Micah 1: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Micah of Moresheth receives a message from the LORD about Samaria and Jerusalem during the reigns of Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah. He calls the whole earth to listen as the LORD comes down and the mountains melt beneath him, and he names the sins of Israel and Judah, centered in their two capital cities. Samaria is to be reduced to rubble and its idols destroyed, and the blow reaches all the way to the gate of Jerusalem. The chapter closes with a chain of laments over the towns of Judah's western hills, ending with a call to shave the head in mourning because the children are being carried away.

Claim by Claim

1. 1:1
   • The word of the LORD came to Micah of Moresheth.
   • This happened in the days of Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah.
   • Micah saw this word concerning Samaria and Jerusalem.
2. 1:2
   • All the peoples are commanded to hear.
   • The earth and everything in it are commanded to listen.
   • The Lord GOD is to be a witness against them.
   • The Lord speaks from his holy temple.
3. 1:3
   • The LORD is coming out from his place.
   • The LORD will come down.
   • The LORD will tread on the high places of the earth.
4. 1:4
   • The mountains will melt under him.
   • The valleys will split apart.
   • The melting is like wax before the fire.
   • The splitting is like water poured down a slope.
5. 1:5
   • All of this happens because of the transgression of Jacob.
   • All of this happens because of the sins of the house of Israel.
   • The question is asked what the transgression of Jacob is.
   • The answer given is that it is Samaria.
   • The question is asked what the high places of Judah are.
   • The answer given is that they are Jerusalem.
6. 1:6
   • The LORD will make Samaria a heap of ruins in an open field.
   • The LORD will make Samaria a place for planting a vineyard.
   • The LORD will pour her stones down into the valley.
   • The LORD will lay her foundations bare.
7. 1:7
   • All her carved images will be beaten to pieces.
   • All her harlot's wages will be burned with fire.
   • The LORD will make all her idols a desolation.
   • She gathered these things from the wages of a prostitute.
   • They will return to being the wages of a prostitute.
8. 1:8
   • Because of this the speaker will lament and wail.
   • The speaker will go stripped or barefoot and naked.
   • The speaker will make a wailing like jackals.
   • The speaker will mourn like ostriches.
9. 1:9
   • Her wounds are incurable.
   • The blow has come as far as Judah.
   • It has reached the gate of the speaker's people.
   • It has reached as far as Jerusalem.
10. 1:10
    • They are told not to declare it in Gath.
    • They are told not to weep at all.
    • At Beth-leaphrah there is rolling in the dust; it is unclear whether the speaker rolls himself in dust or the inhabitants are commanded to do so.
11. 1:11
    • The inhabitant of Shaphir is told to pass on.
    • The inhabitant of Shaphir passes on in nakedness and shame.
    • The inhabitant of Zaanan did not come out.
    • There is mourning at Beth-ezel.
    • Beth-ezel will take away from you its standing place or support.
12. 1:12
    • The inhabitant of Maroth waited in anguish for good.
    • Evil came down from the LORD.
    • The evil came to the gate of Jerusalem.
13. 1:13
    • The inhabitant of Lachish is told to harness the chariot to the swift steeds.
    • Lachish was the beginning of sin to the daughter of Zion.
    • The transgressions of Israel were found in Lachish.
14. 1:14
    • Therefore you will give parting gifts to Moresheth-gath.
    • The houses of Achzib will be a deception to the kings of Israel.
15. 1:15
    • The LORD will yet bring a dispossessing heir against the inhabitant of Mareshah.
    • The glory of Israel will come to Adullam.
16. 1:16
    • You are told to make yourself bald and cut off your hair.
    • This mourning is for your children of delight.
    • You are told to make your baldness wide like a vulture's.
    • Your children have gone from you into exile.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

1:1

"LORD" printed in capitals stands for the personal name of Israel's God, four Hebrew letters usually written YHWH. Jewish readers avoided saying it aloud and substituted a word meaning "Lord," and English translations follow that custom with the capitalized form. Moresheth was a small farming town in the low hills of Judah, roughly twenty-five miles southwest of Jerusalem. The three kings named reign in Judah over roughly 750–690 BC, so Micah is speaking in the decades when the Assyrian empire was swallowing the region. Samaria was the capital of the northern kingdom, called Israel; Jerusalem was the capital of the southern kingdom, called Judah. The two had been separate states for about two hundred years by Micah's time. "What he saw" is the standard way of describing a prophet's message: prophecy was spoken of as something seen, like a vision, not merely heard.

1:2

"Lord GOD" translates a doubled Hebrew phrase, Adonai YHWH, the ordinary word for "master" followed by the personal name. English versions print the second word as GOD in capitals to signal it is the name, not the common noun. The scene here is a lawsuit: a witness in an ancient court did not just observe but testified for or against the accused, which is why the witness "speaks against you." "His holy temple" is ambiguous in Hebrew and left so here; it can mean the sanctuary in Jerusalem or God's dwelling in heaven, and the next verse, where he comes down from his place, leans toward the second.

1:3

"High places" carries two senses at once. Literally it means mountain peaks and ridgelines, which is the picture here of a giant striding across the earth. But the same Hebrew word, bamah, was the standard term for an open-air hilltop shrine, of the kind used for worship of other gods and for unauthorized worship of Israel's God. Verse 5 plays on the second sense.

1:5

"Jacob" is the ancestor renamed Israel in Genesis, and his name is used throughout the prophets as a name for the whole nation descended from him. "Israel" here can mean either that whole people or specifically the northern kingdom, and the Hebrew does not settle it. The question-and-answer form is a rhetorical device: the accusation is that each capital city has become the very thing it should have stood against, Samaria is the nation's rebellion in concentrated form, and Jerusalem, which housed the temple, is Judah's hilltop shrine.

1:6

Fields in this hill country were cleared by piling the stones into heaps and building terraces for vines, so the image is of a walled city reduced to farmland, the stones that made it a city now just rubble in a vineyard. To "lay the foundations bare" means demolition so complete that the buried footings of the walls are exposed, the ancient picture of a city that will not be rebuilt. Samaria was in fact besieged and destroyed by the Assyrians around 722 BC.

1:7

"Carved images" and "images" are statues of gods, made of wood or stone and often plated with silver or gold; the metal is why they could be smashed and melted down and reused. The prophets routinely described worshiping other gods as prostitution or adultery, the nation was pictured as a wife going after other partners for payment. "Everything she was paid" refers to the offerings and treasures accumulated at her shrines, spoken of as a prostitute's fee. The sting of the last line is that Assyrian soldiers will carry the plundered temple metal away and spend it in the shrines of their own gods, so the fee ends up back in the same trade.

1:8

Walking stripped and barefoot was not nakedness for its own sake but the recognized public dress of extreme grief, and also the condition of prisoners of war being marched away, the prophet acts out in advance what will happen to the people. The KJV's "dragons" and "owls" are old renderings of Hebrew words now generally understood as jackals and ostriches, both animals known for eerie, wailing night cries.

1:9

The city gate was the fortified entrance and the weakest point in a wall; an enemy "at the gate" means the attack has reached the capital itself and only the last defense remains.

1:10

Verses 10–15 are a chain of puns: the name of each town sounds like the Hebrew word for the disaster that strikes it. The wordplay cannot survive translation, so the towns simply sound like names in English. "Do not announce it in Gath" quotes David's lament over Saul (2 Samuel 1:20); Gath was one of the five Philistine cities, long-standing enemies, and the point is not to let hostile neighbors enjoy the news. The name Gath also sounds like the Hebrew verb "tell." Beth-leaphrah means roughly "house of dust," and rolling in dust or ashes was the standard gesture of mourning. "Do not weep at all" is uncertain in the Hebrew and some read it as another place name; the ambiguity is left standing here.

1:11

Shaphir means something like "pleasant" or "beautiful", a pretty town paraded away stripped, as captives were. Zaanan sounds like the Hebrew for "come out," and the townspeople do not come out. Beth-ezel means roughly "house at the side," a name suggesting a neighbor to lean on, and this neighbor can no longer support anyone. The last clause is obscure in the Hebrew and translations differ.

1:12

Maroth sounds like the Hebrew word for "bitter." The line turns on the contrast between the good the town waited for and the disaster that arrived instead.

1:13

Lachish was Judah's second city, a heavily fortified garrison town guarding the southwestern approach to Jerusalem, and its name sounds like the Hebrew word for a team of chariot horses, hence the order to harness up and run. "Daughter of Zion" is a standard poetic way of addressing a city as a woman; Zion is the hill Jerusalem stood on, so it means Jerusalem and its people. What sin Lachish began is not specified in the text, and interpreters have suggested either its reliance on chariots and foreign military alliances or its importing of northern-kingdom worship.

1:14

Moresheth-gath is Micah's own hometown, and its name sounds like the Hebrew word for a woman promised in marriage. "Parting gifts" translates a word used for the dowry or send-off presents given when a bride left her father's house for good, the town is being handed over to a new owner and will not come back. Achzib sounds like the Hebrew for "deception," and the related word is used of a streambed that runs in winter and is dry when you need it in summer; a false hope is exactly that.

1:15

Mareshah sounds like the Hebrew word for an heir or dispossessor (the one who takes over your property. Adullam was a cave-riddled district where David hid from Saul (1 Samuel 22:1), so "the glory of Israel") its nobility and leadership, ending up at Adullam means the country's great men reduced to hiding in caves like fugitives.

1:16

Shaving the head and cutting the hair was a customary act of mourning for the dead in this region, and here it is mourning for children still alive but being marched off into exile, which amounted to the same loss. The "eagle" is more precisely the griffon vulture, whose head and neck are bare of feathers, the comparison is to a bald patch that covers the whole head.