The Minor Prophets: Micah

“Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State!
Sail on, O Union, strong and great!
Humanity with all its fears,
With all the hopes of future years,
Is hanging breathless on thy fate!”

I begin with this example because in many respects – the common expectations of the people of Israel were all wound up around the concrete observable and worldly realities of God’s little kingdom symbolized however dimly there on Zion’s “holy” hill. And while the prophet Micah is not charged with sinking the image completely – his is the personal responsibility to take the wind out of her sails – so to speak to the point and bluntly!

We may outline Micah’s purpose in these brief seven verses in this way. First, there is another “anacrusis” in the first part of verse one. Then there is a complaint in verses 1b through 6, followed and concluded by a statement of confidence in verse 7. From there the simplicity of the design becomes complex. The complaint also has two parts, and then the first part of the complaint has two sub-points. Then we are shown that the interpretation is twofold and that is described by two metaphors – but, let us simply consider the details in their proper place.

Development: We begin with the “anacrusis,” the arbitrary first note, which precedes the announcement proper. If it sounds slightly off key, it is because Micah is charged with a heavy responsibility to announce that the earthly voyage of Israel’s Ship of State is not only sailing in harm’s way, but very much in danger of sinking outright – if the leaders and crew do not heed the Creator’s charges against them and then repent of their ongoing sin that endangers the people of God. “Woe is me!” reads our English Standard Version, and “What a misery is mine!” translates our commentator: Bruce Waltke.

A decade ago, an Army Officer tried to recruit me for Desert Storm. While I was flattered that at my late age, I could have some use for my country – I was a little dismayed at the final reason for which my services were needed. If I had agreed – I was told that it would have been a very limited assignment for a couple months activation and training and then being returned home to notify anyone in my area who had lost a loved one in combat in the Middle East. There were many factors in my decision not to participate, but it was not because of the necessary task at hand. However, in looking back I can well sympathize with the prophet here that the job at hand could hardly be pleasant in any way shape or form. As things worked out, another pastor stepped up to the plate and by providential history, was allocated only one such necessary visit. After the end of that brief and relatively bloodless campaign, some of the old salts in the forces were actually complaining that this was no way to fight a war – that many more lives should have been put on the line and much more accomplished in a world where we barely had authority to remove the aggressor from one tiny, albeit strategic country.

With the prophet’s agony well noted and documented, we move on to the first part of the complaint (the accusation) which he is to pass on to the people of Judah. The whole of the prophet’s accusation is noted in verses 1b-4a, but we will focus immediately on what we might label: the second and third couplet of verse one:

“For I have become as when the summer fruit has been gathered,
as when the grapes have been gleaned;
there is no cluster to eat,
no first-ripe fig that my soul desires.

Here the Lord God of Creation is noted as the Vinedresser, He it is who had managed Israel through the desert for forty years, planted her in the promised land and after careful pruning and care is almost distraught at finding no fruit for all His labors. Our reference notes take us to Luke 13: 6-9 where we find the Parable of the Barren Fig Tree. Jesus told this parable: “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. And he said to the vine-dresser, ‘Look, for three years now I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and I find none. Cut it down. Why should it use up the ground?’ And he answered him, ‘Sir, let it alone this year also, until I dig around it and put on manure. Then if it should bear fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.”

Isaiah too demonstrates the same theme in Isaiah 5: 1-7. We will read only the first verse:

“Let me sing for my beloved my love song concerning his vineyard:
        My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill.
                he dug it and cleared it of stones,
                and planted it with choice vines;
        he built a watchtower in the midst of it,
                and hewed out a wine vat in it;
                and he looked for it to yield grapes,
                but it yielded wild grapes.”

Isaiah then goes on pointedly to tell his generation the same things as did Micah. The vineyard of Israel was not a pleasant enterprise. The Lord God “looked for justice, but beheld bloodshed; for righteousness, but beheld, an outcry!” Then again in Psalm 80: 8-16 the same sour note is sounded that the vineyard of the Lord must be left unprotected for the ungodly to ravage it – all for the sins of the people who presumed to serve the Lord.

In short, the Lord had established His people, guided, instructed and protected them, but He found no fruit of the Spirit of the Lord in their midst. Why is that the prophet would lead us to wonder?

“The missing fruit,” to be described in verses two through four is, as Waltke demonstrates: “is godly magistrates.” Waltke goes on to tell us that the word: “’Godly’ refers to those who keep covenant with God and his community;” while the “’upright” are those who maintain the moral rectitude of the covenant.” The word: rectitude, here simply means “correctness of behavior or procedure.” In the second couplet of verse two the prophet identifies the leadership as hunters instead of shepards. Instead of being concerned with the safety of the people and their property – the leaders have gone wildly astray to consume the property and goods of their nation: holding it all for their own gain and glory. Waltke phrases this truth more stridently: “The king and his depraved minions flagrantly pervert the covenant not merely by accepting bribes, but by actually wringing them out of their hapless subjects.” It is one thing to accept favors and bribes to accomplish the administration of justice and regulation. It is another thing even worse to actively force them from everyone for the mere privilege of survival.

Rewarding corruption is unfortunately a way of doing business around the world, however – if you are of a mind to recoil from participation – you do not have to go there and participate. But, it is another thing entirely if we are all forced to participate in an ungodly scheme in order to put food on our table. This is how bad it had become in Jerusalem.

Verse four announces that “the best of them is like a brier, the most upright of them a thorn hedge.” Have you ever tried to force your way though a hedge, especially one that grows thorns? Years ago, the Ohio government agencies encouraged the planting of multi-flora rose. It was supposed to be an impenetrable hedge! For the average human dressed casually – it was very effective, but for a hungry cow or sheep it barely discouraged them. Now the country side is plagued by the growth of this favored fruit and removing it is much less than a labor of love – instead it is an unwanted tax of time for those who only wish to farm their land. How appropriate is this description of the great multitude of bureaucratic managers and administrators – to actively keep people from achieving their dreams and honest desires!

In verses 4b through 6 we move to the second part of the complaint (the affliction) in our text. Here is the announcement of that affliction: “The day of your watchmen, of your punishment, has come; now their confusion is at hand.” Read carefully the text of verses five and six! How very much like the communist and fascist societies is the content and context here! The worldly socialists of every stripe have their spies in every house, even the school children are recruited to rat on their parents. In China, the government there has recruited over the years the most gossipy old crones they can find, all to keep track of who is pregnant, so that any untimely second child may be aborted!

The climate described here is almost like public service at its worst. There was a short period of time when the Chinese methodology was applied. It was announced that anyone who had any concerns whatsoever, should write them down and submit them for the administration to consider. Since I had just read of this technique being used in China during the previous decade, I held my peace. Those who didn’t, those who believed that the system could be improved discovered that their personal files were now corrupted with enough evidence to have them removed the very next time any excuse came up. Half a dozen good people were forced out. That was the terrible year when three or four of my body systems were near to crashing. That was the year I took six weeks off and used it to hold the initial bible studies that led to the formation of Christ Covenant Reformed! Yes, it can happen here, just as it has in the Old World and in ancient Judah as well!

Sadly, it can even happen in Christ’s own church – where improper management techniques are brought in hook, line and sinker from worldly businesses. Now, we have to remember that the themes in these two verses were later used in apocalyptic literature to describe the times when all Heaven breaks loose at the end of the age. “Jesus, too,” Waltke notes, “used this application of the verse to illustrate the division that his advent would produce in Israel.”

Application: We get a certain sense, that the illustration being used would describe the urban dynamics of a city under siege during war. So, this would be entirely appropriate for the shortages in Jerusalem when it was surrounded by the Assyrian hosts. However, Micah will not leave the people of God to stew in their own juices – but, even with the worst of news, he will give a verse of hope. Look over verse seven in our text for today: “But as for me, I will look to the Lord; I will wait for the God of my salvation; my God will hear me.”

In spite of all the turmoil and troubles – God will take care of His own. After my, personal - terrible ordeal at work in the late eighties – there was a change in administration, and when I went back to work – I took may doctor’s advice and no longer participated in any discussions about the nature and purpose of the work place. I did my job, ignored the politics and survived to retire at the very first opportunity! Others were not so fortunate!

The salvation here in Micah’s definition is both military and judicial in the life and history of Judah. The dreaded Assyrians died ‘en masse’ and a national revival restored the judicial process to what it should have been all along! Waltke quotes another to enhance our understanding of the ending in verse seven. “The verbs ‘watch (in hope), wait’ and ’hear’ entail not a passive waiting for the victory but an active participating in it through prayer and hope. As the ship of state broke apart, first internally from corrupt officials and then externally from the Assyrian invasion, our poet-prophet, as Mays says so well: ‘does not give up and surrender to depression, but “waits”, the most powerful form of action by the helpless who express in their waiting the knowledge that God comes to them in the form of salvation’.”

Like the prophet, we too know where history will end, we also know that when the fruit of wickedness ripens to the stage of being rotten – that He too will act within history. Knowing these things – Micah waited on the Lord and not only did the Lord destroy the Assyrians, improve the nation – but He also granted a national revival. May we wait for the Lord to do the same in our own nation, day and time as well.

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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