What is Oppression
The word “oppressed” even a few decades ago would have been one you were more likely to find in the Bible than in news media. Now it has again entered our common vernacular with a vengeance. Everything is oppression. A workplace which expects you to show up on time is oppressive. A school which expects you to follow the standards outlined in the syllabus is oppressive. Even having different expectations for boys and girls as they grow is labeled oppressive.
The Bible has much to say about oppression as well. However, examples there have less to do with people having standards which others find unnecessary and more to do with people failing to meet God’s standards of right behavior with one’s neighbor.
In arrogance the wicked hotly pursue the poor;
Psalms 10:2-3
let them be caught in the schemes that they have devised.
For the wicked boasts of the desires of his soul,
and the one greedy for gain curses and renounces the Lord.
The wicked here is not one who is simply more successful than someone else. They are actively laying schemes to take from others. If their “scheme” were to provide goods and services others were willing to trade to receive, being caught in their own schemes may be a blessing! Instead, these were people who desired gain so much that earning it wasn’t enough.
His mouth is filled with cursing and deceit and oppression;
Psalm 10:7-10
under his tongue are mischief and iniquity.
He sits in ambush in the villages;
in hiding places he murders the innocent.
His eyes stealthily watch for the helpless;
he lurks in ambush like a lion in his thicket;
he lurks that he may seize the poor;
he seizes the poor when he draws him into his net.
The helpless are crushed, sink down,
and fall by his might.
This is a person who kills or deceives others in order to elevate himself over them. It’s not that he has gained more, but the means by which he gains that is the issue. The reason the poor are his target is that they are uniquely vulnerable.
This may be enough to aid one in understanding true oppression versus the types of mundane things that are wrongly labeled this way today.
Godless Oppression
However, that is not the only way we can recognize the difference. How does God characterize the oppressor?
In the pride of his face the wicked does not seek him;
Psalms 10:4-6
all his thoughts are, “There is no God.”
His ways prosper at all times;
your judgments are on high, out of his sight;
as for all his foes, he puffs at them.
He says in his heart, “I shall not be moved;
throughout all generations I shall not meet adversity.”
He says in his heart, “God has forgotten,
Psalms 10:11
he has hidden his face, he will never see it.”
It is a person who trusts in his own position and does not believe God’s judgements to be his concern. He believes anything which elevates him is equally good and that, once elevated, there will be nothing which could bring him down.
Hope for the Oppressed
On the flip side, how do you know when a person is truly being oppressed? He won’t be the one begging for more authority to be given to man to address the issues, since it is his fellow man who has caused him harm in the first place! Instead, the hope for the oppressed is in the higher authority of God.
Arise, O Lord; O God, lift up your hand;
Psalms 10:12-18
forget not the afflicted.
Why does the wicked renounce God
and say in his heart, “You will not call to account”?
But you do see, for you note mischief and vexation,
that you may take it into your hands;
to you the helpless commits himself;
you have been the helper of the fatherless.
Break the arm of the wicked and evildoer;
call his wickedness to account till you find none.
The Lord is king forever and ever;
the nations perish from his land.
O Lord, you hear the desire of the afflicted;
you will strengthen their heart; you will incline your ear
to do justice to the fatherless and the oppressed,
so that man who is of the earth may strike terror no more.
This is not a person who haughtily opposes judgement but one who longs to see it. He knows his deliverance comes when God holds those to account who strike terror here on earth. To those who cry “oppression” against the judgements of God while pursuing their own means to power. Such a one is simply an actual oppressor who is grasping after more power by the means available to him at that time. Those who are truly wronged long to see God’s justice.
