God Hates Crooked Scales Text: Deuteronomy 25:13-16
Introduction: The Sanctity of the Marketplace
We live in an age that has tried to put God in a box. For modern man, God, if He exists at all, is to be kept in the church building on Sunday morning, and perhaps let out for a quiet moment of personal piety in the home. But He is certainly not to be let loose in the marketplace, in the halls of government, or in the science lab. The secularist insists on a strict separation of faith and economics. Your religion is your private hobby, but business is business. This is a neat and tidy arrangement, and it is a damnable lie from the pit of Hell.
The God of Scripture is the God of everything. He is Lord of the harvest and Lord of the boardroom. He cares about your prayer life, and He cares about your price points. He is interested in your theology and your weights and measures. The Bible does not give us a set of spiritual platitudes that float three feet off the ground in a cloud of pious irrelevance. No, the Word of God comes down into the dust and grime of everyday life, into the buying and selling, the contracts and the commerce, and it makes demands. It establishes a standard. And it pronounces judgment.
Our text today is one of those places where the rubber of our theology is required to meet the road of our daily transactions. This is not a quaint set of rules for an ancient agrarian society. This is a timeless principle of covenantal ethics. God is establishing the groundwork for a just and prosperous society, and He locates the foundation of that society not just in the temple courts, but in the integrity of every transaction that happens at the city gate. What we find is that for God, economic justice is not some secondary, optional extra for the super-spiritual. It is a matter of righteousness, and its corruption is something He finds personally detestable. It is an abomination.
The Text
You shall not have in your bag differing weights, a large and a small. You shall not have in your house differing measures, a large and a small. You shall have a full and just weight; you shall have a full and just measure, that your days may be prolonged in the land which Yahweh your God gives you. For everyone who does these things, everyone who acts unjustly, is an abomination to Yahweh your God.
(Deuteronomy 25:13-16 LSB)
The Prohibition of Duplicity (v. 13-14)
Moses begins with a very specific and practical command about the tools of commerce.
"You shall not have in your bag differing weights, a large and a small. You shall not have in your house differing measures, a large and a small." (Deuteronomy 25:13-14)
In the ancient world, commerce was conducted with balance scales. A merchant would have a set of stones, certified weights, and he would place the appropriate weight on one side of the scale and the commodity being sold, grain or silver or what have you, on the other. The system was simple and, if conducted honestly, effective.
But the sinful heart is endlessly creative. A dishonest merchant would keep two sets of stones. When he was buying, he would pull out the "large" weight. He would put his heavy stone on the scale and thus receive more product from the farmer than he was paying for. But when he was selling, he would use the "small" weight, a lighter stone that cheated the customer into receiving less than they had purchased. He had one standard for his accounts payable and another for his accounts receivable. The same principle applied to measures for volume, the "differing measures" for grain or oil.
Notice the comprehensive nature of the command. You shall not have them "in your bag" or "in your house." God is not just prohibiting the act of fraud; He is prohibiting the possession of the tools of fraud. He is dealing with the premeditation. Having the two sets of weights meant you were prepared to cheat. You had institutionalized duplicity. You had made dishonesty part of your business plan. God is not just interested in what you do over the counter; He is interested in what you have stored in the back room. He judges the intent of the heart, and having a "small" weight in your bag is a clear indicator of a crooked heart.
This is a fundamental prohibition against hypocrisy. It is a command to have one standard of righteousness. You cannot have one set of ethics for your family and another for your customers. You cannot have one standard for your political allies and another for your opponents. A divided weight is the sign of a divided mind, which is unstable in all its ways. This is the sin of having a forked tongue, of being two-faced. God demands integrity, which comes from the word integer, meaning "one" or "whole."
The Mandate for Justice (v. 15)
From the negative prohibition, Moses moves to the positive command.
"You shall have a full and just weight; you shall have a full and just measure, that your days may be prolonged in the land which Yahweh your God gives you." (Deuteronomy 25:15)
The Hebrew for "full and just" is shelemah va-tsedeq. It means a weight that is whole, complete, perfect, and righteous. The standard for our business dealings is not "what I can get away with," or "what the market will bear," but rather the very righteousness of God Himself. Justice in the marketplace is to be a reflection of the justice of our God.
And here we see the covenantal connection. Righteous behavior is tied directly to national blessing. "That your days may be prolonged in the land." This is not some primitive prosperity gospel. This is covenantal cause and effect. A society built on fraud will rot from the inside out. When trust is destroyed, commerce collapses. When men are constantly looking over their shoulders, worried they are being cheated, the energy that should be going into productive work is diverted into suspicion and litigation. A high-trust society is a prosperous society, and trust is built on a shared commitment to a transcendent standard of justice.
When a nation's economy is riddled with theft, whether it is the petty theft of the corner merchant or the grand larceny of government-sponsored inflation, that nation is on the road to ruin. God is promising that if Israel will conduct their affairs with righteousness, He will bless them with stability and longevity. Economic integrity is not a hindrance to prosperity; it is the only possible foundation for lasting prosperity.
The Divine Revulsion (v. 16)
Finally, we are told why this is so important. The stakes are not merely economic; they are theological.
"For everyone who does these things, everyone who acts unjustly, is an abomination to Yahweh your God." (Deuteronomy 25:16)
The word "abomination" is one of the strongest words of moral revulsion in the entire Old Testament. It is the word used for idolatry, for perverse sexual acts, for sacrificing children to Molech. And right here, in the same category, God places using a crooked scale. Let that sink in. The man who cheats his customer out of a few ounces of flour is, in the eyes of God, committing an act that is as detestable and foul as bowing down to a pagan idol.
Why? Because it is a direct assault on the character of God. God is a God of truth, justice, and righteousness. A false balance is a lie. It is a practical denial of the God who is. When a man who calls himself a follower of Yahweh cheats his neighbor, he is blaspheming the name of his God. He is telling the world that his God is a shyster, a trickster, a God for whom truth is negotiable. To act unjustly is to misrepresent the perfectly just one.
This is where our modern, secular worldview completely falls apart. Without God, what is a "just" weight? Who says? Is it simply a matter of government regulation? A social contract? If there is no transcendent standard, then "justice" is just a word for "what the powerful people want." But the Bible says justice is grounded in the unchangeable character of God. A pound is a pound because God is a God of objective reality, not subjective preference.
And we must not fail to make the modern application. The most widespread and insidious form of "differing weights and measures" in our day is fiat currency and the inflation that it enables. When a government or a central bank can create money out of thin air, they are using a "small" measure. They are debasing the currency, stealing value from every dollar in your savings account, and redistributing it to themselves and their cronies. It is theft on a grand, institutional scale. It is a lie. And because it is a lie, it is an abomination to the Lord.
The Full and Just Weight of the Cross
Now, this law, like all of God's law, does two things. First, it shows us the standard of perfect righteousness. And second, it shows us that we have utterly failed to meet it. Who among us can say they have always had a "full and just weight" in all their dealings? Who has never shaded the truth for financial gain, never cut a corner, never presented themselves or their product as something slightly better than it was? The law comes and it condemns us all. We are all found wanting. We have all used light weights.
On the scales of God's perfect justice, all of our righteousness is weighed and found to be less than nothing. The law demands a full and just payment for our sin, and we are bankrupt. We stand before the holy Judge of all the earth with nothing to offer.
But this is where the glory of the gospel shines. God, in His infinite mercy, provided the full and just payment Himself. On the cross of Jesus Christ, the scales of divine justice were balanced forever. On one side of the scale, God placed the full weight of our sin, every dishonest deed, every light measure, every abomination. All of it was placed on His Son.
And on the other side of the scale, He placed the infinite merit of Christ's perfect life and substitutionary death. Jesus Christ is the only man who ever lived a life of perfect, full, and just weight. He is the ultimate standard of righteousness. And on the cross, His perfect righteousness was credited to our account, and our staggering debt was paid in full. God's justice was satisfied, and His mercy was magnified.
Therefore, we who are in Christ are now free from condemnation. But we are not free to go back to our old, crooked ways. We are free to live righteously. We are called now to be people of the full and just weight, not in order to be saved, but because we have been saved. Our honesty in business is not a grim duty we perform to earn God's favor; it is a joyful act of worship, a testament to the world that our God is the God of truth, the God who hates all falsehood, and the God who, through His Son, has made us true.