Here is Boadt’s introduction to Micah….
If Isaiah seemed to be totally concerned with the
behavior and life of Jerusalem the capital city, and with the presence of the
holy God that dwelled in its midst, Micah seems nearly the opposite. Except for
the long poem on Zion that fills chapter 4 of his book and which many scholars
doubt is original to Micah, hardly a mention of Jerusalem or the temple occurs
anywhere. Instead, he talks of the villages and small towns, the tribal
territories and the border cities of the Philistines to the west. The label
that heads the book in Micah 1:1 tells us that he preached his message at the
same time as did Isaiah, but the two prophets must have been very different
types of people. Micah’s town of Moresheth-gath was probably quite small and
more concerned with the agricultural year and the weather than with the affairs
of state. Where Isaiah might cry out against injustice in urban vocabulary,
“How the faithful city has become a
prostitute, who used to be full of justice; righteousness lived in her, but now
murderers!” (Is 1:21), Micah would rather choose to say, “We are utterly
ruined; he takes away the inheritance of my people and removes it from me;
among our captors he divides our fields”
(Mi 2:4).
But Micah looked out at the same nation as Isaiah
and saw the same injustices and evil everywhere. His charges are leveled above
all against the landlords who take advantage of the poor, and he foresees the
same divine judgment coming against the people and their leaders as Isaiah did.
Indeed, the two prophets stand so close in their understanding of what was
happening in Judah that we can hardly doubt that each one was reporting very
accurately what was going on. Micah’s message was powerful and uncompromising.
He declares that even if the whole nation should become corrupt and turn from
Yahweh, he will wait and trust only in the Lord (Mi 7:7). Even a hundred years
later, the Book of Jeremiah remembers the power of Micah’s message that
encouraged King Hezekiah to begin his reform movement (Jer 26:18-19).
The Book of Micah can be divided conveniently
into four parts which alternate between judgment and hope:
1-3 Oracles
of judgment against both Samaria and Judah
4-5 Oracles
of hope and restoration
6:1-7:7 A
legal trial against Israel for its sins
7:8-20 A
vision of God’s victory over Israel’s enemies
Chapters 1-3 open with a condemnation of the
leaders of Judah for their sins. Micah lists a whole series of cities and towns
and announces their day of judgment. In many ways he sounds much like an angry
resident of a small town expressing his grievances against large cities when he
asserts that the two chief sins of both
the northern kingdom and of Judah are their two capital cities, Samaria and Jerusalem (Mi 1:5). People in power use their
position to take the inheritances belonging to the weak and powerless. People
are forced from their homes and family farms because of the greed of civic
officials, priests, diviners and even other prophets! This shocking series of
oracles ends in a final climactic vison in 3:12 that sees the total destruction
of Jerusalem and the end of the temple. In this he goes further than Isaiah
usually did, although Isaiah himself often hinted that God’s punishment might
affect the whole land.
If you live in the country, do you tend to think
that most if not all of the problems of the world arise in the big cities? If
you live in the city, do you tend to think that the only important stuff in the
world happens where you are, or in big cities like yours? What do you think of
this statement? ...
“If only it were all so simple! If only there
were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were
necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the
line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And
who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?” Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Do you think that Micah and Isaiah would have
agreed with Solzhenitsyn?
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