The Minor Prophets: Micah

Introduction: Michael Bentley tells us that the book of Micah ‘falls naturally into three parts, each one beginning with the expression ‘hear’ or ‘listen’. At the end of each of these sections there is a message of hope.”

Thus, inn chapter 1:2 we read:
            “Hear, you peoples, all of you; pay attention, O earth, and all that is in it.”
Then, in chapter 3:1 we read:
            “And I said: Hear, you heads of Jacob and rulers of the house of Israel!”
And finally in chapter 6: 1 we read:
            “Hear what the LORD says: Arise, plead your case before the mountains, and let the hills hear your voice.”

Warning, but promise – this is almost always the cycle of biblical prophecy. These three prophetic portions were preached, we are told: over a thirty to fifty year period of time. The revival that finally broke out was still fresh in the folk memory of Israel a hundred years later, when Jeremiah was spared from execution because his own prophecy took on the same form and function as that of Micah. We read further in the Minor Prophets what James Montgomery Boice describes as a common theme at the beginning of his section on Micah: “The minor prophets largely convey a message of God’s judgment. … With the sole exception of Jonah, moreover, their messages of judgment went unheeded. The prophets appeared. Their warnings were rejected. Judgment came.”

How little the world has changed since then! The Lord’s people, especially his messengers are forever unpopular with their necessary owning of the “sin message.” After all, the world defies the definition and nowhere is the world in denial more than here in Twenty-first Century America! So, we can thus all the more realize the popularity of Micah of Moresheth, and the miracle of hearing that once brought revival to the nation in the time of Hezekiah.

Development: In our selected text for today, there are two specific divisions. In verses two through seven, there is the prophecy that Samaria shall be leveled. That this was accomplished within the lifetime of the prophet Micah only adds credence to his further warnings and his prophetic perspective. Then in verses eight through sixteen Micah foretells what we might understand from contemporary literary mind pictures: “The souring of the shire”. By that missing element of the recent blockbuster, we may have a better understanding the harrying, destruction and captivity of the rural precincts in the course of border wars that erupted in the context of the three kings whose reign Micah’s prophecy encompassed.

Let us begin our outline today with a thorough consideration of the first section. Verses two through four wax poetic in their descriptive polemic against the created order, that must unfortunately bear the weight of war and destruction continually down through the ages. In a contemporary situation, there is a law suit in some part of this fair land, reported by the conservative media. It seems that a private land owner wants to use a wooded hill side for a Buddhist meditation ministry. However, the local naturalists have filed suit against the religious use of this more properly natural shrine. It would appear that they desire that nature not be polluted with any prayers or meditation.

While, we may smile at that similitude to the biblical record, we may still appreciate that it is exactly such pagan practical uses of high places that is being condemned here in these three verses. The well known folk-hymn tune “The Ash Grove” seems historically related to similar pagan practices in a time when Christianity began to replace the nature worship of the Druids. In the modern context, it is only in the last few decades that explorers have revisited the mountain tops of the Andes and there discovered the human sacrificial practices of the pagan Inca tribes in South America.

All through the Old Covenant era, the pagan use of high places for nature worship of gods and goddesses was condemned and whenever the religious-political alliance was powerful enough, such utter tripe and nonsense was ended and the pagan parks destroyed. There were common throughout the whole period Ashteroth poles around which all manner of fertility rites were performed. In our own colonial era, the related dancing around any May poles was condemned as unworthy of a god fearing nation. Witchcraft and human sacrifices also abounded throughout the whole of Palestine. And for these grievous sins, the Palestinians were condemned and their property handed over to the people of Israel.

However, the pornographic associations of such religious rites afflicted the people of Israel for long centuries until they were finally cured in and through the exile. One major secular corporation has chosen to deal with computer images of that type by announcing to their employees that those found guilty of so misusing company machinery can either choose counseling or expulsion. A clergy member of our denomination has been hired to provide the necessary counseling. And so – still today we are attempting to cleanse the “high places” of “lowlife practices” unworthy of any civilization!

We see in verses two through four how even nature is afflicted and affected with the fallen interests of mankind. In verse two, not only the peoples of the earth, but also that is addressed: “O earth, and all that is in it, and let the Lord GOD be a witness against you, the Lord from his holy temple.” It is clearly what man has made of earth that must be attentive to the coming destruction. In the next verse, we read that in His coming down, the Lord will “tread upon the high places of the earth.” It is those very sacred parks that must be destroyed, either by the miraculous intervention of the Lord, or the righteous purging of Israel’s theonomic government.

Further, we read of scenes of natural disaster: Remember the gigantic mudslides and earthquakes that have barely moved from news to history, in the last few weeks? In California, the earth literally gave way and melted down the mountain side, sweeping a dozen or more people to their deaths. In Bam, half a world away, the deaths were numbered in the thousands – as the mud bricks of an ancient city fell apart in the churning and turning of the earth.

As we move on through the biblical text, we read in verse five why these things happen on earth. “All this is for the transgression of Jacob and for the sins of the house of Israel.” Specifically the prophecy here proposed is aimed at the House of Ahab and the city of Samaria, where God’s Name has been shamed for a hundred years or more by the time of Micah. Then the verse goes on to explain the theological failure of Samaria and the assumption of the title of true “Israel” by Judah and the sacred precincts of the Temple in Jerusalem. Because of the spiritual prostitution of the ten tribes, they are lost theologically long before the tribes were translated to the pagan backwaters of the Assyrian and Babylonian empires.

The next two verses (six and seven) vividly describe the coming fall of the Samaritan capital. Not only will the city be leveled, but all of its idols destroyed. The fees of whoredom shall return upon the heads of those who willingly and gladly paid them out. Thus, the prophet finishes the Lord’s condemnation and proposes the immediate context of the coming destruction.

In the second section before us, the scene changes to describe the kingdom of Judah, which itself is to be condemned for the exact same circumstances and covenant failings. Commentator Bruce Waltke describes this short lament in verse eight through sixteen. “Micah’s lament over the fall of Judah has three parts:

1. an introduction stating his intention to mourn
     Micah 1: 8-9
2. a lament song, commemorating the fall of the Judean strongholds by a play on words
     Micah 1: 10-15
3. a conclusion, calling the house of David to join in mourning rites because it will go into exile
     Micah 1: 16

The same commentator tells us that “The song … features word plays between the name of the town and its predicted doom. The regularly occurring alliteration, the rapid shift from one locality to another, images juxtaposed in opposition to one another, along with imperatives and parallels, give the song a dynamic and dramatic effect. One feels the excitement before the dreaded march of the enemy.”

The list of towns is a literary arrangement of those places within “a radius of fourteen kilometers around Micah’s hometown, Moresheth-Gath.” The geographic arrangement here is very much like the various circles of counties counted out in the Hungarian districts of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire. There the circles of counties were also counted in the close relationship of the various market districts separated by mountains and rivers.

This descriptive prose recounts the beloved “Shire” of the prophet. I use the word shire not only for its immediate media play on words, but also for the loving attachment of the rural folk to their districts, counties and townships throughout the English speaking world. And here in words indicative of the coming judgment he warns the “conservative” rural folk that they are to be judged and punished for their sins even as their spiritual and ethnic relatives further north in Samaria.

In Tolkien’s tale of Middle Earth, The Scouring of the Shire was left out of the three movie epic, simply because there was so much literary ground and geography to be covered in the telling of the tale. And yet, the wickedness of the dark Lord came even to the peaceful borders of the least threatening folk, the family farmers of Tolkien’s beloved country shire. In the context of that scouring, several of the hobbits rise to the rank and responsibilities of the Old English title of Shire-ff, or as we have it in these United Shires of North America: the county Sheriff, who from ancient times would rally the militia and be responsible for the enforcement of the law and order. All of this was being done for a purpose, so that the people may live in peace and enjoy their life and loves without threat.

However, the peaceful shires of true Israel are never left to themselves, they are always and forever obligated to enforce the “King’s Peace,” specifically that of our Lord, God and King in good times and in bad. In Scotland, after the rising of forty-five, a Black Watch of several Highland companies was established to contain the Lairds and their armed, kilted gangs of ruffians. No longer, would they be free to roam at will and capture the lowland cattle, no more would the armed might of clans intent on blood vengeance be allowed. Peace must come to the Highlands – no matter the cost and transition of the people and economy. Like many rural and rugged areas – the introduction of roads, forts and trade allowed a transformation of the country under the influence of the gospel of peace and like many districts in other parts of the world; peace and prosperity became the hall marks of civilization.

And yet, according to our prophet, it was this very peace which must be disturbed. While the authors of robbery and rape, pillage and pestilence would be the Assyrian hosts, the Lord God of heaven and earth Himself would whistle up this plague of enemies to remind His own people that they had forgotten the person of Himself!

“Tell it not in Gath” could just as easily be put in the modern idiom: “Say it isn’t so!” Then as we move into the circle of towns and villages we must appreciate the former foibles of rural folk in every time and place. Names of hills, valleys, towns, and crossroads are the poetry of geography once celebrated in song and story. The modern world has ruined in so many ways the affection of time and place and even as the modern media dismisses most of the heartland as fly over country – so too has the former Mayberry crowd been shuffled of to meaninglessness. Dusty Beth-le-apharh will be rolled in the dust, beautiful Shaphir will be beautiful no longer, the out-going Zannan will not come out, the nearby city of Beth-ezel will not longer be conveniently in its place, the people of Maroth will comprehend the bitterness associated with their neighborhood, the military town of Lachish will see its forces flee rather than protect the district as they were intended. The Scouring of the Shire will come up to the very gates of Jerusalem and altogether, as we know from later sources: over 200,000 people in the rural districts were marched away into a horrible captivity and slavery.

But the city of Zion will be spared. Micah returns to recite the poetic destruction of the rural districts. Moresheth, the city betrothed will be taken from her husband and ravished by the enemy. Even disappointing Achzib will turn to the enemy in time of war. Mareshah, the possessed will no longer be possessed by Judah. Just as in the final chapter of Tolkien’s movie – the people who flee will take refuge in the caves, in this case the very caves of Abdullam where David found refuge in his day.

Application: It is often hard to make poetic sense that can be passed along to another people or even a generation, but Micah does present the proper images to move our emotions along, the key question which faced the people of his time and even our own: will the people hear?

Boice, whose better poetic intensity I have attempted to convey, comes to these words with which to move us: “Nothing could be dreaded or more severe. To go into exile was to become a slave, and to have an entire people exiled was the death of the nation.”

He goes on to quote another author in this same regard. “Can we feel the force of this?” he asks: “the impact of this powerful poem upon the modern reader is unfortunately marred by a cultural rift. Anyone who despises puns and prizes emotional restraint as a virtue has a long bridge to cross before he can enter this particular section of the heritage God would have him make his own. Micah is not playing clever word games for the amusement of his listeners.”

Let me try to force the poetic sense from a modern American landscape. About fifteen years ago, there was a movie about a “Coca-Cola Kid,” who was sent to a rural district of Australia to discover why the local area drank practically none of the company’s product. To his dismay he discovered a turn of the century bottling plant which cranked out the local fizz that was still enjoyed without the benefit of sharing their joy with the corporate pirates. The “kid’s” responsibility was to destroy the local economy so that the corporate empire could be spread.

When I first saw that movie, I was reminded of the old Kenton Bottling Works that even into the early seventies produced the once fashionable red, blue and orange pops that had been the mainstay of the regional bottlers. As I sorted bottles in that once quaint store of the sixties and seventies – I watched as a new regional product began to spread from the south. A local company in Tennessee began to ship its “Mountain Dew” around the country, at least until it and every other regional company were bought up and out by the big three bottling companies: Coke, Pepsi and 7-Up.

I use that example that in time after time after time, displays the corporate greet of the Sam Wal-Mart’s who like the generation to be described later here in Israel, did indeed ruin on purpose the middle class in ancient Judea. While a false sense of prosperity may certainly be assumed in both ancient and modern circumstances, nevertheless what the poet is getting at here is simply this: a whole way of life has disappeared. Just as the ante-bellum south had both its good and its wicked points, nevertheless the Civil War washed it all away as if it never existed.

I will be the first to admit that the America of the fifties had its sins and faults which became so evident in the social calamity of the sixties. And while the pendulum has swung both ways since – still the American county shires remain just as ripe for destruction as those sentimental towns and villages of Micah’s day and time. We could just as well read “Mayberry” for any one of Micah’s towns and realize the emotional value of what had passed away in the swath of economic and social destruction unleashed by the Lord God of Israel.

“Shave your heads,” Micah admonishes the Lords of Jerusalem because your rural precincts have been destroyed. Let me share one final point here from history. Destroyed cities are very often rebuilt when the rural farms and villages are left intact. The opposite is not always as trustworthy and true, because over the course of history – it has always been the heartland of any country which is its social, economic and moral strength. Whenever that heartland is weakened and destroyed, so too goes the national empire built upon those solid foundations. Historically, we know that Jerusalem lasted another hundred years, more or less – but from this point on: The Scouring of the Sire – the remnant would be forever weakened because the source of hardy rural soldiers, tradesmen and workers was severely weakened. The Lord was beginning a great work in Israel and while He might stay His mighty hand for a time, unless the people repented of their sins – punishment must assuredly come their way. What was true for the pagan fortunes of Samaria must also be shared in Judea as well.

But this is not to be the final word from Micah, even while the dismal gloom and doom of the poetic dispersion and destruction reads on – at the end of each oracle the prophet will have words of hope. To that end we may live without despair, knowing that even in times such as these, and our own: the Lord is sovereign over the kings of the earth and if we trust in Him, He will be faithful in our regard.

PREACHING RESOURCES
Bentley, Michael.  Balancing the Books: Micah & Nahum.
Boice, James Montgomery.  The Minor Prophets: An Expositional Commentary 2.
Waltke, Bruce.  Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries:  Micah
The Holy Bible:  English Standard Version.
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