Increased “defense” spending has nothing to do with the just balances and scales in Prov. 16:11. The passage is about honest money and markets, not about spending priorities. It is forbidding schemes of theft, which includes all government-financed programs, military or otherwise.  The passage requires the elimination of all deficit spending and all national debt, in which current generations are spending and wasting massively via debts that future generations will have to pay. “Quit stealing from your grandchildren,” is the proper application.   So is “quit stealing from everyone else.” All programs funded by government taxation and debt which involve any form of wealth redistribution fall in this category.
          Most importantly, the proper application of this commandment includes the inherently unjust weight and measure called the Federal Reserve. Manipulating the money supply—which is a government monopoly—is the ultimate form of falsifying scales. The Federal Reserve should be abolished.
- Joel McDermon, “Answers to a liberal Congresswoman’s Bible Questions," at http://americanvision.org/5660/answers-to-a-liberal-congresswomans-bible-questions/, (accessed 4/9/12).

A budget that increases defense spending while cutting investments in our children and families violates Prov. 16:11:  “A just balance and scales are the Lord’s.”
- Rep. Jan Schakowsky, quoted in Joel McDermon, “Answers to a liberal Congresswoman’s Bible Questions," at http://americanvision.org/5660/answers-to-a-liberal-congresswomans-bible-questions/, (accessed 4/9/12).

When I decide to stand up for foreign aid, or prevent atrocities in places like Uganda, or take on issues like human trafficking, it’s not just about strengthening alliances, or promoting democratic values, or projecting American leadership around the world, although it does all those things and it will make us safer and more secure. It’s also about the biblical call to care for the least of these [Matt. 25:40] — for the poor; for those at the margins of our society.  To answer the responsibility we’re given in Proverbs to “Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute" [Prov. 31:8].
- Barack Obama, speech at the National Prayer Breakfast on 2/2/2012, at http://www.buzzfeed.com/zekejmiller/obama-i-pushed-dodd-frank-and-health-care-reform and http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/NationalPrayerBreak.