Micah 3: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Micah confronts the rulers, prophets, and priests of Israel and Judah. He accuses the leaders of hating justice and treating the people like meat for the pot, and says that when they cry out God will not answer them. He says the prophets who speak well of whoever feeds them will lose their visions and be shamed, while he himself is filled with power by the Spirit of the LORD to name Israel's sin. The chapter ends with the warning that because of these leaders, Zion, Jerusalem, and the temple hill will be left in ruins.

Claim by Claim

1. 3:1
   • The speaker said the following.
   • The speaker called on the heads of Jacob to listen.
   • The speaker called on the rulers of the house of Israel to listen.
   • The speaker asked them whether it was not their business to know justice.
2. 3:2
   • They hate what is good.
   • They love what is evil.
   • They tear the skin off the people.
   • They tear the flesh off the people's bones.
3. 3:3
   • They eat the flesh of the speaker's people.
   • They strip the people's skin off them.
   • They break the people's bones.
   • They cut the people up as meat is prepared for a pot.
   • They treat them like flesh inside a cooking pot.
4. 3:4
   • At that time they will cry out to the LORD.
   • The LORD will not answer them.
   • The LORD will hide his face from them at that time.
   • The LORD will do this because their deeds have been evil.
5. 3:5
   • This is what the LORD says concerning the prophets.
   • The prophets lead the LORD's people astray.
   • The prophets proclaim peace when they have something to bite with their teeth.
   • Against anyone who puts nothing in their mouths, the prophets declare war.
6. 3:6
   • Therefore night will come upon them, so they will have no vision.
   • Darkness will come upon them, so they will not divine.
   • The sun will set over the prophets.
   • The day will turn dark over them.
7. 3:7
   • The seers will be ashamed.
   • The diviners will be disgraced.
   • They will all cover their upper lip.
   • There is no answer from God.
8. 3:8
   • The speaker is filled with power by the spirit of the LORD.
   • The speaker is filled with justice.
   • The speaker is filled with might.
   • The speaker is so filled in order to declare to Jacob his transgression.
   • The speaker is so filled in order to declare to Israel his sin.
9. 3:9
   • The speaker called on the heads of the house of Jacob to hear this.
   • The speaker called on the rulers of the house of Israel to hear this.
   • They abhor justice.
   • They twist everything that is straight.
10. 3:10
    • They build Zion with bloodshed.
    • They build Jerusalem with injustice.
11. 3:11
    • Her heads judge for a bribe.
    • Her priests teach for a price.
    • Her prophets divine for silver.
    • They lean upon the LORD.
    • They say the LORD is among them.
    • They say no evil will come upon them.
12. 3:12
    • Therefore, because of them, Zion will be plowed like a field.
    • Jerusalem will become heaps of ruins.
    • The mountain of the house will become wooded heights.

Words Worth Explaining

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

3:1

"Jacob" and "Israel" are two names for the same ancestor, and both are used here to mean the nation descended from him. The "leaders" and "rulers" are the clan chiefs and officials who ran the courts; the Hebrew word behind "what is just" (mishpat) means both justice in general and the specific business of hearing cases and giving verdicts, which was their job.

3:2

The skinning and butchering language is a deliberately shocking picture, not an accusation that these officials literally ate anyone. It borrows the steps a butcher takes with an animal, and it describes what crooked rulings, seized land and unpayable debts did to poor families, who could lose their fields, their freedom and finally their lives.

3:3

The butchering language is figurative. Micah describes officials stripping people of land, property and freedom in the words a cook would use for jointing an animal. The "cooking kettle" is the large pot in which meat was boiled, the ordinary equipment of a household or a sacrificial meal.

3:4

"Hide his face" is a standard Hebrew idiom for withdrawing favor and refusing to respond, the opposite of turning your face toward someone who is speaking to you.

3:5

Prophets were normally consulted in person and paid with food or a fee, so "who feeds them" is literal: these prophets shape the message to fit the payment. "All is well" translates shalom, safety, health, prosperity, nothing to worry about. "Declare war" uses the language for formally launching a sacred war; here it means pronouncing doom on the person who paid nothing.

3:6

Divination means seeking word about the future by set techniques, reading omens, casting lots, interpreting dreams. Visions and dreams were expected to come at night, so "night without visions" is pointed: the very time the message should arrive will bring nothing.

3:7

"Seer" is an older word for a prophet, literally, one who sees. Covering the mouth or upper lip was a public gesture of shame and mourning, and was also required of a person declared ritually unclean; here it marks men who have nothing left to say.

3:8

Micah is setting himself against the paid prophets of verse 5. To be "full of power by the spirit of the LORD" was the standard claim that a prophet's words came from God rather than from his own head; the difference Micah points to is that his message costs him rather than pays him. The King James "might" here means courage, the nerve to say this to the people who run the country.

3:10

Zion was originally the fortified ridge in Jerusalem that David captured; the name came to stand for the temple hill and for the city as a whole. Building "with bloodshed" points to building projects paid for by extortion, seized property and forced labor.

3:11

These three groups were the three recognized channels of guidance in Israel: rulers gave legal verdicts, priests gave rulings on what was clean and permitted, and prophets delivered messages from God. All three were normally supported by the community; the charge is that each now sells the answer. "Lean on" means rely on for support, as on a staff. Their confidence rests on the belief that the LORD's presence in the Jerusalem temple made the city itself safe from capture.

3:12

Plowing the site of a city means destruction so complete that the ground goes back to farmland; "a heap of rubble" is the mound of debris left where buildings stood. "The hill where the temple stands" is the KJV's "mountain of the house." The KJV's "high places of the forest" describes a bare hilltop overgrown with scrub, the same word used for the open-air hilltop shrines of the region. This particular sentence was still remembered a century later and was quoted at Jeremiah's trial (Jeremiah 26:18) as a prophecy that had not been punished.