Micah
Author: Micah
Micah, from Moresheth, prophesies against Samaria and Jerusalem in the days of Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah.
Outline
The case against the cities (1–3)
Samaria will become a heap, and Jerusalem’s rulers, priests, and prophets are charged with selling justice.
The mountain of the Lord (4–5)
Nations come to Zion to learn the Lord’s ways, and a ruler is promised from Bethlehem.
What the Lord requires (6–7)
Sacrifices are refused as a substitute for justice, mercy, and a humble walk, and the book ends in pardon.
Key verses
Micah 4:1–3
The mountain of the Lord’s house is lifted up, and nations beat swords into plowshares.
Micah 5:2
Bethlehem Ephrathah is named as the place from which a ruler in Israel will come.
Micah 6:8
The Lord requires justice, mercy, and a humble walk with him.
Micah speaks from a town in the Shephelah while both kingdoms are still standing and both are under indictment. The word is against Samaria and Jerusalem. The Lord comes out of his place. Mountains melt. Samaria becomes a heap of the field, and her idols are beaten to pieces because she gathered them with the hire of a harlot. Micah then mourns the towns of his own region as the wound comes down to the gate of Jerusalem. The prophet of the villages is not flattering the capital.
The second movement is about the leaders who have made the wound. They devise iniquity on their beds and perform it in the morning because it is in the power of their hand. They covet fields and take them, houses and take them. The women of the Lord’s people are cast out from their pleasant houses. The rulers of Jacob are told they ought to know justice. They hate the good and love the evil. They eat the flesh of the people. They lean on the Lord and say, is not the Lord among us? No evil can come upon us. Micah says Zion will be plowed as a field and Jerusalem will become heaps. Priests teach for hire. Prophets divine for money. The security that quotes the Lord’s presence while selling verdicts is the security the book attacks.
Against that picture the mountain of the house of the Lord is established in the top of the mountains. Peoples flow to it. They say, come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, and he will teach us of his ways. He will judge among many peoples. They will beat their swords into plowshares and will not learn war any more. The promise is not a denial of the plowing of Zion. It is what the Lord intends for Zion after the leaders who ate the people are removed. A ruler comes from Bethlehem Ephrathah, little among the thousands of Judah, whose goings forth are from of old. He stands and feeds in the strength of the Lord. The Assyrian enters the land and is raised against, and the remnant of Jacob is in the midst of many peoples.
The book’s most quoted question comes in a controversy the Lord has with his people. He has a case. He brought them from Egypt and redeemed them from the house of bondage. With what shall I come before the Lord? Burnt offerings, calves, rams, rivers of oil, a firstborn? The answer refuses the bidding war. He has shown you, O man, what is good. Do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God. The last chapter confesses that the godly man has perished from the earth and that a man’s enemies are the men of his own house. It also says the prophet will look to the Lord and wait. Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over the transgression of the remnant? He will cast all their sins into the depths of the sea. Micah holds the lawsuit and the pardon in one short book, and he locates the future ruler in a town smaller than the capitals he has threatened.