Genesis

Micah

LeRoy Eims

The message of Micah was given to both the southern and northern kingdoms. It was addressed primarily to their two respective capitols, Jerusalem and Samaria.

He was preaching in the western part of Judah the same thing that Isaiah was preaching in Jerusalem, and that Hosea was preaching in the northern kingdom. His message carried three main ideas: he rebuked the sins of the people, predicted their destruction and their restoration.

In Samaria, the capitol of the northern kingdom, sin was running rampant and the rulers were directly responsible for the national corruption. They had adopted calf worship, Baal worship and other practices of the pagan nations. God had sent Elijah, Elisha, and Amos to bring them back, but it was in vain.

They were just about ripe for the deathblow. Micah lived to see his words come true as the Assyrians carried away all of northern Israel and Samaria became a heap. In addition to their idolatry, the ruling classes were merciless in their treatment of the poor. They seized their fields, even their clothing and on top of it all, keeping to themselves false prophets who cheered them on in their unjust and cruel behavior.

Micah pronounced the doom of both Jerusalem and Samaria. The prophecy concerning Jerusalem is truly amazing. At the time Assyria is sweeping everything before it. This prophecy was made 100 years before the rise of the Babylonian Empire. Yet Jerusalem survived the Assyrian attack and lived to see Assyria overthrown by Babylon at whose hands Jerusalem fell and was carried away.

The Psalmist describes their sorrow and homesick condition during their captivity: "By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.” (Psalm 137:1‑6)

Micah warns his people that because of their ingratitude to God, hypocrisy, dishonesty, idolatry, treachery, violence and bloodthirsty ways, punishment is certain. No prophet presented the truth in a greater variety of ways than did Micah.

It is the truth of course, not only for Israel and Judah, but for the nations of every age. There are fundamental moral laws underlying the structure and woven into the fabric of society. When they are ignored and violated, disintegration sets in and the structure is sure to collapse. For the confirmation of this truth, it is only necessary to scan the pages of history. The chosen people were not exempt. They paid the penalty for their sins in disaster and oppression. The state went to pieces as truly as did Greece and Rome.

All the prophets went to the heart of the matter in condemning the empty formality of rites and ceremonies, but none stated it more clearly and forcefully than did Micah. "Wherewith shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before the High God? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves of a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my first‑born for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He hath shown thee, Oh man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?" (Micah 6:6‑8)

The sacrificial system was divinely appointed to be continued and fulfilled in Jesus Christ. It was not the system that the prophets condemned, but the empty, meaningless performance and the spiritually decadent lives of the people who observed them.

Micah emphasized the fact that Jesus is the hope of the world. That is true today and will be true tomorrow. Education, culture, and politics cannot save the world. In the shifting of foundations, the breaking of the moral, social and religious order, with growing disintegration, the hope of the world is the Christ who stepped out of eternity into the manger of Bethlehem (Micah 5:2).

Other prophets told us of His person and work, but here we learn where He was to be born. And the prophecy was fulfilled to the letter. The Word of God is sure.