This knowledge caused Micah to enter upon his investigations with greater interest and deeper feeling. He discovered that the nobility and the rich were fattening upon the sweat and toil of the rural and working population. A farmer thrown into debt was sure to lose his acres, and a wage earner, having no possessions that could be taken from him, was sure to lose his liberty. Widows and orphans were quickly robbed of their inheritances by the greedy land-grabbers of the metropolis, aided by a corrupt judiciary.
All this was a severe shock to the young peasant. He, himself, born and raised on a farm, had inherited his father's estates free from debt. He lived simply, worked hard, saved a neat sum every year—and imagined that every one else was doing the same.
Awakened to the real condition of affairs, Micah now determined to leave his estates in the care of his trusted overseers and to go to the great and famed cities of his land, to study at first hand the causes that had made possible the terrible economic and social wrongs in his section of the country.
CHAPTER II.
The Cause of the Common People.
Micah, the Moreshtite, came to Jerusalem when the capital was at comparative peace. The struggle between King Ahaz and the Prophet Isaiah had narrowed down to an armed neutrality, as it were—the king was paying his tributes to Tiglath-Pileser and the prophet was preparing his "Remnant" for the day when the crown prince, Hezekiah, would come to the throne.
The young peasant took no sides and embraced no causes in Jerusalem. He stood aside, the better to study conditions as an onlooker. To his great dismay and sorrow, he found the situation even worse than he had imagined it. It was true of the rich and mighty of the capital that
"They covet fields and seize them,
And houses, and take them away.
They oppress a man and his house,
Even a man and his heritage."
This much was clear on the surface of things. Rapacity on the part of the rich meant oppression of the poor; increase of power for the mighty meant decrease of opportunity for the humble tiller of the soil and for the wage earner.
Seeing all this and understanding it, Micah felt himself impelled to fight the cause of the common people.