Micah The Morashtite

by L.B. Home, Hamilton, Ontario | Category: The Minor Prophets | Jun 1969

Micah specified his own chronological location, in the reigns of Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah. These three kings reigned for a total of fifty-eight years. Jeremiah gave a specific indication when he spoke of the prophet being active in the reign of Hezekiah. Most of the prophecies in the book seem to relate to the Assyrian invasions of 711 and 701 B.C. Micah was a border dweller, citizen of a small town in the foothills at the edge of the Philistine plains, and he was a contemporary of Isaiah. A man of the country, like Amos, he saw through the tinsel covering of city society. His message spoke of the enemy inside as well as the enemy outside.

It is a startling fact that the defeats of Israel came from the enemy inside. It is fair warning to a people today that wishes to avoid defeat and would like to know more about victory. The real defeats come from inside. The enemies outside capitalised on a situation that already existed, from the defeat

at Ai to the fall of Samaria. Now it was time for Micah to warn that the fate of Samaria threatened Jerusalem, "for the transgressions of Israel were found in thee." Micah met the same hard defensiveness that had greeted others, based on self-satisfaction and righteous assurance. Nothing is more rock hard than a self-righteous man. "Is not the LORD among us? No evil shall come upon us." There was no p05sible penetration of that armour in which the priests ~and the prophets strutted, and with which they inspired the population to put their trust in a tottering structure; no possible penetration except the word of the LORD.

Behind the security and affluence there was rottenness and a great vacuum, such as Amos had seen in Israel. The small farmers were being exploited by great landowners. "They covet fields, and seize them." There was no justice in the land, that priests and the prophets were grabbing for money, and there was idolatry. Micah came to attack the system with a variety of weapons. It is good to know that, for once in a long time, the people heard the message and obeyed it, and the result was a stay of execution by the miracles of deliverance (Jeremiah 26.18,19).

One of Micah's weapons was satire. He used it sharply and with bitter skill. The last six verses of chapter one are a sequence of word plays on the names of places, like saying that, "At the Cape of Good Hope we learned to despair."

The political situation at the time was very precarious. As the Assyrian threat grew, the people of Judah had to choose. Public opinion polarised around two positions, pro-Assyrian or pro-Egyptian. Lachish was the headquarters of a new chariot brigade, obtained at great cost and highly publicised as a valuable weapon. It was a situation of choice that recurred throughout their history, the selection of a power alliance. Only a few of God's people looked upwards, when everyone else was looking north or south. It was hard in those times to remember that God had set His Name on a certain small place and that He had promised,

"Happy art thou, 0 Israel:

Who is like unto thee, a people saved by the LORD"

(Deuteronomy 33.29).

It was easy to forget or to live in doubt that they were the people who had carried all before them and spread terror among nations that awaited their coming. It was easy to believe that victory in God's strength belonged in history and that nothing quite like it would ever happen again. The men who spoke in the Name of the Lord did not say that the great days were finished. There is no reason now to say that the great days are finished unless we mean that the people are not willing to abandon materialism and comfort to obey the word of the Lord.

Anything was offered to God, except the things that He asked. Every effort was made to buy His favour or to avert His displeasure except the effort that God wanted.

"Wherewith shall I come before the LORD, and bow myself before the high God? shall I come before Him with burnt offerings, with calves of a year old? Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?"

"Yes", they would have answered. The smoke on the altars and the ritual processions were what made them feel secure, but Micah went on,

"He hath shewed thee, 0 man, what is good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?"

The history of man's relationship to God, from the time of Cain, is full of instances of people who want to give Him something other than what He wants from them. The pagan concept of gods was that they were grotesque projections of human personality who had to be bribed, flattered or placated. Those who knew the God of heaven, learned that He required from men those things that were necessary for their own good, because they were necessary to life both individual and social.

Ignorance or disobedience brought people into the area of judgement, and Micah preached the inevitability of judgement. He also preached the glory of God's mercy.

"He will bring me forth to the light, and I shall behold

His righteousness."

L.B. Home, Hamilton, Ontario | Jun 1969
The Minor Prophets