Hebrew Prophets, The
8th–6th c. BCE

The Hebrew Prophets — Isaiah, Amos, Micah, Jeremiah — reserved their fiercest critique for kings and priests who combined religious display with corruption and exploitation of the poor (Amos 8:4: 'Hear this, you who trample on the needy and bring the poor of the land to an end'). Their ethical core, Micah 6:8 ('do justice, love mercy, walk humbly with your God'), is the most universally cited verse in Jewish political ethics. Paxton — Ten Commandments mandates alongside securities-fraud settlement, impeachment for abuse of office, the Annunciation House investigation, the Waco one-day plea deal — fits the pattern Amos and Isaiah would have written about directly. Talarico's platform is essentially Micah 6:8 in policy form: justice for the poor, mercy for the immigrant, humility through anti-corruption and church-state separation. He drops two points because the Prophets were socially conservative on family structure in ways Talarico's full LGBTQ/abortion platform doesn't reflect.