Bible Commentaries
Micah 1

Verses 1-13

XXVIII

THE BOOK OF MICAH PART I –

INTRODUCTION AND EXPOSITION

Micah 1:1-2:13

Micah was a contemporary of Hosea of the Northern Kingdom and the great prophet, Isaiah, of the Southern Kingdom. They all prophesied in the reigns of Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, during the last decades of the eighth century B.C. Micah and Isaiah present contrasts in many respects, as well as great similarities in other respects. It has been thought, with a degree of reason, that Isaiah belonged to the royal family, or at least, the princely families of Jerusalem. Micah evidently belonged to the poorer classes living in the country, but preached in the capital and doubtless in the country districts also. While Isaiah belonged to the noblest of families, we have no account whatever of the family of Micah. He does not give us his father’s name, which is an unusual thing among the Israelites, as they generally give the name of the father and sometimes the grandfather. Their home life was considerably different, as the life of the city is different from the life of a country village. Thus the sphere of their activity was somewhat different. Isaiah moved among the politicians and statesmen: he was a friend and a counselor of the king. Micah moved among the poorer classes, the yeomen, and was much less interested in the politics of the country than Isaiah was. Isaiah’s audiences many times were the royal and the princely families, the grandees of Jerusalem and Judah. Micah’s audiences were sometimes the peasantry living in the lowlands, or Shephelah, of Judea.

Micah has been termed "the prophet of the poor," for he was born and reared among the villages, and his message is mainly a message on behalf of the poor.

The date of his preaching was somewhere between 735 B.C. and 700 B.C., probably somewhere about 730 B.C. or 720 B.C. We know that he preached during the reign of Hezekiah for we have a report of that fact in the book of Jeremiah He says he also preached in the reign of Jotham and Ahaz. We find by reference to Jeremiah 26:17-19 that Micah had preached in Jerusalem, and had said that Zion should be plowed as a field, and that Jerusalem should become a heap and the mountain of the house as the high places of the forest. We find also in Jeremiah 26:19 of that same chapter that Hezekiah, the king of Judah, and all Judah heard him, but did not seek to put him to death, as Jehoiakim and the nobles were seeking to put Jeremiah to death. But the rulers of Jerusalem seem to imply that Micah’s preaching was largely influential in bringing about the reformation under Hezekiah. He says in that nineteenth verse, "Did Hezekiah not fear Jehovah, and entreat the favor of Jehovah, and Jehovah repented him of the evil which he had pronounced against them?" All that seems to imply that the preaching of Micah largely influenced the life of the good king Hezekiah, and helped to bring about the reformation that took place in his reign, and that Micah was a man of great power and influence among the higher classes as well as among the lower.

The range of his prophecy was not as wide as that of Isaiah. The latter was to some extent a prophet of the nations, a statesman; his eye took in all the politics of the world at that time, and he prophesied concerning the policies of kings and counselors, princes, and grandees of Jerusalem. He uttered his stern denunciations and diatribes against the party that would seek for aid from Egypt, and likewise touched on the politics of other nations, especially Judah’s and Jerusalem’s relation to them. Isaiah dealt in world politics, but Micah did not deal with the political situation; he dealt with the moral, the civil, and the economic conditions of his country.

In many respects they are like each other. In their messages they are fundamentally the same – they cry out against the same evils in Judah and Jerusalem; they denounce them in almost the same terms. Their conception of God is much the same, their conception of sin is almost identical, and their conception of the future of Judah and Jerusalem, and of the restoration, and the blessed messianic age, are almost the same. Thus God uses two men at the same time for the same end who are of very different mold, very different characteristics, and of very different temperaments.

Micah evidently preached among the people and also in Jerusalem among the leaders. He preached for some years, we do not know how long, and probably retired to his home and put in permanent form the substance of his preaching during these years. It is altogether likely that that is the case. Jeremiah did the same and probably others of the prophets, as many a man does today; after preaching twenty or thirty years, he chooses the best of his sermons and has them published and leaves them in permanent form.

There are three distinct addresses, or discourses, in the book, each commencing, "Hear ye, etc." Following these marks as dividing points we have the following analysis:

Introduction: The author, place, date, and objective of the prophecy (Micah 1:1)

I. Threatened judgment and promised restoration (Micah 1:2-2:13)

1. Jehovah approaching in judgment on Samaria and Jerusalem (Micah 1:2-7)

2. The prophet’s distress (Micah 1:2-7)

3. The nature and punishment of their sin (Micah 2:1-11)

4. The return and restoration of Israel (Micah 2:12-13)

II. A gross sin, a great salvation (restoration) and a glorious Saviour (Micah 3-5)
1. Their gross sin and consequent destruction (Micah 3)

2. Their great salvation (restoration) and consequent exaltation (Micah 4)

3. Their glorious Saviour and consequent deliverance (Micah 5)

III. Jehovah’s lawsuit with Israel (Micah 6-7)
1. A statement of the case (Micah 6:1-8)

2. Jehovah’s charges against the city (Micah 6:9-16)

3. The prosecution by the prophet (Micah 7:1-6)

4. Pleading guilty and hoping for mercy and pardon (Micah 7:7-13)

5. The final pleading of the case by the prophet with the hope of glorious triumph (Micah 7:14-17)

6. The doxology (Micah 7:18-20)

The introduction to the book of Micah says that he prophesied during the reigns of the three kings we have mentioned. This would imply that he preached during a period of probably twenty or thirty years, possibly sixty years. He says also that he prophesied concerning Samaria and Jerusalem. Amos’ message was directed mainly to Samaria, so was Hosea’s. Isaiah’s was mainly to Judah and Jerusalem, and Micah’s to Samaria and Jerusalem, but mainly to Jerusalem.

The theme of Micah 1:2-7 is Jehovah’s approaching in judgment on Samaria and Jerusalem. Micah begins his prophecy, "Hear ye people, all of you; hearken, O earth, and all that therein is." Isaiah says, "Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth, for Jehovah hath spoken." Micah may have been influenced by Isaiah, and may have used, to some extent, his phraseology. Certainly the introductory words of his prophecy resemble Isaiah’s in a striking manner. And he goes on, "Let the Lord Jehovah witness against you, the Lord from his holy temple." The figure is a little different from that of Isaiah’s who represents Jehovah sitting upon his throne as Judge, and as accuser of the people. Here, he is a witness against the people because of their sins. The figure is much the same though not exactly.

In the next verse we have a vision of the appearance of God in judgment and this again very strikingly resembles the passage in Isaiah (Isaiah 64:1-2). He says, "Behold, Jehovah cometh forth out of his place, and will come down and tread upon the high places of the earth, and the mountains shall be molten tinder him, and the valleys shall be cleft as wax before the fire, as waters that are poured down a steep place." This of course, is Oriental imagery representing the appearance of God in judgment and the terrible effect of his presence and his power upon nature itself. Isaiah 64:1-2 says, "Oh that thou wouldest rend the heavens, that thou wouldest come down, that the mountains might flow down at thy presence, as when fire kindleth the brushwood and the fire causeth the waters to boil."

Micah 1:5 tells why Jehovah is thus going to appear: "For the transgressions of Jacob," referring to the entire people of Israel, "and for the sins of the house of Israel," a parallel expression, synonymous with the former. Then he raises the question, "What is the transgression of Jacob? Is it not Samaria?" What does he mean? He means that the transgressions of Northern Israel are all centered in its capital, concentrated there, and all her life – her civil, economic, political, and religious life – is determined by the life of Samaria, the capital. It is concentrated there, in the heart of the nation, and out of that heart issues the sins that are going to be the ruin of the nation. What are the high places of Judah? The high places, of course, refer to the idolatrous seats of worship, the centers of their iniquities, and the cause of their downfall. "Are they not Jerusalem?" Here again he means to imply that the iniquities of Judah are concentrated in Jerusalem and the life of Judah has been molded and shaped and fashioned according to the life of Jerusalem.

In other words, Micah emphasizes the one great thought which is now taking hold upon men, and which is sometimes overemphasized, that is, "as goes the city, so goes the country." Now, that is to a large extent true. But it is not absolutely true. In certain respects it may be, but in a great many moral conflicts in our land we may thank God that it is not, for the country is wiping out the saloon element and many other evils which the city is unable to do. Yet in some respects the country is shaping the destiny of the nation. In Micah’s day is was different. All the power was centered in the city, and as Samaria so was Northern Israel, and as Jerusalem, so was Southern Israel. Micah was right in placing the source and cause of all their evil in their two capitals, Samaria and Jerusalem.

Now Micah 1:6 says, "Therefore I will make Samaria as a heap of the field." Samaria was to be like a heap of stones and rubbish in a great field; as the planting of a vineyard where there was scarcely any vegetation, possibly a little life, possibly a stump or root, dead and dried out, decayed, or possibly a shoot with a little life in it. "I will pour down the stones thereof into the valley, – the walls and the great buildings and the palaces should be leveled to the earth, and he would discover or lay bare the very foundations of that magnificent capital, Samaria, built upon the second strongest fortification in all that part of the world.

And as a result, there was to come disaster upon all their idolatrous worship, their golden calves, their shrines, and their altars: "And all her graven images thereof shall be beaten to pieces, all her hire shall be burned with fire, and all her idols will I lay desolate." Then he gives the reason for the destruction of all the instruments of their idolatrous worship: "For she gathered it of the hire of an harlot, and they shall return to the hire of an harlot." This means that Northern Israel had secured her wealth and luxury by means of idolatrous worship, which is always described as harlotry, or adultery, by the prophets, and because of this adultery and harlotry all their wealth should return to those from whom it came. All this implies that her idolatrous systems should be utterly wiped out, and all the profit gotten thereby should be utterly lost. All this was fulfilled in the capture of Samaria by Shalmaneser.

The special theme of Micah 1:8-16 is the prophet’s distress over this destruction. Here Micah gives us a glimpse into his heart, for he loved his people, his nation, and city, and as he sees the destruction that is to come, he tells us his feelings: "I will go stripped and naked; I will make a wailing like the jackals, and a lamentation like the ostriches. For her wounds are incurable (the wound of Samaria is in his mind) ; for it is come unto Judah." It was incurable because of her sins. "It reacheth even unto the gate of my people," to the very city of Jerusalem itself.

From Micah 1:10 on, Micah is looking out upon his own beloved country, the Shephelah, or the lowlands, from the hills of Judah, and he sees there a great many thriving villages that dot these lowlands from the Philistine plain on the west to the hills of Judah on the east, and in vision he sees the enemy spreading over that fair land and leaving it desolate, over his own beloved village where he was born and brought up, which he loved. Now in these verses there is a great play upon words, and the Hebrew of them must be an interesting study. I will try to give a little idea of how he plays with the meaning of words showing the fate that should overtake those villages. "Tell is not in Gath." But the Septuagint has it, "Tell it not in Gath, weep not in Aceo." Translated literally, it would be, "Tell it not in Tell-town; weep not in Weep-town." "At Bethle-Aphrah have I rolled myself in the dust," or literally, "At the house of dust, I have rolled myself in the dust." "Pass away, O inhabitants of Shaphir," or "Inhabitant of beauty," pass away in anything but beauty – in ugliness, in wretchedness, and shame. "The inhabitant of Zaanan," or the village that means "going further," is literally, "not going further." "The wailing of Bethezel," wailing on the house of support, "shall have taken away from her the support thereof." "The inhabitant of Maroth" (bitterness), waiteth anxiously for good, because evil is come down from Jehovah unto the gate of Jerusalem." What does he mean? He is using the names of those various villages to suggest the fate that shall overtake them. One shall not receive the news of the destruction of Jerusalem, another shall receive the news and another shall be left in shame and ugliness and wretchedness, etc.

Then he speaks of another city which was besieged by Sennacherib, near the parting of the caravan ways leading out from Judah down to Egypt. Every embassy passing from Pudah down to Egypt would pass by Lachish, and every conquering host would pass that way. “O inhabitant of Lachish, bind the chariot to the swift steed: she was the beginning of the sin to the daughter of Zion, for the transgressions of Israel were found in thee." This means that, as Lachish was the hearquarters for the Egyptian steed and the Egyptian cavalry, which Judah and Jerusalem sent for, to aid them in their struggle against Assyria, the prophet denounces her because of her alliance with the heathen country in an attempt to secure horses and chariots for protection. That was their sin. "Therefore shalt thou give a parting gift to Moresheth-gath; the house of Achzib shall be a deceitful thing unto the king of Israel," or, "The house of the beautiful spring shall be the house of the dried-up, deceitful spring." "I will yet bring unto thee, O inhabitant of Mareshah," or "I will bring unto the possessor, him that will possess thee." "The glory of Israel shall come even unto Adullam," the cave where David remained so long in hiding with his warriors.

Thus Micah saw the army of the Assyrians coming and taking the villages on the borders of the Philistine plain, reaching up to the foot of the great hills that lead up to Jerusalem, all the lowlands of Judah thus being laid waste. Because of this, "Make thee bald, and cut off thy hair for the children of thy delight: enlarge thy baldness as the eagle (baldness was a sign of grief and sorrow) ; for they are gone into captivity."

The special theme of Micah 2:1-11 is the nature of the sin and the punishment. Micah inveighs against the commercial heads, the business magnates, the princes, and the great men of Judah. It is against them that he hurls his prophecies, and he represents them as businessmen pondering and scheming how they may seize upon the lands of the poor. "Woe unto them that devise iniquity, and work evil upon their beds! when the morning is light, they practice it, because it is in the power of their hand." How many commercial men and land-grabbers, how many great corporation managers lie awake devising some way by which they may get their fellow’s land, to satisfy their insatiable greed for more land, or for the possessions of the poor! They did it in Micah’s day and they are doing it yet. They covet fields and seize them, foreclose mortgages, sell out the homes of the poor, seize the land and houses whenever they can possibly do so, and take them away, "So they oppress a man and his house, even a man and his heritage."

Micah’s sympathy is with the poor in the lowlands of Judah and we cannot be surprised at that, for great commercial iniquity and the economic distress following therefrom nearly always attack the poor first. Many of the great uprisings of history have occurred among the poorer classes. The bloodiest wars among the Romans in ancient days arose because of the agrarian outrages perpetrated in that land. It was in the fourteenth century, that oppression of the yeomanry by the rich nobles and lords of England and France caused the great peasant uprisings. Just after the Reformation when a new spirit had been infused into the people there was a notable uprising in Germany, and among the peasants of France the volcano of the French Revolution broke forth, which made its impression upon all the world and all history. Micah’s sympathy goes out to the poor, for they are the backbone of the nation.

In Micah 2:3 he predicts the penalty of this sin that shall come: "therefore thus saith the Lord, Behold, against this family do I devise an evil, from which ye shall not remove your necks, neither shall ye walk haughtily; for it is an evil time." You are going to be brought so low, that in that day one shall take up a parable against you, and lament with a doleful lamentation, and say, "We are utterly ruined: he changeth the portion of my people: how doth he remove it from me I to the rebellious he divideth our fields," showing how that all the land and law system would be completely changed and turned upside down by the terrible revolution that was to take place. The result was that there would be none left to divide the inhabitants and none to measure the fields and allot them to their owners: "Thou shalt have none that shall cast the line by lot in the congregation of the Lord."

Micah deals again with the leaders of the people, and this is what they say to him, that is, these grandees, these business magnates: "Prophesy ye not . . . reproaches shall never cease." Thus they try to persuade Micah to be quiet. “O thou that art named the house of Jacob, is the Spirit of the Lord straitened?" This is the reply on the part of Micah to those men who told him not to prophesy, and implies by way of answer to them that, if they will do the words of the law and walk uprightly, then the Spirit of Jehovah will not be straitened any more, but they will have the liberty which they claim they have at present. Then he goes on from Micah 2:8 to denounce their rapacity. These men were extremely covetous, extremely ruthless in their treatment of the poor: "Even of late my people is risen up as an enemy: ye pull off the robe with the garment from them that pass by securely, as men averse from war." They so oppress the poor that they have robbed them of their very clothes and take their children from their homes: "The women of my people have ye cast out from their pleasant houses, from their children have ye taken away my glory for ever." They oppress the women, the widows, and when they could seize upon a house or a field or anything belonging to them, they would seize it and drive the women and children from their own houses, the same as the Pharisees in the time of Christ, who "devoured widows’ houses and for a pretense made long prayers."

Because of that he again denounces them: "Rise ye, and depart: for this is not your rest: because it is polluted: it shall destroy you, even with a sore destruction." Get away from this, go into exile. That will be the inevitable result. With stinging sarcasm, he refers to the false prophets and tells them they are the kind of preachers they like to listen to: "If a man walking in a spirit of falsehood do lie, saying, I will prophesy unto thee of wine and of strong drink, he shall even be the prophet of this people." That is the kind of a prophet they like, a man that will preach to them about wine and strong drink, or the man that will preach to them the things they like.

The theme of Micah 2:12-13 is the return and restoration of Israel. This passage has caused a great deal of discussion among commentators. The critics say it is out of place here; that it breaks the connection, and that it was written in exilic times or after, because it prophesies the restoration of the exiles. If it appears to break the logical connection, let it be remembered that Micah had already predicted their captivity and this paragraph simply gives the needed encouragement at this time. Surely Micah, prophesying as he did in the early part of 722 B.C., saw a vision of the restoration. He certainly gives us a picture here of Israel restored, as he says, "I will surely gather the remnant of Israel; I will put them together as the flock in the midst of their fold; they shall make great noise by reason of the multitude of men. The breaker is gone up before them: they have broken forth and have passed on to the gate, and are gone out thereat, and their king is passed on before them, and Jehovah at the head of them." This is sometimes taken as a prophecy of the exile itself, showing how the people are to be gathered together as a flock and led into captivity; that their king would be led before them, and Jehovah would be the real leader and cause of it all. The better interpretation, however, is that it represents Israel as returning from exile and led by their God.

QUESTIONS

1. With whom was Micah contemporary, during whose reigns did they prophesy, and what the contrasts between Micah and Isaiah?

2. What special characterization of Micah and why?

3. What is the date of Micah’s preaching and what the testimony from Jeremiah?

4. How does the range of Micah’s prophecy compare with that of Isaiah?

5. In what respects were they alike?

6. Who is the author of the book of Micah and what the probabilities in the case?

7. Give an analysis of the book.

8. What is the contents of the introduction (Micah 1:1)?

9. What is the theme of Micah 1:2-7, how does Micah begin his prophecy, how does it compare with the opening of Isaiah, and what other parallel with Isaiah?

10. What is reason assigned in Micah 1:5 for the appearance of Jehovah, what the meaning and application of this verse?

11. What is the results of this coming of Jehovah in judgments (Micah 1:6-7) and when fulfilled?

12. What is the special theme of Micah 1:8-16, how does the prophet describe his feelings, and what the case as stated in Micah 1:9?

13. Show Micah’s play on words in his vision of the destruction of the cities of the plain (Micah 1:10-16).

14. What is the special theme of Micah 2:1-11 and against what class does Micah inveigh in this prophecy?

15. With whom was the sympathy of Micah and what examples in history of land troubles?

16. What is the penalty to be meted out for this sin (Micah 2:3-5)?

17. What is the response of the leaders to the prophecy of Micah, what Micah’s reply, what the character of the leaders as herein revealed, and what kind of preaching suited them?

18. What is the theme of Micah 2:12-13, what do the critics say about it, and what the fulfilment of this prophecy?