The Abomination of Crooked Standards Text: Proverbs 20:10
Introduction: The War on Reality
We live in an age that has declared war on reality. Our secular, relativistic culture is built on the sandy foundation of the autonomous self, which insists on its right to define everything. It wants to define morality, it wants to define gender, it wants to define marriage, and it most certainly wants to define money. But when man declares himself to be the measure of all things, he invariably begins to cheat with the measurements. He starts using crooked scales.
The book of Proverbs is intensely practical. It does not float in the ethereal realm of abstract spirituality; it brings the fear of the Lord down to the street level, into the marketplace, the home, and the halls of government. And here, in this short, sharp verse, the Holy Spirit addresses the foundation of any healthy civilization: honest standards. Many Christians are tempted to think that God is intensely interested in their prayer life but only vaguely concerned with their business ethics or the nation's monetary policy. This is a sacred/secular divide that the Bible simply does not recognize. God cares about everything, from the songs we sing in church to the scales we use in the shop.
Proverbs 20:10 is not a quaint suggestion for ancient Israelite merchants. It is a timeless declaration of God's character and His requirements for a just society. It is a frontal assault on all forms of relativism, duplicity, and fraud. When God condemns "differing weights and differing measures," He is condemning the mindset that believes truth is malleable and that reality can be manipulated for personal gain. As we will see, this principle applies to far more than just bags of grain. It applies to our words, our character, and even the very nature of the money we use.
The Text
Differing weights and differing measures,
Both of them are an abomination to Yahweh.
(Proverbs 20:10 LSB)
The Grammar of Deceit
The first part of the verse lays out the crime: "Differing weights and differing measures." The Hebrew is emphatic, literally "a stone and a stone, an ephah and an ephah." This refers to the practice of keeping two sets of standards. A merchant would have a heavy stone weight that he used when he was buying goods from a farmer. He puts his heavy stone on one side of the scale, and the farmer has to pile on extra grain to make it balance. Then, when he sells that same grain to a customer, he pulls out his light stone. He puts the light stone on the scale, and for the same price, he doles out less grain. The same principle applied to measures of volume, like the ephah. He would use a large basket when buying and a smaller basket when selling.
This is not a simple mistake or a slight inaccuracy. It is calculated, premeditated theft. It is institutionalized fraud. In our modern parlance, we would call this "keeping two sets of books." One set is for the tax authorities, and the other, true set is for the business owner. One public face for the world, and another, private reality behind closed doors. It is the essence of hypocrisy, rendered in stone and wicker.
But we must press the principle further. What is the largest and most pervasive example of "differing measures" in the modern world? It is, without a doubt, fiat currency. When money has an objective standard, like gold or silver, a dollar is a defined weight of a precious metal. It means something. But our system is a fiat system, meaning our money is money simply because the government declares that it is. There is no external standard. This allows governments and central banks to engage in the ultimate "differing measure." They can create money out of thin air, a process we call inflation. Every time they do this, they devalue every single dollar that is already in existence. Your savings are worth less, your paycheck buys less. It is a hidden, insidious tax that punishes the responsible and rewards the profligate. It is a national policy of dishonest measures, stealing wealth from the private citizen to fund the ever-expanding state.
God is a God of objective truth. He is a God of mathematics. For Him, two plus two always equals four. A just weight is a just weight. When a society untethers its money from reality, it has untethered itself from the God of reality. This is not just bad economics; it is a profound moral and theological rebellion.
The Divine Revulsion
The second half of the verse describes God's reaction to this duplicity: "Both of them are an abomination to Yahweh." We must not skim over this word "abomination." The Hebrew is to'ebah, and it is one of the strongest words in the Old Testament for revulsion and disgust. It is the same word used to describe idolatry, witchcraft, and the most grievous forms of sexual sin. God does not just dislike crooked accounting; He finds it utterly detestable.
Why such a violent reaction? Because a false standard is an attack on the very character of God. God is truth. He is faithful. He is consistent. With Him there is no variation or shadow of turning (James 1:17). A false scale is a physical lie. It is a monument to the principle of deceit. It claims that reality is not fixed and that truth can be manipulated for selfish ends. Therefore, every act of commercial fraud is a form of blasphemy. It is a denial of the God who is the ultimate standard of all things and an attempt to set up a crooked, man-made standard in its place.
Furthermore, this practice destroys the foundation of a free and prosperous society, which is trust. When you cannot trust that a pound is a pound and a gallon is a gallon, all commerce becomes fraught with suspicion. Contracts become meaningless. The social fabric unravels. A society that tolerates "differing weights" in the marketplace will soon find itself tolerating them everywhere else. It will have differing standards of justice, one for the rich and another for the poor. It will have differing standards of morality, one for the powerful and another for the common man. A rejection of objective standards in one area inevitably bleeds into all other areas. God hates it because He loves justice, order, and the well-being of the people He has made.
The True and Just Weight
This proverb, like all of God's law, serves as a mirror. As we look into it, we see our own reflection. Who among us can claim to have always used a just measure? We may not have cheated customers with physical scales, but have we not kept two sets of books for our own lives? We have one standard by which we judge our own actions, full of grace and excuses, and a much heavier, stricter standard by which we judge the actions of others. We present a carefully curated public self while hiding the private reality of our sin. We are all guilty of using differing weights.
And so the law condemns us. When we are weighed in the balances of God's perfect righteousness, we are all found wanting (Daniel 5:27). Our own righteousness is a fraudulent weight; it cannot satisfy the demands of a holy God.
But this is where the glory of the gospel shines. God, in His mercy, provided the one true and just weight. The Lord Jesus Christ lived a life of perfect integrity. He was the truth incarnate. There was no duplicity in Him, no shadow of deceit. His public life and His private life were one and the same. He perfectly fulfilled the righteous requirements of God's law.
And on the cross, a great transaction took place, the only truly just exchange. Our sin, our fraud, our spiritual bankruptcy was placed on His account. And His perfect righteousness, His infinite moral weight and substance, was credited to ours. God weighed His own Son in the scales of His justice, and in Him, our debt was paid in full.
Because of the gospel, we are now free to live lives of integrity. We no longer have to lie, cheat, and manipulate to get our way, because our security is not in our own performance but in the finished work of Christ. We are free to be honest in our business dealings, generous with our resources, and truthful with our words. Our calling as Christians is to be a people of the true standard in a world of crooked scales. We are to contend for justice, for honesty, and for objective truth in every sphere of life, not as a way to earn our salvation, but as a joyful consequence of having received it freely by grace.