Those Who Plan Evil on Their Beds
1 Woe to those who devise iniquity and work evil on their beds! When the morning is light, they practice it, because it is in the power of their hand. 2 They covet fields and seize them, and houses, then take them away. They oppress a man and his house, even a man and his heritage. 3 Therefore Yahweh says: “Behold, I am planning against these people a disaster, from which you will not remove your necks, neither will you walk haughtily, for it is an evil time. 4 In that day they will take up a parable against you, and lament with a doleful lamentation, saying, ‘We are utterly ruined! My people’s possession is divided up. Indeed he takes it from me and assigns our fields to traitors!’” 5 Therefore you will have no one who divides the land by lot in Yahweh’s assembly.
The offense is not appetite but planning, and the sentence is built deliberately out of the offender's own verb.
The woe in verse 1 falls on men who devise wickedness while lying awake and carry it out when morning is light, and the reason given is that it lies within the power of their hand. Nothing is put down to provocation or weakness. The crime is scheduled.
Verse 2 names it. They covet fields and seize them, houses and carry them off. The verb for coveting is the tenth commandment's Exodus 20:17, and this passage shows why that commandment sits among acts: an inheritance in Israel was not property in the ordinary sense but the family's allotted share in the land itself Numbers 36:7, so taking it removed a household from the nation permanently.
Verse 3 answers with the same word. Yahweh is devising an evil against this family, using the verb the schemers used of themselves. They planned in bed; he plans in reply, and what he plans is a yoke their necks cannot slip.
The reversal completes in verses 4 and 5. A taunt song is put in their own mouths — our portion measured out to someone else — and no one is left to cast the measuring line by lot in the assembly of Yahweh. Men who redistributed land lose their place in the allotment.
settled What this mark means