Micah: Do Justly, Love Mercy, Walk Humbly

Micah - Peter Mitchell

Open our ears, O Lord, to hear your Word and to know your voice. Speak to our hearts and strengthen our wills, that we may serve you today and always. Amen.

What might a Remembrance Day service, a Christmas Carol service and a prayer of confession at a service of Holy Communion all have in common?

The answer is that they may all contain the words of the prophet Micah. Where, exactly? Wait and see!

We’re told that Micah came from Moresheth, a small village to the south of Jerusalem. Micah’s career as a prophet spanned part of the 8th century BC, shortly after Amos’s time and overlapping with the end of Hosea’s ministry and the beginning of Isaiah’s. Unusually, Micah is said to have prophesied both to Samaria and to Jerusalem, but Micah’s prophecies to the northern kingdom are only mentioned at the beginning of the book and no further; implying that Micah began his work in both kingdoms before the destruction of the northern kingdom by the Assyrians in 722 BC and continued after that event in the south.

Micah’s concerns about the behaviour of God’s people were similar to those of Hosea and Amos and so, therefore, was his message. Sadly, the people of Judah hadn’t learnt from the experience of their neighbours in Israel, indeed they convinced themselves that they were better than Israel had been, and they arrogantly and complacently decided that they had escaped the fate of Israel on this occasion because God had a special affection for Judah and for Jerusalem and wouldn’t allow them to be punished as Israel had been. If that is what they truly thought, they had a strange way of showing it.

Like Hosea and Amos, Micah condemns God’s people for their rejection of God and for their worship of other gods. Micah warns the people that God will ‘tread upon the high places of the earth’, for the shrines of other gods were often located on the tops of mountains. And Jerusalem itself will be one of the high places that God will destroy. Oh dear!

Some 20 years after Israel’s destruction, Judah rashly joined a rebellion against Assyria and the result was that the Assyrian army marched down through Judah, destroying most of its land and its major towns and cities. But, incredibly, Jerusalem is saved, for the present. The Assyrians approach the gates of Jerusalem and besiege the city but do not conquer it, and eventually withdraw, taking with them their spoils and their captives from Judah. However, the people are so complacently wrapped-up in their own affairs that the fate of their kinsfolk leaves them unmoved, despite Micah’s efforts to urge them to consider their own culpability in the events which have led to this situation.

Micah reserves a special condemnation for the wealthy; self-centred, self-serving and arrogant, lying in bed plotting how they shall grab land and riches from others to bolster their own wealth, not because they need it but simply because they can. For the accumulation of wealth is insidious; they can never have enough. It is said that, when you have everything, the only remaining luxury is to take away from others what they have.

When the people first settled in the Promised Land, Joshua oversaw the apportionment of the land equally and fairly, and the principle of Jubilee was put in place to protect this equity. Every 50 years, the land ought to revert to its original owner, in order that no person or tribe should gain undue control over the land. This principle appears to have been forgotten and Micah prophesies that the guilty will lose what they have taken from others, as a punishment for their greedy actions.

Not surprisingly perhaps, the wealthy don’t take too kindly to Micah’s criticisms and warnings. Appropriate attitudes to wealth, how it is gained and then used, is one of the messages most preached in the bible and, sadly, most ignored by its readers. And the Judahites are no exception; they would much rather Micah stuck to subjects with which they were more comfortable, such as preaching about ‘wine and strong drink’. But of course, it is the prophet’s, and the preacher’s, job to speak God’s word, even when it is unpopular; perhaps especially when it is unpopular.

Micah also has a go at the rulers and leaders of the people. They have been enforcing the letter of the law, to achieve their own ends; however, what concerns God is not the law but justice. The leaders clearly have not been just but have, as Micah puts it, taken the skin and flesh from their victims, much as Shylock in The Merchant of Venice demanded a pound of flesh from his victim in the name of justice. Micah says that this is because the leaders do not really ‘know’ justice; in ancient Israel, knowing something involved not just having it in one's mind but also carrying it out.

Then Micah, whose own motives are led by God’s spirit, condemns some of the other prophets as self-seeking; they are prophesying for food rather than for God; prophesying good outcomes when they were given enough to eat and disaster when not given enough. The priests too have been offering their services at a price. Power and influence bring with them the temptation to abuse one’s position for personal gain; we see this today in the lives of some politicians and celebrities and, sadly, have sometimes seen this in church leaders.

And the whole community is to be punished and cleansed in response to the corrupt actions of the guilty. Micah prophesies the complete destruction of Judah and Jerusalem and the exile of its people; however, the purpose of this is not to be an end of things but to enable God to rebuild his people the way he wants them to be. Thus, Micah moves from prophecy of doom to one of hope and restoration. The temple mount shall be raised up again as an attraction to which people of many nations will flock, united, to learn from and to follow God.
In prophesying about the future unity of the nations, Micah says, “They shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.” Words which you may recognize from the prayers for peace offered at Remembrance Day services. Interestingly, these words also appear in the prophecy of Isaiah, and it isn’t clear where they originated, but Micah intends these words to show that true, lasting peace can only come from a common worship of God, based on unity, equality and justice.

And God will gather together again his lost and scattered people, and they will be made strong, though not in the way that they had always envisaged. In future, the restored, faithful remnant of Judah will live in peace under God’s rule, dependent on him alone; therein would lie their strength. And this strong nation will be made up of the lame, the cast-off and the afflicted; those who are weak and vulnerable and who have nothing, not the wealthy, the powerful and the mighty. Much the same message as Jesus would preach, some 700 years later.

But for now, the people are suffering, and Micah uses the metaphor of labour pains to show that this suffering has a positive purpose; in the end, there will be the joy of new life.
The Judahites are about to be taken away into exile in Babylon, but there will be life beyond this catastrophe; if they persevere through the dark time to come, God will redeem them.

And how is God to achieve this? Micah says, “But you, O Bethlehem of Ephrathah, who are one of the little clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to rule in Israel, whose origin is from old, from ancient days. … … And he shall stand and feed his flock in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God. And they shall live secure, for now he shall be great to the ends of the earth; and he shall be the one of peace.”

Matthew adopted this passage in his gospel as part of his nativity narrative, and Christians cannot hear these words of Micah without understanding them to refer to the coming of Jesus as King and Saviour. Micah’s vision is of a time when a leader of humble origin will be born and will rule as God would, nurturing his people with compassion and strength. And in the transformed remnant of Judah, God will rid the land of various things, including horses and chariots, strongholds, sorcery and sacred images; anything, that is, which the people relied on for their strength rather than on God himself and anything which encouraged worship of other gods.

This vision of hope is for the future of course and, as he returns to the reality for the people in his time, hovering on the brink of destruction, Micah firstly asks the people to remember what God has done for them in the past, including the Exodus, in which he rescued the people from slavery in Egypt and gave them great leaders including Moses, and then suggests that the people ought to be asking themselves how best they might come before God.
We are taught that God is loving and kind and approachable, which he is, but we must also remember that he is almighty and awesome and mysterious; a degree of deference is appropriate in our relationship with God. Might it also help if we offer God a gift, a sacrifice perhaps? And would a year-old calf be good enough, or would thousands of rams be better, or tens of thousands of rivers of oil, or the firstborn of our children?

The suggested gifts become increasingly elaborate and costly, but they miss the point. Micah says that, in fact, all that God really requires is that we do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with our God; in other words, God wants us to journey with him and so to become more like him, in whose image we are made. It’s not what we bring to God but who we are and how we live our lives that matters. God calls us to reflect his sense of fairness, unfailing love and care for other people in our everyday thoughts, words and actions.

Those who continue in their wickedness, cheating and violence will be punished. The things which they crave and seek will leave them discontented and objects of scorn. The wicked stand accused of following the ways of former king Omri, his son Ahab and Ahab’s wife, Jezebel, who collectively made Israel wealthy and famous but at the expense of harmful alliances and a watering-down of their own faith by introducing immoral and dishonest practices and the worship of other gods; they are, in reality, a very long way from walking humbly with God.

Because of this, God will destroy Judah in the same way as he destroyed Israel. Micah laments the fate of his land and the lack of faith which has brought this about; no-one can be trusted, even family members betray each other, the very fabric of society has broken down and Micah expresses his feelings of isolation and disillusionment. Living in faith in the face of a broken world can be a lonely existence, but Micah confidently looks to the Lord and waits for his salvation.

There will come a day when the penalty is paid, sins are forgiven, and sorrow turns to comfort. Micah’s message is that God has not abandoned his people but, in fact, remains with them; a light in their darkness; their hope, for the day when he will raise them up once more, God’s beloved flock, grazing together the good pasture under the protection of the good shepherd. Micah, in the end, is not simply yearning for the ‘good old days’ but is prophesying the coming of something new and more glorious. For God delights in compassion and mercy, faithfulness and loving kindness.

Micah’s name means ‘Who is like the Lord?’. Surely, there is no-one quite like the Lord … … or is there? … … Perhaps just one man, the humble man from Bethlehem, who will give his life for his people, in order that we might turn our weapons into tools and live together, with God, in fairness, loving kindness, humility and peace.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Amen