Those Who Legislate

 The text we have in Isaiah 10:1–4 bears its own urgency: “Woe to those who enact unjust statutes, who write oppression as law, to turn aside the needy from justice, and rob the poor of my people of their right… What will you do on the day of visitation, when the spoil has been divided and the lame taken as prey?” (NRSV‑inspired).

Scholars highlight that Isaiah is condemning those in positions of authority, legislators, judges, who craft laws that institutionalize injustice, who write in statutes the privilege of the powerful at the expense of the vulnerable. 

These few verses are brutally simple, and devastatingly relevant. They call to account: those who decree unrighteous decrees, those who turn aside the needy from justice, those who rob the poor of their rights. The cry is “Woe!” not because the system is broken only at the margins, but because the system is broken at its very heart: the making of laws and the writing of statutes that say loud and clear: the weak will be trampled.

Now, in our present moment, let us speak honestly, our political system has recently weathered yet another government shutdown. Whether the shutdown was ended or held open for weeks, whether it was partisan or seemingly bipartisan, the fact remains: when budget lines are drawn, the poor, the marginalized, the vulnerable are often the afterthoughts. While we continue to fund huge machinery of war, enforcement, surveillance, and detention, while agencies like immigration enforcement and military budgets swell, programs that serve the arts, education, affordable housing, mental health, social services, healthcare for the underinsured are slashed, trimmed, deferred.

Isaiah 10:1–4 confronts us with this very dynamic: it is not simply “bad policy,” it is injustice made law. The prophet asks: when the statute is written to advantage the powerful and write off the poor, what will you do when the day of visitation comes? When the day of reckoning arrives and the spoil is divided, who will stand for the weak?

Let us use our mind’s ear and heart’s courage to hear uncomfortably loud: our government shutdown may be over, funding lines may be back in motion, but the deeper problem remains: the unjust allocation of resources remains wholly intact. The budget might be reopened, appropriations might be granted, and yet the statutes, the laws, the written policies continue to favor the powerful, ignore the poor, and codify privilege.

Isaiah’s word stops us. It refuses to let us off with platitudes. Law matters. Statutes matter. What is written counts. The leveraging of state power to create or protect disparity is not incidental; it is intentional. Isaiah pulls back the curtain and shows that those who write oppressive statutes are not simply misguided, they are morally culpable. 

Consider how that plays out today. A politician promises to “end the shutdown” and “restore funding.” Fine. But if the restored funding is primarily for enforcement, war, and detention, and only marginally for housing and health for the poor, then have we really corrected the injustice? Or have we just re‑loaned power to the strong? If our national budget continues to ramp up the war machine and immigration enforcement while letting school funding stagnate, while arts programs vanish, while the mentally ill sleep on our streets, then we must hear Isaiah’s cry: “What will you do on the day of visitation?”

We like to talk about “emergency relief,” “temporary fixes,” “stop‑gap measures.” Yet Isaiah speaks of statutes, of laws, written down, inscribed in code. These are the architectures of injustice. And the prophetic tradition does not permit us to applaud the mere ending of a shutdown while the statutes continue to favor the powerful, the rich, the well‑connected, the ones with access, while the poor remain silenced.

We cannot be satisfied that the shutdown ended if the truth of Isaiah 10 remains unaddressed: statutes still exist that turn aside the needy from justice, that rob the poor of their right. We cannot say “problem solved” when the resources never stop being diverted from the vulnerable to the guarded.

Isaiah 10:3 asks: “Who will rise up when the day of visitation comes? Doesn’t Idols still prevail? But if you rely on those who crafted the unjust law, then on whom will you lean when the chains tighten?” (paraphrase). The judgment comes not just on the foreign invader (which comes in v.5ff) but on the home front: the oppressor within the community. The one who uses law to subjugate, the one who uses policy to exploit.

So our task is urgent: we must continue to speak out for just distribution of resources. Where the budget directs millions to weapons and detention and yet casts aside schooling, affordable housing, mental healthcare, we must call it what Isaiah calls it: unjust decrees, statutes of oppression. If we fail to do so, we join in the silence that sanctions them.

Here is how we might translate that prophetic word into our day:

First, we must recognize that politics is not only about who holds power, but about whose lives the policies serve. If a budget continues to fund enforcement and war at the expense of the poor, then the strong are still strengthened and the vulnerable are still deprived. Isaiah’s condemnation is not directed only at those who loot; it is directed at those who legislate looting of the poor through policy. “Woe to those who write oppression as law” means: accountability must include laws and budgets, not just rhetoric.

Second, we must refuse the rhetoric of “we ended the shutdown so everything is fine.” It is not fine when marginalized lives are still treated as afterthoughts. The end of the shutdown may have reopened the doors of government but did not necessarily open justice for the poor, did not necessarily halt the draining of resources from those who have the least. We cannot hope that a shift of power automatically corrects the deep structural injustice. The text of Isaiah demands deeper reflection.

Third, we must act. We must be voices and hands for those whose rights have been robbed. We must lobby, we must advocate, we must demand transparency in how funds are allocated. One can praise the end of the shutdown, but we must also ask: how much educational funding was restored? How much child care assistance? How many underinsured were again left behind? How many mental health initiatives were sacrificed for militarized enforcement? Scripture says the grave sin is not simply neglect, but writing the law of neglect into statute.

Fourth, we must embody redistribution not just talk it. As a faith community we must reimagine stewardship not as preserving privilege but as radical generosity. The metaphor of national budget lines becomes real when we support local services: community clinics, housing initiatives, arts programs in underfunded neighborhoods, educational opportunities. While we work at the level of policy, we must also live the gospel by sharing resources, time, listening, organizing. Because sometimes the “statutes” that govern life are the ones we write ourselves, in our families, in our churches, in our neighborhoods. If we replicate the pattern of taking from the weak and giving to the strong, we become the very oppressors Isaiah is condemning.

To those who say “But the war machine must be funded” let me answer: No one argues that every safety mechanism is illegitimate. But the question is priority. Isaiah’s concern is using systems of power to exploit the needy. When our budget prioritizes global dominance or enforcement over feeding the fatherless and housing the homeless, we have inverted the divine economy. God’s word says: “They shall not bow down under prisoners, they shall not fall among the slain.” (v 4) If the law takes the poor to be prey, then the day of visitation arrives and those who upheld the statutes will themselves bow under the chains they helped forge. That’s a warning, not abstract, not distant.

In the wake of government shutdowns we must ask: Whose lives were suspended? Who lost access to healthcare or education when programs were parked? Whose art funding vanished, whose subsidized housing was delayed, whose single mother’s childcare voucher disappeared? Those are the realities of oppressive statutes in motion.

Isaiah 10 is not meant to demonize all government. It is to call justice into what government does. Because law and budget are not morally neutral. They reflect values. And if the values embedded in policy ensure the powerful are strengthened and the poor are diminished, then Scripture stands opposed. Isaiah is clear: “Woe to those who write grievousness, to turn aside the needy from justice, and make the fatherless the spoil.” 

Let us consider v 2: “To turn aside the needy from justice, and rob the poor of my people of their right, that widows may be their spoil, that the fatherless may be plunder.” Here the social categories, “widows,” “fatherless,” “poor of my people”, stand for those unprotected by power. The text says: the unjust statutes are written so that the vulnerable become spoil. Not beneficiaries of justice, but objects of extraction. This is not ancient Assyria only, it is our moment when funding is diverted away from housing and art and health and is redirected toward weapons, enforcement, detention. The vulnerability is not an accident. It is a feature of a system that writes law to deny rights.

And from v 3: “What will you do on the day of visitation… when the spoil has been divided, when you are crushed in the midst of it?” The visitation is a day of reckoning. It reminds us that there is a divine witness. There is a moment when the crooked statutes will rip back on the oppressors, when those who built systems of privilege will themselves fall under them. That gives hope: the power will not always be held with impunity. God’s justice will come. And that should spur us to action, not to wait for the reckoning, but to live now in the justice of God.

In practical terms: our advocacy, our voting, our public witness must not only aim to end temporary moratoria like shutdowns or furloughs. It must aim to restructure the system. It must aim to realign the budget so that health, education, housing, arts, which nurture the poor, the marginalized, are first, not last. And arms, enforcement, surveillance which often serve the powerful, is second or lower. That’s the kind of redistribution Isaiah calls for, when he says: woe to those who rob the poor and legislate injustice.

And church: let us not be silent. For the people of God are called to speak for the weak. The prophet says nothing of optional charity; he addresses those who legislate injustice. We may not write national budgets, but we vote, we lobby, we voice. We give, we organize, we serve. We must insist that the end of a shutdown is not enough. A shift of political party is not enough. Unless the statutes, the budget, the funded priorities shift, nothing has changed at the root. We are still living under unjust decrees.

The end of a shutdown might reopen government offices, restore paychecks, renew programs. But if years of underfunding of healthcare, arts, housing for the poor, and education continue, if those priorities were not recovered, we still live in the chapters of injustice Isaiah condemned. Because a law written to disadvantage the needy remains a law written to disadvantage the needy, regardless of which party signs it.

Isaiah reminds us that it’s not simply the foreign threat (Assyria) we should fear, it is the domestic statutes that rob and the civic systems that write injustice in code. So long as our budgets reflect that the needy must wait while the war machine hums, still we must cry “Woe.” Still we must speak out. Still we must advocate.

May we repent, not only when the shutdown ends, but when the budget is realigned.

May we turn not only from enforcement overreach, but toward resource justice.

And may we trust that the Lord of hosts sees the statutes, sees the needy, and will bring justice for the widow, the orphan, the poor of his people.

Amen.