Introduction: The Prophet Micah prophesied primarily to the Southern Kingdom of Judah, but also to the Northern Kingdom of Israel? His name means, "Who is like Jehovah?" The obvious answer is, “Nobody,” for Jehovah alone is God and there is none other. The book, like many portions of the Bible’s prophetic books, is written in poetry rather than prose and contains several wordplays. It may be divided into three messages: Micah’s first message (chapters 1-2), Micah’s second message (chapters 3-5), and Micah’s third message (chapters 6-7).
Micah 1:1a — The book of Micah is declared from the outset to be, “The word of the Lord that came to Micah.”
Micah, like twenty-six of the Old Testament’s thirty-nine books, contains a direct statement that it is the Word of God. (2 Peter 1:20-22)
Micah 1:1b — Micah was probably a “country” prophet from Morasthite who preached to both Samaria, the capital of the Northern Kingdom of Israel, and Jerusalem, the capital of the Southern Kingdom of Judah, during the reigns of three kings of Judah—Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah.
This dates Micah’s prophetic career somewhere between the years 750 to 686 BC, and makes him a contemporary of the prophets Isaiah, Hosea, and Amos.
Micah 1:2-3a — Micah is the cosmic court’s bailiff, crying, “Hear, ye, hear ye, all ye people of the earth, for God is bringing charges against you from His holy temple.”
God Himself is leaving Heaven to personally prosecute His case against the earth and all who dwell within it.
Micah 1:3b — God is coming down from Heaven to “tread upon the high places of the earth”; that is, to stomp all the earth’s false gods to smithereens.
Pagans built their altars to their idols on high places, believing the higher the altar the closer they were to their hallucinatory gods.
Micah 1:4 — God is coming down from Heaven in His fiery indignation to “tread upon…the mountains,” so that they will melt beneath His feet and flow into the valleys like wax from a fire and floodwaters pouring downhill.
God, in His grandeur, is so gargantuan that He steps from one mountain peak to another handing out His irreversible verdicts and irrevocable sentences upon the earth.
Micah 1:5 — God’s fiery indignation was incited by the idolatry of His own people. Israel had turned its capital, Samaria, into the center of its idolatry, and Judah was starting to follow in Israel’s steps by turning its capital, Jerusalem, into an idolatrous high place.
Since God laid the blame for the iniquity and idolatry of Israel and Judah on their capitals, Samaria and Jerusalem, does He not hold our capital, Washington D.C., largely accountable for our country’s current sinful rebellion and spiritual reprobation?
“Men cannot be made good by the state, but they can easily be made bad.” (Lord Acton)
Micah 1:6-9 — Here we have the wailing of the Prophet Micah over the coming catastrophic judgment of a wrathful God upon His own wayward people.
Charles Spurgeon, who was well-known for preaching with visible tears, stated that he never preached on the subject of judgment and Hell without great distress. Likewise, James Montgomery Boice once suggested that many who were unmoved by preachers’ sermons were won over by their sobbing.
The coming catastrophic judgment of God that Micah sees and sobs over in this passage is undoubtedly the approaching invasion of the bloodcurdling and cold-blooded Assyrians, which not only left Samaria a “heap of ruins” and its people inflicted with an “incurable wound,” but also continued into Judah and right up to “the gate” of Jerusalem. (2 Kings 15:19-29; 17:1-6; 18:13-19:37; Isaiah 36-37)
Micah 1:10-15 — This passage is a series of divinely inspired wordplays that should not be mistaken as puns or clever word games, but as prophetic proof that our destiny is charted by our character.
Remember, as you peruse these divinely inspired wordplays by the Prophet Micah that Biblical names were not just means of identification, but believed to be descriptive of one’s character and destiny.
1. “Gath” means “tell.” — “Don’t tell the people of Tell.” (verse 10a)
2. “Aphrah” means “dust.” — “Tell the people of Dust to roll in the dust.” (verse 10b)
3. “Saphir” means “beautiful.” — “Tell Beautiful it is about to be naked and ashamed.” (verse 11a)
4. “Zaanan” means “come out.” — “Tell the people of Come Out that they better not come out.” (verse 11b)
5. “Bethezel” means “adjoining house.” — “Tell Adjoining House that it will mourn when it is left without anything to adjoin.” (verse 11c)
6. “Maroth” means “bitterness.” — “Tell Bitterness that nothing awaits it but bitterness.” (verse 12)
7. “Lachish” means “team of horses.” — “Tell Team of Horses they better harness their horses.” (verse 13)
8. “Moreshethgath” means “parting gifts.” — “Tell Parting Gifts it will be left as a parting gift to the invading Assyrians.” (verse 14a)
9. “Achzib” means “deceptions.” — “Tell Deceptions it will be exposed as a lie.” (verse 14b)
10. “Mareshah” means “conqueror.” — “Tell Conqueror it will be conquered.” (verse 15a)
11. “Abdullah” means “refuge.” — “Tell Refuge it is to be a hideout for the high and mighty of Israel.” (verse 15b)
Micah 1:16 — The Prophet Micah calls upon the idolatrous people of God to shave their heads as bald as the eagle’s in mourning over the coming captivity of their children.
Tragically, the idolatry of parents always imperils their posterity to the captivity of the enemy.
Micah 5:2 — In the incredible miracle of the Incarnation the infinite invaded the finite in the form of an infant.
Micah 7:19 — To cast our sins into the depths of the sea means for God to put them where no man can ever bring them up against us again.
God buries our sins in the depths of the sea and then puts up a sign that reads, “No Fishing.” (Corrie Ten Boom)
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