Micah

Micah was a prophet from the countryside of Judah. He came from Moresheth, a small farming town in the low hills southwest of Jerusalem, and he preached during the reigns of Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah (c. 750–686 B.C.). These were the same years in which Isaiah preached in Jerusalem, a few decades after Amos and Hosea had warned the northern kingdom. It was a time of danger and change. The Assyrian empire was spreading west, Samaria fell to Assyria in 722 B.C., and in 701 B.C. the Assyrian king Sennacherib swept through Judah and surrounded Jerusalem. Inside the land, wealthy and powerful people were taking fields and houses from ordinary families, judges and priests took bribes, and prophets told people only what they wanted to hear. Micah spoke to both capitals, “Samaria and Jerusalem” (1:1), and especially for the poor who were being pushed off their land.

The book is made up of three messages, and each one begins with a call to listen: “Hear, you peoples” (1:2), “Listen, you leaders of Jacob” (3:1), and “Listen to what the LORD says” (6:1). Each message moves from judgment to hope. Chapter 1 pictures the LORD coming down from his dwelling place like a great storm: “The mountains melt beneath him and the valleys split apart” (1:4). The reason is the sin of his people, and its centers are their capital cities. Samaria will be turned into “a heap of rubble,” and its idols will be smashed (1:6–7). Then Micah turns to Judah and weeps, “for Samaria’s plague is incurable; it has spread to Judah. It has reached the very gate of my people, even to Jerusalem itself” (1:9). In a lament full of wordplays on the names of towns near his home, from Gath to Lachish to Moresheth, he mourns the army that will sweep through the land and the children who will go into exile (1:10–16).

Chapter 2 names the sin that most troubled Micah. “Woe to those who plan iniquity, to those who plot evil on their beds!” In the morning they carry out their plans: “They covet fields and seize them, and houses, and take them. They defraud people of their homes, they rob them of their inheritance” (2:1–2). In Israel the land was a gift from God to each family, passed down through the generations (Leviticus 25:23), so taking it was a sin against God as well as against neighbors. The LORD answers that he is planning disaster against them, and their own fields will be divided among their captors (2:3–5). The people try to silence Micah: “Do not prophesy about these things” (2:6). Micah replies that if a liar came and promised “plenty of wine and beer,” he would be just the prophet for this people (2:11). Yet the chapter ends with hope. The LORD will gather the survivors of Israel “like sheep in a pen.” “The One who breaks open the way will go up before them… their King will pass through before them, the LORD at their head” (2:12–13).

Chapter 3 speaks directly to the leaders. Rulers who should “embrace justice” instead “hate good and love evil,” and Micah describes their treatment of the people in shocking terms, as if they were butchering them for a meal (3:1–3). Prophets promise peace to anyone who feeds them and declare war on anyone who does not, so the LORD will give them no more visions (3:5–7). Micah sets himself against them: “But as for me, I am filled with power, with the Spirit of the LORD, and with justice and might, to declare to Jacob his transgression, to Israel his sin” (3:8). The leaders judge for a bribe, priests teach for a price, and prophets tell fortunes for money, yet they say, “Is not the LORD among us? No disaster will come upon us” (3:11). Micah’s answer is the most startling sentence in the book: “Therefore because of you, Zion will be plowed like a field, Jerusalem will become a heap of rubble” (3:12). A century later, Jeremiah 26:18–19 records that King Hezekiah took this warning to heart and sought the LORD, and the disaster was held back in his day.

Chapter 4 moves straight from the ruined temple hill to a vision of its future glory. “In the last days the mountain of the LORD’s temple will be established as the highest of the mountains.” Many nations will come to learn God’s ways, and “out of Zion the law will go forth” (4:1–2). God will settle disputes among the nations: “They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore. Everyone will sit under their own vine and under their own fig tree, and no one will make them afraid” (4:3–4). The same vision appears in Isaiah 2:2–4. The LORD will gather the lame and the exiles and make them a strong nation, ruling over them in Mount Zion forever (4:6–8). Before that day, though, Zion will go through great pain, like a woman in labor. “You will go to Babylon; there you will be rescued” (4:10), and in the end Zion will triumph over the nations gathered against her (4:11–13).

Chapter 5 contains Micah’s best-known promise. Israel’s ruler is humiliated, struck on the cheek with a rod (5:1). Then God speaks to a small town: “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times” (5:2). Bethlehem was the hometown of King David, so this new ruler would come from David’s family, but also from humble beginnings. “He will stand and shepherd his flock in the strength of the LORD… And he will be our peace” (5:4–5). His greatness “will reach to the ends of the earth.” The rest of the chapter describes the remnant of Jacob among the nations, like refreshing dew and like a lion (5:7–9), and a day when the LORD will remove everything his people trusted instead of him: horses and chariots, fortified cities, witchcraft and carved images (5:10–15). Centuries later, when wise men came looking for the newborn king of the Jews, the chief priests quoted Micah 5:2 to tell Herod that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem (Matthew 2:1–6).

Chapter 6 is set like a courtroom. The LORD calls the mountains to hear his case against his people. “My people, what have I done to you? How have I burdened you? Answer me” (6:3). He reminds them that he brought them out of Egypt, sent Moses, Aaron and Miriam to lead them, and turned Balaam’s curse into a blessing (6:4–5). The people respond with a question: what offering would be enough? Burnt offerings, calves a year old, thousands of rams, ten thousand rivers of olive oil, even a firstborn child (6:6–7)? The answer is the heart of the book: “He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God” (6:8). The rest of the chapter shows how far the people are from this: dishonest scales and false weights, violence and lies, and the ways of the wicked northern kings Omri and Ahab (6:9–16). Chapter 7 begins with Micah’s lament that “the faithful have been swept from the land; not one upright person remains” (7:2). No one can be trusted, not even a friend or one’s own family (7:5–6), words Jesus later used to describe the cost of following him (Matthew 10:35–36). “But as for me,” Micah says, “I watch in hope for the LORD, I wait for God my Savior; my God will hear me” (7:7). The book ends with confidence and praise: “Though I have fallen, I will rise” (7:8). Micah prays for God to shepherd his people as in days long ago, and closes with words that echo his own name: “Who is a God like you, who pardons sin… You do not stay angry forever but delight to show mercy… You will tread our sins underfoot and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea” (7:18–19).

Several themes run through Micah. Justice for the powerless: God sees when the strong take homes and land from the weak, and he holds them to account (2:1–2; 3:1–3; 6:10–12). True worship is a way of life: sacrifices cannot replace justice, mercy and a humble walk with God (6:6–8; see also Hosea 6:6; Amos 5:24). Leaders are accountable: rulers, priests and prophets who serve themselves will not escape judgment (3:1–12). Judgment and hope: each message moves from warning to promise, because God’s judgment is not his last word (2:12–13; 4:1–5; 7:8–20). A coming ruler of peace: a shepherd-king from Bethlehem will bring security and peace to the ends of the earth (5:2–5), a promise the New Testament sees fulfilled in Jesus (Matthew 2:6; John 7:42). A God who forgives: no one is like the LORD, who pardons sin and keeps his promises to Abraham and Jacob (7:18–20).

Readers understand some parts of Micah in different ways. Micah 4:1–3 and Isaiah 2:2–4 are nearly word for word the same; some think Micah borrowed from Isaiah, some that Isaiah borrowed from Micah, and others that both used an older prophecy. “The last days” (4:1) is read by some as the age that began with Jesus and the spread of the gospel to the nations, by others as a future time when Christ reigns on earth, and by others as both, begun now and completed later. The ruler from Bethlehem (5:2): Christians, following Matthew, see Jesus, and many take “whose origins are from of old, from ancient times” as pointing to his eternal existence, while others read the phrase as referring to the ancient line of David; Jewish readers have long understood the verse as a promise of the Messiah from David’s line. The mention of Babylon (4:10) is seen by some as a prediction made in Micah’s day and by others as a sign that the passage was written or updated during the exile. How the book was put together is also debated (see the Author and Date cards). Micah’s own warning shows that prophecy could be conditional: when Hezekiah repented, the disaster was delayed (Jeremiah 26:19). This outline simply follows the text.