The Book of Micah

Introduction: Prophecy in Israel

Before turning to the book of Micah, we need to understand both the phenomenon of prophecy in ancient Israel and the collection of prophetic writings which has become part of the Christian Old Testament. Prophets are commonly thought of as people who predict the future, but this is at most an aspect of their role in Israelite society, of speaking in the name of God.

The origins of prophecy are very unclear, as our knowledge of history and society in ancient Israel is very incomplete and uncertain. Prophecy was not confined to Israel, as illustrated by the story of the Moabite king Balak summoning the prophet Balaam to curse Israel (Numbers 22-24), and the graphic account of Elijah’s contest with the prophets of the Canaanite fertility god Ba`al (1 Kings 18). There are indications that there were what are sometimes known as mantic prophets at an early date; men and women who were essentially diviners, recognised as having supernatural powers which could be helpful in times of need. Saul’s appeal to Samuel for help in finding missing donkeys (1 Samuel 9) is an example – though of course Saul ended up discovering that Samuel would play a rather larger role in his life. There are accounts too of prophets practising healing, whether through natural remedies or through intercession with God, working nature miracles such as causing the rain to fall or not; the stories attributed to Elijah and Elisha in 1 & 2 Kings are examples. Some prophets were cultic functionaries, like Samuel. Others, like Jeremiah and Ezekiel, were born into the hereditary priesthood of Israel, but exercise a function quite distinct from officiating in the sacrificial cult.

What is sometimes known as “classical” prophecy refers to those prophets whose names are given to a significant proportion of the writings which constitute the Hebrew Bible. While not entirely unlike the other prophets we have described, these are remembered primarily for having spoken to Israel in the name of God, frequently at considerable cost to themselves. Often, but not always, they pronounce judgement, condemning the nation and its rulers for ways in which they have departed from the law of God, and predicting the consequences which would be meted out as God’s punishment. There are occasions also when these prophets speak hope, when they advise and encourage, but always they call the people and their rulers to faithfulness to God and obedience to God’s laws.

Prophets often appear as opposition figures, who speak out against kings and their courtiers, and also against the temple and the official cults, both of Samaria and of Jerusalem, and against the prophets attached to those cults whom they accuse of offering a vain hope and misleading the people.

This raises very directly the question of the authenticity of prophetic oracles. When there were competing voices claiming to speak in the name of God, how were people to distinguish which was true? There is no simple answer to this question, but we do know something of how the prophets sought to demonstrate their authenticity. The story of Micaiah ben Imlah in 1 Kings 22 illustrates this. The prophets claim to have been elevated, through some mystical experience, into God’s heavenly presence. God is depicted as enthroned, and surrounded by heavenly beings, in a scene analogous to the court of an oriental king. The prophet is accordingly able to witness what is spoken in the divine council, and accordingly to know what God has determined to bring about on earth.

While surviving oracles have of course come down to us in writing, the composition of books of prophecy was not a part of the ministry of the classical prophets. While later developments in the prophetic tradition saw the development of apocalyptic literature as a distinct genre, prophecy during the classical period was delivered orally. While often accompanied by dramatic and symbolic action, including occasionally the writing of letters and other documents, prophecy was nonetheless spoken, not written.

Committing to writing the substance of a speech is a complex process, particularly when the transcription takes place some time after the oral delivery. There is no reason to suppose that the words of prophets were transcribed as they spoke, still less that they read from a prepared text. In non-literate societies, such as ancient Israel, there is developed within the culture the skill and the capacity to commit to memory discourses which have been heard, and other traditions which need to be preserved in order that they may be handed down to others. This does not imply or require verbatim rendition, but will inevitably involve editing and re-ordering of the material, and its interpretation, particularly in the light of subsequent events. In the case of prophecy, we should expect that the written version reflects the transmission, possibly over a period of decades, if not centuries, of words which have been preserved, interpreted, and perceived to have been vindicated by unfolding historical events.

While most of the prophetic books bear the name of a single person, we should not assume that the prophets were always the isolated and lonely figures they sometimes appear. Elijah and Elisha have disciples, and the same is the case with at least some of the later prophets, including Isaiah and Jeremiah. However they may have shared in the work of their leader during his lifetime, they continued to function as a recognisable group after their deaths, preserving the records of their words and deeds, committing them to writing, and continuing to speak to Israel in the name of God. Oracles would often be preserved, not in the names of individual prophets, but in the name of the prophet who had founded the movement or school. The canonical book of Isaiah, e.g. preserves oracles from at least three distinct periods, viz. the final years of David’s kingdom, towards the end of the Babylonian exile, and early in the Persian period. The same is true of the much shorter book of Micah, which is in many ways contemporary with the traditions in Isaiah.

Micah of Moresheth

Little is known of Micah, or Micaiahu, other than that he hailed from Moresheth, a fortified frontier town in Judaea, 15 miles south-west of Jerusalem. He lived during the late eighth and early seventh centuries BC, and prophesied in Jerusalem during the reigns of kings Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah (Micah 1:1). The surviving oracles, preserved in Micah 1-3, almost certainly date from the reign of Hezekiah, and reflect historical circumstances known also from 2 Kings 18-19 and 2 Chronicles 29, as well as from the contemporary prophet Isaiah (36-37). The Assyrians under Sennacherib were threatening Jerusalem, and Isaiah and Micah are both remembered for their pronouncements at this time. Whereas Isaiah, the aristocratic but nonetheless outspoken prophet of Jerusalem, counselled steadfastness, Micah pronounced the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple. This is the crisis which inspired Byron’s poem “The Destruction of Sennacherib”:

The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,

And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;

And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,

When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.

Like the leaves of the forest when Summer is green,

That host with their banners at sunset were seen:

Like the leaves of the forest when Autumn hath blown,

That host on the morrow lay withered and strown.

For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,

And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed;

And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill,

And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still!

And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide,

But through it there rolled not the breath of his pride;

And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf,

And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf.

And there lay the rider distorted and pale,

With the dew on his brow, and the rust on his mail:

And the tents were all silent, the banners alone,

The lances unlifted, the trumpet unblown.

And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail,

And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal;

And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,

Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!

While the crisis was suddenly averted and Jerusalem delivered from the Assyrians, Micah was remembered not as a false prophet or one who had been proved wrong, but as one who had pronounced God’s judgement, thereby bringing the people to repentance, and causing God to withhold the judgement which had been pronounced. A century later, when Jeremiah similarly pronounced God’s judgement against Jerusalem, Micah and his words were remembered, and at least some of the Jerusalem nobility repented on that account, hoping that God would once again deliver Jerusalem from destruction (Jer 26:18). It is important to recognise that Micah was remembered as a true prophet, not because his predictions proved true (which they did not – until a century later), but because they evoked the appropriate response from those who heard him speak. He was acknowledged as speaking in the name of God, due heed was taken, and God had accordingly withheld judgement against Jerusalem and its rulers.

It is the oracles contained in the first three chapters which originate with the historical Micah. Those preserved in chapters 4 and 5 date from the Exile, and chapters 6 and 7 from the end of the Exile or the early Persian period, when the disparate traditions were redacted into a single text. This process over centuries demonstrates that Micah remained a significant figure for a period much longer than his historical activity. The relative brevity of the book, compared e.g. with Isaiah or Jeremiah, does not diminish Micah’s importance in the continuing evolution of Judaism.