Micah 1:1-9
The LORD comes down
He comes out of his place and treads on the high places of the earth, and the mountains melt under him like wax. Micah says he will wail and go stripped and naked for it.
People of the Bible
Micah
From a farming town in the foothills, and the one who named the village the Messiah would come from.
Micah is from Moresheth, a small place in the lowlands, and he prophesies against both capitals, Samaria and Jerusalem, in the same breath. His targets are the people who make the system work: rulers who hate good and love evil, priests who teach for hire, prophets who divine for money and cry peace while they have something to chew. He is also the only Old Testament prophet whose preaching is quoted in a later trial, when the elders cite him a century on to save Jeremiah’s life.
Scroll down to the storyThe movements, in the order the text gives them.
The story of Micah
- 01
- 02
Micah 3:9-12
Zion shall be plowed as a field
Heads that judge for reward, priests that teach for hire, prophets that divine for money, and all of them leaning on the LORD and saying no evil can come. Jerusalem shall become heaps.
- 03
Micah 4:1-5
Swords into plowshares
The mountain of the house established in the top of the mountains, nations flowing to it, and every man under his vine and under his fig tree with none to make him afraid.
- 04
Micah 5:2-5
Out of Bethlehem
Though you be little among the thousands of Judah, out of you shall he come forth to be ruler in Israel. The scribes read this verse to Herod when the magi ask where.
- 05
Micah 6:6-8
What does the LORD require
The escalating offer, calves, thousands of rams, ten thousands of rivers of oil, a firstborn, is answered by three verbs that cost more than any of them.
Why it matters
Two verses of Micah are among the best known in the Old Testament and they pull in opposite directions, which is the shape of the book. One is a location, Bethlehem Ephratah, little among the thousands of Judah, out of which shall come a ruler whose goings forth have been from everlasting, quoted to Herod by his own scholars. The other is a summary of the whole law in three phrases: do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God.
9 songs
The music
Every song in the catalogue whose passage falls inside these chapters.
