Micah 1 verses 1 to 9

 

MICAH 1 verses 1 to 9

The word of the LORD that came to Micah the Morasthite in the days of Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, which he saw concerning Samaria and Jerusalem.

Hear, all ye people; hearken, O earth, and all that therein is: and let the Lord GOD be witness against you, the Lord from his holy temple.  Call to hear the Lord’s testimony

For behold, the LORD 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 under him, and the valleys shall be cleft, as wax before the fire, and as the waters that are poured down a steep place. Description of the Lord’s coming

For the transgression of Jacob is all this and for the sins of the house of Israel, what is the transgression of Jacob? Is it not Samaria? And what are the high places of Judah? Are they not Jerusalem?  Explanation of the Lord’s ‘appearance’

Therefore I will make Samaria as an heap of the field, and as plantings of a vineyard and I will pour down the stones thereof into the valley and I will discover the foundations thereof.

And all the graven images thereof shall be beaten to pieces and all the hires thereof shall be burned with the fire, and all the idols thereof will I lay desolate; for she gathered it of the hire of an harlot, and they shall return to the hire of an harlot.  Announcement of the Lord’s plan

Therefore I will wail and howl, I will go stripped and naked: I will make a wailing like the dragons and mourning as the owls.

For her wound is incurable; for it is come unto Judah; he is come unto the gate of my people, even to Jerusalem.  Reaction of the Lord’s servant

 

 

Micah 1 verse 1

The word of the LORD that came to Micah the Morasthite in the days of Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, which he saw concerning Samaria and Jerusalem.

Micah starts with a claim and a fact.  This is “the word of the Lord.”  It “came” to him.  That is, it was just there, present, imposing itself.  There is sovereignty about Yahweh’s word.  The prophet does not control it; God presses it upon him.  This divine word does not shrink from using a human instrument.

“The word of the LORD that came to Micah the Morasthite” – refers to Micah’s home town, apparently Moresheth-gath, some 25 miles south-west of Jerusalem, among the lowland hills of western Judah.

“which he saw” – verb haza as used here, refers to seeing in a prophetic vision, one of the ways Yahweh conveyed his word to the prophets.  It seems to indicate that there is a visual component in the receiving of Yahweh’s word which then results in the verbal communication of that word. 

The circumstances in which God’s word came to Micah – “in the days of Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, kings of Judah”.  Micah did not prophesy from the very beginning of Jotham’s reign to the very end of Hezekiah’s, it only means that he prophesied during the reigns of these 3 kings, perhaps from about 735 – 700 BC.  When we read Jotham, Ahaz, Hezekiah, we should also read another name, though it’s not actually in the text – Assyria.  These 3 kings ruled during the Assyrian decades.  True, Assyrian pressure and assaults initially affected the northern kingdom (Israel) more than Micah’s Judah but the big red Assyrian machine came running into Judah in 701BC, bleeding Hezekiah’s kingdom within an inch of its life.  In short, Micah served in fearful times.  Even in scary times Yahweh does not cease bringing his word to his people.

APPLICATION

Yahweh came  - consider the kindness and grace of having a God who speaks and is not silent.  He does not allow his people to walk in darkness but rather causes his word to come to his servant Micah, so that they will clearly know his will and his assessment of things!  Grace provides clarity.

Secondly, ponder the gratitude we owe for this digest of Micah’s proclamation.

“Thus what took Micah some 38 to 40 years to preach, we can read within an hour.  How immense our ingratitude, then, if seeing that Micah laboured all of his life to exhort the people of his era, and that God has so graciously provided such a brief summary of his teachings for us, we should fail to esteem them, or neglect to cast our eyes upon them.” John Calvin

Thirdly, observe how little detail Micah provides about himself.  Only his name, date (in reference to 3 kings) and postcode.  Nothing more – not his family, his hobbies, nothing.  “What after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants through whom you came to believe.” 1 Corinthians 3 verse 5)

Micah 1 verses 2 to 9

Hear, all ye people; hearken, O earth, and all that therein is: and let the Lord GOD be witness against you, the Lord from his holy temple.  Call to hear the Lord’s testimony

For behold, the LORD 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 under him, and the valleys shall be cleft, as wax before the fire, and as the waters that are poured down a steep place. Description of the Lord’s coming

For the transgression of Jacob is all this and for the sins of the house of Israel, what is the transgression of Jacob? Is it not Samaria? And what are the high places of Judah? Are they not Jerusalem?  Explanation of the Lord’s ‘appearance’

Therefore I will make Samaria as an heap of the field, and as plantings of a vineyard and I will pour down the stones thereof into the valley and I will discover the foundations thereof.

And all the graven images thereof shall be beaten to pieces and all the hires thereof shall be burned with the fire, and all the idols thereof will I lay desolate; for she gathered it of the hire of an harlot, and they shall return to the hire of an harlot.  Announcement of the Lord’s plan

Therefore I will wail and howl, I will go stripped and naked: I will make a wailing like the dragons and mourning as the owls.

For her wound is incurable; for it is come unto Judah; he is come unto the gate of my people, even to Jerusalem.  Reaction of the Lord’s servant

 

 

The verses divide in two – the Lord’s coming verses 2 to 7 and secondly the prophet’s response verses 8 and 9. 

“Hear, all ye people: hearken, O earth, and all that therein is: and let the Lord GOD be witness against you, the Lord from his holy temple.”

All the “people throughout the whole earth” are to pay attention.  The Lord God is going to bring his case against (“be a witness against”) the peoples of the world.  Yahweh is both judge and plaintiff.  His “holy temple” is, as in Psalm 11 verse 4, his heavenly temple of which the earthly temple is, we might say, a vastly scaled-down replica.  Here is no ghetto deity, no mere provincial “lordlet” of a chunk of Near-Eastern real estate.  Here is the Lord of all the earth summoning all the peoples of the earth to hear his case against them.  First off, the reader gets hit between the eyes with how big Micah’s God is – “he will judge the world.”

“For behold, the LORD 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 under him, and the valleys shall be cleft, as wax before the fire, and as the waters that are poured down a steep place.”

Yahweh is not only the witness who accuses but the judge who comes.  That’s how Micah depicts the Lord here.  His picture implies that Yahweh is neither distant (verse 3) nor safe (verse 4).  He is not removed, not off somewhere in the nether reaches of the universe; rather he comes forth, comes down, treads (verse 3).  When he comes the world seems to fall apart (verse 4).

If mountains melt and valleys are torn up, if everything turns to hot wax or plunging water, we have got devastation on our hands.  Micah uses such graphic language to generate a proper fear of Yahweh.  This is the advent of the Lord of all the earth.  Micah wants us to tremble.

“For the transgression of Jacob is all this, and for the sins of the house of Israel.  What is the transgression of Jacob? Is it not Samaria? And what are the high places of Judah? Are they not Jerusalem?”

Micah gives us the reason for the Lord’s coming 2 phrases.  Yahweh is coming in judgment because of, or on account of the transgression of Jacob and the sins of the house of Israel.  In the last 2 lines of verse 5 Micah specifies that the whole covenant people stands guilty; both the northern kingdom (Samaria) and the southern (Jerusalem) are hotbeds of rebellion and sin. They are the leading source or centre of corruption (perhaps pointing to the leadership of both nations in particular).  “High places” were cult shrines where idolatrous and/or deviant worship was conducted.  By equating Jerusalem with the high places of Judah, Micah implies that Jerusalem itself is one huge high place where such illegitimate worship goes on.

Micah slams his literary fist right into the solar plexus of his hearers.  In verses 2 to 4 Micah is preaching doctrine that his hearers accept without question: Yahweh is coming to judge the world.  The corollary of this doctrine is that when the nations are judged Israel will be delivered  Just as folk are tempted to say “Amen” to Micah’s preaching, he delivers the withering punchline: “All this” – all this fury and terror of the Lord’s coming in judgment – is “because of the rebellion of Jacob”; it’s for the depravity of Samaria and Jerusalem, the covenant people.  Prophets knew how to do this.  In verses 2 to 4 he preaches the doctrine they love, the Lord’s coming and in verse 5 he adds “and this is very bad news for you?”  Micah demonstrates that one can be Yahweh’s prophet and a clever communicator at the same time.

Therefore I will make Samaria as an heap of the field and as plantings of a vineyard and I will pour down the stones thereof into the valley, and I will discover the foundations thereof.  And all the graven images thereof shall be beaten to pieces and all the hires thereof shall be burned with the fire, and all the idols thereof will I lay desolate: for she gathered it of the hire of an harlot and they shall return to the hire of an harlot.

Here Yahweh himself speaks (I will make Samaria as an heap) and proclaims a double devastation, for both the site (verse 6) and the religion of the city (verse 7).

Samaria had been the pet project of kings Omri (880 BC)and Ahab.  It sat on an oval hilltop 300 feet high isolated from the hills around it (except to the east), beside the ridge road running north-south, 40 miles north of Jerusalem and 25 east of the Mediterranean – an excellent defensive position, on the whole.

Yahweh will turn Samaria into a heap of ruins, with the slopes of its hill useful at least for viticulture; such slopes were prime locations for vineyards.  Yahweh will heave the stones of her walls and/or buildings into the valley below. 

Verse 7 depicts how Yahweh will eradicate the religion of Samaria – indeed, that of the northern kingdom.  Yahweh will be venting his anger on their defiance of the first and second commandments; he does not chide them for failure to institute an urban renewal programme.

We wonder how “the hire of an harlot” can appear as a parallel term with “graven images” and “idols”.  This may be an allusion to “sacred prostitution” and fertility rites which permeated popular religion.  A worshipper comes to the shrine, pays a fee for the services of one of the “holy whores” on the staff and engages with her in his “act of devotion”.  Such fees may have been collected and used to purchase more images and idols.  Burning the prostitutes’ wages with fire may refer, then, to burning what those wages purchased – namely, more images and pagan paraphernalia.

“and they shall return to the hire of an harlot.”  Perhaps the idea is that Samaria’s conquerors will plunder the accrued funds of Samaria ‘s shrines, take them home (to Assyria?) and use them to make more images for worshipping their false gods.  Or it may be simpler than that: the soldiers who plunder Samaria’s chapels will use their loot to buy a night in a girl’s bed.

“Therefore I will wail and howl, I will go stripped and naked: I will make a wailing like the dragons, and mourning as the owls.  For her wound is incurable; for it is come unto Judah, he is come unto the gate of my people, even to Jerusalem.”

Here is Micah’s own reaction to is prophecy and the reason for that reaction.  He gives us both the audio (“I will wail and howl”) and the visual (“I will go stripped and naked”) versions of his response.  His are not the quiet tears deemed appropriate in the West; his anguish is of the Near-Eastern, ear-splitting variety.

Going “stripped naked” may be associated with grief, but also fits the description of a captive of war who is being carted off to an unknown land.  Perhaps Micah is suggesting that he is ready to act the part of an Israelite captive suffering under an Assyrian “relocation programme.”

Why is Micah’s reaction so extreme? “For her wound is incurable”.  There is no “fix” for Samaria, no recovery; she is too far gone and can expect only the blows of Yahweh’s judgement.  But his anguish is aggravated because those “wounds” (perhaps both her sinfulness and Yahweh’s judgement) are infectious – it has all “come unto Judah”.  Micah’s own people will be ploughed under the furrows of history.

APPLICATION

This passage depicts the dark side of the gospel truth,  Micah begins by proclaiming “gospel doctrine” that his people would gladly accept; the Lord is coming to judge the world; then he turns that doctrine on them.  The Lord will “come” in judgement on his own professing people.  They approve of the doctrine, but are oblivious to the danger.  Matters can be much the same today; you may be outwardly one of God’s Jesus – you may even have definite views about his coming – and yet have no part in the blessing of that coming.  Jesus himself has warned us that just because we have been on the ‘Jesus’ bandwagon is no indication that we have a place in his kingdom.

This passage also shows us the deep anguish of God’s servant.  Micah is beside himself with grief over the catastrophe coming on Samaria and Jerusalem.  Think what this shows us about a (true) prophet.  A prophet is a man who fearlessly threatens God’s people with God’s judgement and stands against them – and then goes home and weeps shamelessly over the judgement because he cares so much for the people who are to be judged.  And can we not see in Micah one greater than Micah?  Doesn’t the prophet Jesus respond in the same way to the judgement that is coming on Jerusalem? Those who had closed their ears and eyes and hearts to him will receive what they deserve – and Jesus sobs over it. 

“I think he will weep over the lost as he did over Jerusalem.  It will be something to be said for ever in heaven, “Jesus wept as he said, Depart, ye cursed.”  But then it was absolutely necessary to say it.” Andrew Bonar.