Proverbs 20:10 Divers weights, and divers measures, both of them are alike abomination to the LORD. Trade tricksters are not called highly respectable in Scripture, whatever they are in society. Apologists for tricks in trade say that the real fault is in the consumer, who will have a cheap article. On which showing, the whole charge of adulteration, and of the wickedness of selling worsted and silk for silk, shoddy for broadcloth, and sloe-juice for vine-wine, is held to amount to nothing. Cicero's rule holds good to-day, that everything should be disclosed, in order that a purchaser may be ignorant of nothing that the seller knows. But few people have leisure for investigating the real quality and quantity of their purchases. It is only necessary, remarks Mr. Emerson, to ask a few questions as to the progress of the articles of commerce from the fields where they grew to our houses, to become aware that we "eat and drink, and wear perjury and fraud in a hundred commodities." Christian critics have been fain to admire in Mohammed the vigour and emphasis with which he inculcated a noble sincerity and fairness in dealing. "He who sells a defective thing, concealing its defect, will provoke the anger of God and the curses of the angels." Every age has its recognised offenders of this sort, from Solomon's days downwards. It was reserved, apparently, for our own age to merit in full the bad eminence of attaining such a pitch of refinement "in the art of the falsification of elementary substances," that the very articles used to adulterate are themselves adulterated. (F. Jacox, B. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: Divers weights, and divers measures, both of them are alike abomination to the LORD.WEB: Differing weights and differing measures, both of them alike are an abomination to Yahweh. |
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