Micah, An Introduction

Micah

An Introduction

 

The Prophet

The name “Micah” (1:1) is a shortened form of a name which is spelled in various ways in different passages in the Bible. For example, in 1 Kings 15:2, it is spelled Maacah; in 2 Chronicles 17:7, it is Micaiah; in Nehemiah 12:35 (KJV) it is Michaiah. In any spelling, the name “Who is like God (Yahweh)? It has the same meaning, but different etymology, as Michael: Who is Like God (El)? This Micah is identified as being “of Moresesheth and this town is further identified as “Moreshath Gath” (1:14) as it was a small town near the Philistine city of Gath. This designation is to distinguish our “minor prophet” from an older prophet with the same name: Micah ben Imla (1 Kings 22:7-9).

Micah was contemporary with many other prophets of the late Old Testament era. The list of kings in 1:1 dates him as contemporary with Isaiah (Isaiah 1:1) and Jeremiah (Jeremiah 1:1-3)) who specifically references the ministry of Micah (Jeremiah 26:18) but before Ezekiel, whose ministry came after the fall of Judah (Ezekiel 1:1).

As recorded in the book of Micah, the message of the prophet cycles between punishment and salvation and between judgment and hope. The beginning passage (1:2-7) introduces the Sovereign Lord, the one who is worthy to judge, who brings a case against Israel and brings punishment upon them for their idolatry. This same God is also the one who is qualified to redeem us, and promises to come in deliverance, leading all those who will follow (2:12-13).

The second cycle does not deal directly with idolatry, but with those who pursue riches at the expense of others (6:9-14). The judgment of God is to deliver these people into their own idolatrous desires – desires that can never be satisfied because the riches of this world “leave hunger that won't pass away.” Pursuits of this world never lead to satisfaction, but only to hunger for more. As God alone is competent to bring judgment, it is God alone who gives us hope (7:7-9).

Plowshares and Pruning Hooks

The book of Micah contains three passages that are very familiar to us. The first is a passage of ultimate hope (4:2-3). There are similar passages in other settings (Isaiah 2:4, Joel 3:10). Of these passages, the one in Isaiah is most familiar to us, but the one in Micah is very similar. In all its settings, the peace that is presented is more than an absence of open hostility, but a peace in which the tools of war are no longer needed and, as Micah has it, the art of war is no longer taught. The picture is of a peace that the world has never known, and it is wonderful to imagine a generation who never learn the trade of war. But the peace presented here goes beyond even that thought. The tools of war are not left to rust, but are made into tools of basic prosperity.

In our own day we must consider what could be accomplished if we did not have the enormous burden of the cost of war. Not only would there be an end to the pain and suffering of war, which leaves its victims dead, disabled, destitute and orphaned, but there would be an enormous bounty with which we could finance the end of world hunger and the establishment of basic education and health care for everyone in the world.

We pray for peace and uppermost on our minds is our own safety; to a lesser degree we ask abstractly for the safety of others who are like us or known to us in some way; on very rare occasion we may pray for those we call our enemies. We despair of the day when we can once again feel secure. This is our idea of peace, but God's offers us so much more!

Bethlehem Ephrathah

In the second of the three familiar passages in Micah, the prophet foretells of the savior from Bethlehem Ephrathah (5:2). The term “Ephrathah” seems to identify some region which included the city of Bethlehem. The region may have been named after the second wife of Caleb (1 Chronicles 2:19) or perhaps she was named after the region (1 Chronicles 2:50). It is sometimes used as though it were interchangeable with Bethlehem (Genesis 48:7).

It is Matthew who connects for use the prophecy of Micah with the birth of Christ (Matthew 2:1-6). This is the nature of prophecy. Micah's primary ministry was to the people of his time and applied to their problems and possibilities. What did this passage mean to them? How could this prophet foresee the Advent of Christ hundreds of years past his time? Are we open to the same voice that spoke to Micah, or do we believe that we know all we need to know about God? The Bible is a book like no other and is sufficient to our salvation, but can the God who is God be captured between the first chapter of Genesis and the final chapter of Revelation?

He Has Showed You, Oh Man

The final familiar passage (6:6-8) asks a question for every age: how can we even come before the Sovereign Lord? What does the presence of the Lord require of us? The speaker makes several suggestions, each of which is immediately inadequate. The first is the requirement of the law: a simple sacrifice of the fruit of his labor. From there, the speaker goes to extremes. If a simple sacrifice is good, then rivers of blood would be even better. Indeed, the pagan gods required even the firstborn child; would this great sacrifice be enough for God?

The answer that Micah gives is in harmony with with Hosea (Hosea 6:6). It is not ritual that the Lord requires, but surrender. We do not make sacrifice to save our lives, but sacrifice our lives to save our selves (Matthew 16:24-25).

Who Is like God?

In the end, Micah is true to his name, asking who is a God like our God?

Who is a God like you,
who pardons sin and forgives the transgression
of the remnant of his inheritance?
You do not stay angry forever
but delight to show mercy.

(Micah 7:18 NIV)

Arise, Shine, for Your Light Has Come

Arise, Shine, for Your Light Has Come

Isaiah Chapters 58-66

A New Heaven and a New Earth

The book of Isaiah ends quite abruptly with very severe imagery. In order to emphasize the coherent structure of these final chapters, which is somewhat difficult to grasp in the face of the sudden ending, we will consider the chapters out of their normal order, starting with the ending and backtracking to previous chapters to establish the context of the final statements.

The final comment (66:22-24) provides a statement of hope in the new heaven and new earth, but at the same time speaks in uncompromising terms of the eternal fate of those who rebel against God. These are eternally separated from God (so that the righteous must “go out” to look upon them), they suffer eternal torment of the fire that is never quenched, and they are eternally bound to the decay that is the nature of this world. Our Lord warned us against our attachment to such corruption, advising us to invest ourselves in heaven, rather than treasures of this world (Matthew 6:19-21) and, in a passage that should cause concern for almost all of us in the Western world, pronounces blessing on those who are poor and woe to those of us who are rich, because we have already received our reward (Luke 6:20-24).

In contrast to the unrighteous, who depend on their own resources and are doomed to that dependence, the redeemed are shown a new heaven and a new earth that is in eternal harmony with the Lord (65:17-19). Jeremiah also preached a message of renewal (Jeremiah 31:31-33) through a new covenant, and Christ brought us a new covenant (or “testament”) in his blood (Mark 14:24). The call to a new covenant relationship echoes throughout the Bible. In each case, the promise is that we will be God's people, and the Lord will be our God. What, then, is new about these new covenants? The answer was revealed to John on the Isle of Patmos: it is God who makes all things new (Revelation 21:1-5). God is the same, the covenant is the same, but we are renewed as we reenter the covenant with God.

Declare to My People Their Great Rebellion

Backing up, now, to Chapter 58 to begin establishing the context for this final separation of the righteous and the unrighteous, we find a surprising accusation: the rebellious people are not some foreign, pagan people, but the very people of God who were in fact carefully observing their religious practices, of which “fasting” is used as a metaphor for all their ritual observances (58:1-4). These people are surprised themselves of the ineffectiveness of their religious expressions. The charge of the Lord was that their worship was empty. They did not allow the way they worshiped to affect the way they lived, and the way they lived their lives rendered their worship meaningless.

The Lord delivered a similar message through Hosea (Hosea 6:6). God expects our worship to be expressed through real concern toward those around us, not through meaningless words or deeds. What Isaiah identifies as proper “fasting” (58:6-8) is the same attitude and action that James identifies as true religion (James 1:27).

As Chapter 58 identifies this lack of real compassion as “rebellion” against God, Chapter 59 explains that our failure to be godlike in our interaction with others is counted as open rebellion to God (59:1-4). But while we may fail to be God's people (Jeremiah 5:23-25) God never fails to be our God (Deuteronomy 7:9).

Favor and Vengeance

We have been noting that we know many of the passages of Isaiah from their New Testament setting. The beginning verses of Chapter 61 (61:1-2) contain the passage most closely with the “good news” of the New Testament. It is the passage Christ used to announce his ministry (Luke 4:16-21) and to define himself as “the one” – the long-awaited Messiah (Luke 7:19-22). The unsettling combination of favor and vengeance that is mentioned in this passage is returned to more emphatically in Chapter 63 (63:3-6). While the strong language of this passage seems intentionally designed to foster the “Fear of the Lord”, the idea that the judgment of God is never separate from the love of God is not a new idea for Isaiah, where Christ has already been presented as both a sanctuary and a stumbling stone (8:14).

Chapter 64 begins (64:1-4) from a position we often find ourselves: ready for the Lord to open the heavens and come down upon the enemies of God. We make that sort of statement when we feel certain we know who those enemies are. As the chapter progresses, however, it includes the confession that we are all enemies of God (64:5). How, then, can we be saved? Only the Lord can save us: he who is our Father, who made us, and can make us whole (64:8).

Arise, Shine, for Your Light Has Come

In the middle of this struggle of redemption and wrath, the conflict between our love of God and our infatuation with ourselves, emerges the call from a God who is intent on our salvation, and calls us to participate in the salvation of the world (59:21-60:3). We have been shown a light that darkness cannot overcome (John 1:1-5) and we are expected to carry that light to the rest of the world (Matthew 5:14-16).

Come to the Waters

Come to the Waters

Isaiah Chapters 54-57

A Brief Moment

Chapter 54 begins (54:5-6) by reminding us of the intended relationship between ourselves and God as God calls himself our “redeemer”. We think of this word as synonymous with “savior” as, in fact, it is, but in Hebrew the word is a metaphor with a specific meaning. When Naomi tells Ruth that Boaz is their “kinsman-redeemer”, she used this same word. A woman in the time of Isaiah had no legitimate income or authority and in these depended solely on her husband. If her husband died, then she was lost, but could be redeemed by a brother-in-law or another male relative. This is the way it is with our redeemer: we have no worth of our own and no rights but what our redeemer offers us.

Though our sin causes of to be briefly separated from our God, it is not the will of God that we suffer for ever (54:7-8). In contrast to the brief anger we bring upon ourselves, there is the everlasting love of God (Jeremiah 31:3-4). Though our sin hides from us the face of our God, the same God who sees all our sin sees also our affliction (Psalm 10).

Thoughts and Ways

Our thoughts could not be further from the thoughts of God (55:7-11). If we think we are gods, we deceive ourselves (1 Corinthians 3:18-20). Our words are week, changeable things, but the word of God is a powerful thing that will not return without affecting its redemptive intent. Jesus himself is the Word (logos) of God , the human expression of Divine thought (logos) (John 1:1-3).

Where our ways are petty and self-serving, the ways of God are completely just (56:1-2). Even the justice of God is far removed from our own: where we seek punishment, the Love of God seeks forgiveness (57:16-18). We want at least an eye for an eye (Matthew 5:38-45) but the love of God requires that we love others as we love ourselves (Matthew 22:35-40).

Come

Early in Isaiah, God calls us in an amazing way. In the midst of a catalog of sins, we are called to come together with the Lord, the very measure of good, so that not only are our sins forgiven, but there are washed away as if they never existed (1:18). In these later chapters we have another clarion call to come to the presence of God, to the waters of redemption (55:1-5). What must we do, how can we qualify for the waters of life? Nothing but the to thirst after righteousness (Matthew 5:6). The Lord our God says “Come.”

And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely. (Revelation 22:17 KJV)

By His Wounds We Are Healed

By His Wounds We Are Healed

Isaiah Chapters 49-53

The Servant of the Lord

The book of Isaiah does not, as other prophetic works do, begin with a statement of commission. Instead, it is Chapter 6 (6:1;8) that is generally accepted as the commission of Isaiah. But there is in Chapter 42 (42:1-4) a new statement of commission for one identified as the Servant of the Lord. As we have previously discussed, there are those who believe that after Chapter 39 we hear a new prophetic voice; if that were the case, then a new statement of commission would not be out of place. This is not the only explanation, however, as evidenced by the “recommission” of Jeremiah (Jeremiah 15:19-21).

However, the idea Servant of the Lord, introduced in Chapter 42 and referred to again in 49:1-3, is more mysterious than the simple commission of a new prophet or the recommission of one that has begun to falter. To begin with, in the manner of Jeremiah (Jeremiah 1:5) and Paul (Galatians 1:14-16) the Servant acknowledges the eternal call of God who knew him from before his birth. But, in the face of this most personal confession, the Servant identifies himself as “Israel”, the priestly nation of God. We must add to this multiplicity of identity the New Testament viewpoint that claims this Suffering Servant as our Lord Jesus Christ (Matthew 12:17-21).

Who, then, is this servant? Is it Isaiah? Is it Israel? Is it Christ? The prophet seems purposely to suspend, rather than resolve, this enigma as he speaks for the Servant in the first person, attributes to the Servant the hoped-for recovery of the remnant of Israel, and further names the Servant as the as yet unimagined redeemer of the ends of the earth (49:5-6).

I Will not Be Disgraced

Through the rest of Chapter 49 and into Chapter 50 the voice of the Servant continues in dialogue with the voice of the Lord. In the second section of the latter chapter (50:4-9) we again see the Servant's prefiguration of Christ, who taught in word and deed that we must submit ourselves to our enemies (Matthew 5:43-48; 27:27-31). Here, the Servant says a surprising thing: it is the power of men to beat us, mock us, and spit upon us, but not to disgrace us; our help is in the Sovereign Lord, and we cannot be insulted or put to shame.

The words of Paul to the Romans are not only in agreement with the command to submit ourselves to those who would abuse us, specifically (Romans 12:14) and to all earthly authorities in general (Romans 13:1-6) but in the idea that these powers cannot cause us eternal harm because our trust is in the Christ of God (Romans 9:33). Our God gave us his own Son to redeem us; there is no one who can condemn us (Romans 8:31-34).

Awake, Awake!

In the middle of Chapter 51 we find the first of three calls to “Awake, Awake!” This first call (51:9-11) goes out to the arm of the Lord to act as in former days; the strength that was of old still is and will always be. The second call (51:17) is to Jerusalem, to shake off the drunkenness of the cup of the wrath of God. In the Bible, the image of the cup is used both to symbolize the salvation of God (Psalm 116:13; Matthew 26:27-28) and the wrath of God (Jeremiah 25:15-16; Revelation 14:10). There is no ambiguity in this image. The same dichotomy is attributed the the stone that was rejected by the builders (Matthew 21:42-44). The same word of God will fall upon those who reject it and uphold those who accept it. Israel had become drunk on their own devices – the cup of wrath – and was invited to put away that cup and drink the cup of salvation. It is this escape of ourselves to which we, with Jerusalem, are invited in the third call (52:1-2). The chains around our neck are of our own making, but we are invited to shed the chains and clothe ourselves in strength, to put on the armor of righteousness (Ephesians 6:10-11).

By His Wounds We Are Healed

It is the nature of all prophecy that it has meaning not only in the setting in which it was originally proclaimed, but in all later times, as well. There are passages in Chapter 53 that are so familiar to us in their New Testament recapitulation that it is now hard for us to imagine what they might have meant in their Old Testament setting (53:1-7). Was there an Old Testament servant of whom this passage speaks, or was Isaiah, as John implies, completely caught up in the glory of Jesus (John 12:37-41)? If not Christ, who was it who took our infirmities and carried our sorrows (Matthew 8:16-17)? If not the Son of God, whose are the wounds that heal us (1 Peter 2:23-25)?

The Advent of Christ now seems to us frozen in time. What Isaiah looked forward to with such fervent anticipation as to ease the suffering of his day, we look back upon as our foundation of faith. But this is the nature of the Word of God: it is in this world never a thing achieved, but a goal before us and a help beside us. The sacrificial death of Christ was, in fact, an event in time which became for us the propitiation of our sin. By his wounds we are healed. Yet we are each in our own time called to take his wounds upon us – to lose our very lives in order to find them (Matthew 10:38-39). By his wounds we are healed.

 

There Is no Other

There Is no Other

Isaiah Chapters 44-48

Jeshurun

The initial verses of Chapter 44 (44:1-8) set the tone for the chapters we now approach. However, there are two side issues we must consider before we address the focus of this passage. The first is question of what it means to write “the Lord's” on one's hand. The answer is somewhat disappointing, because we really do not know what it means, though it seems to be some sign of ownership (Revelation 13:16-18).

The next issue we must address is the name “Jeshurun”. This word means “the upright one” and it is a name used for Israel here in this passage and in only one other place in the Bible. In the closing chapters of Deuteronomy, Moses uses this name both in his song (Deuteronomy 32:15-18) and also in his blessing (Deuteronomy 33:26). In that context, the name itself is a tender rebuke: at the same time Moses calls Jeshurun “the upright one” he portrays the nation as a people not evil by intent – not as those who considered and rejected their God – but as a people fatted and indolent who simply ceased to care for anything but their own bellies.

Isaiah¹ is intentionally invoking that same context tender rebuke (love and judgment) here as the same God who will not share glory with idols (42:8) will pour out blessing as water in a dry, thirsty land.

As the chapter progresses, the notion of idolatry is completely unmasked. In verses 16-20 the Lord says plainly that idols are nothing but wood and stone. Though the people may have believed that the idols they fashioned were indwelled by the gods they evoked, the Lord exposes them as simple, inanimate objects that can have no power because there is no other God. We may think ourselves more advanced than those who would worship simple things, but surely this prophetic message prefigures our consumer society where we have not only the wood we need for the fire, but much much more. The accumulation of things entraps us, and we make detestable what should be good. We cannot save ourselves from our things, because it is not the things themselves that enslave us. Our ultimate idolatry is our enslavement to ourselves.

I, the Lord, Do all these Things

Chapter 45 begins (verses 1-8) with astonishing pronouncements. First, the Lord calls Cyrus, king of the Persians (or the Medes, depending on whom you read) “his anointed one.” Surely this idea would have been astounding to the people of Israel, who saw themselves as the only anointed of the Lord. It is an idea that continues to trouble us to this day. Though Paul tells us that there is no authority except that which God has established (Romans 13:1-6) we act as though it is our right to establish such authorities, and to disregard or actively subvert authorities which do not measure up to our standards of Christian morality (never mind that we may not meet those standards ourselves). Certainly, this is a hard saying, and we would wish to qualify this instruction. Surely God does not intend for us to support by our inaction an oppressive regime! Did our Lord himself not come to set at liberty those who are oppressed (Luke 4:16-21)? We must remember, however, that even as Paul wrote us this instruction, the Roman authority was actively hostile to Christians, and further that the Jews expected a political or even military Messiah who would overthrow the Roman Empire and establish the superiority of the Jews. As it turned out, this was not the sort of Messiah we were given, and not the sort of Lord we serve.

But what kind of God do we serve? One who is the source of both light and darkness and of prosperity and disaster. In the Hebrew, the word translated “prosperity” is shalom, the word we know well from the blessing in Numbers 6:24-26. The second word, translated “disaster” is ra; we know it from the 23^rd Psalm (Psalm 23:4). How can we serve a God who allows bad things to happen to good people or (perhaps more to our exasperation) allows good things to happen to bad people? Can we accept a God that sends rain and sun on both the just and the unjust (Matthew 5:43-45)? As Isaiah knew (and Paul, after Isaiah) we have no right even to ask this question – no right to quarrel with our Maker (45:9-11; Romans 9:20-21).

Still, we ask.

There Is no Other

The answer we form for ourselves is that the God we cannot explain must not exist. Like the Babylonians we fill the void we imagine with the gods we create. We no longer fashion gods from wood and stone; our idols are more abstract and more insidious. Ultimately, we want no god other than ourselves (47:8).

The answer we form for ourselves is nothing but illusion, but the voice of God rings throughout these chapters with an answer that is very real: God is God, there is no other (44:21-24; 45:5-6, 18-19; 46:8-10; 48:12-13). This is the essence of faith: the world is good because God is God.

 

1As we have discussed previously, there is good scholarship which suggests that the chapters after 39 are from a different author (or perhaps a different editor) than those before. It is not uncommon for this individual to be referred to as “Second Isaiah”. You author is not a scholar, and chooses not to affect scholarly terminology, but instead uses the term “Isaiah” to refer to the word of the Lord as recorded in the book of Isaiah.