Micah

Micah (Heb. Mikhayah, “who is like the LORD?”) is the Moreshite, named for Moresheth-gath, a village in the Shephelah about 35 km southwest of Jerusalem. He prophesies in the reigns of Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah (Mic.1.1), roughly 740–700 BC, making him a younger contemporary of Isaiah and a witness to the Assyrian destruction of Samaria in 722 and Sennacherib’s invasion of 701. His book moves in three cycles of judgment and hope. The first announces the LORD coming out of his place to tread on the high places, with Samaria reduced to a heap and a lament that stretches from Gath to Adullam. The second confronts the dishonest landgrabbers, the unjust rulers, the prophets who divine for money. The third gives the most famous oracle: the future ruler whose “goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting” will come from Bethlehem Ephrathah (Mic.5.2), cited by the Jerusalem scribes when Herod inquired about the Christ (Mat.2.6). Micah’s closing summary — “what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God” (Mic.6.8) — is one of the great compressions of the prophetic ethic. Jeremiah’s contemporaries remembered Micah by name a century later as the prophet whose word turned aside Hezekiah’s judgment (Jer.26.18).