s Rainbow Theology: Bridging Race, Sexuality, and Spirit (New York: Seabury Books, 2013), wherein he includes the numeral 2 in order to acknowledge Two-Spirit Indigenous identities found within the culture of indigenous peoples in the Americas.

[iii] Teresa J. Hornsby and Ken Stone, “Already Queer: A Preface,” in Bible Trouble: Queer Reading at the Boundaries of Biblical Scholarship, ix-xiv, (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2011), xii.

[iv] Michael Carden, “The Book of the Twelve Minor Prophets,” in The Queer Bible Commentary, Deryn Guest, Robert E. Goss, Mona West, and Thomas Bohache, eds., 468-471, (London: SCMN Press, 2006), 468.

[v] Carden, “The Book of the Twelve Minor Prophets,” 468.

[vi] Carden, 469.

[vii] Erin Runions, Changing Subjects: Gender, Nation and Future in Micah, (London: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), 219.

[viii] Runions, Changing Subjects: Gender, Nation and Future in Micah, 213.

[ix] Runions, Changing Subjects: Gender, Nation and Future in Micah, 232.

[x] Rebecca T. Alpert, “Do Justice, Love Mercy, Walk Humbly: Reflection on Micah and Gay Ethics,” in Take Back the Word: A Queer Reading of the Bible, Robert E. Goss and Mona West, eds., 170-182, (Cleveland: The Pilgrim Press, 2000), 171.

[xi] Alpert, “Do Justice, Love Mercy, Walk Humbly,” 172.

[xii] Alpert, 175.

[xiii] Alpert, “Do Justice, Love Mercy, Walk Humbly,” 177.

[xiv] Alpert, 178.

[xv] Hornsby and Stone, “Already Queer: A Preface,” x.

[xvi] Micah 6:6-7

[xvii] Runions, Changing Subjects: Gender, Nation and Future in Micah, 232.

[xviii] Hornsby and Stone, “Already Queer: A Preface,” xii.

[xix] Alpert, “Do Justice, Love Mercy, Walk Humbly,” 177.