Micah 1.

When what is far away makes it home.

We are now in the book of Micah, and this is one book that gave me quite a bit of a struggle when I first started reading it. I could read the words, but I was not necessarily seeing the flow or getting the direction. I went through it three or four times, and there were moments when I genuinely felt stuck. I would read and think, “What exactly is going on here?” Thankfully, the help came through, and eventually I began to get a sense of what Micah was saying and where he was taking us.

As we begin, it is important to note that there are several people called Micah, or names closely related to Micah, in the Bible. The spelling varies depending on the person and the English translation. For our purposes, let us narrow our attention to the three who are commonly rendered Micah. The first is the Micah we meet in Judges 17 and 18. This is the man who made an idol, established his own shrine and hired a Levite to serve as his priest. Eventually, the tribe of Dan came along, took the idol and took the Levite with them. It is one of those strange stories in Judges that tells you just how far Israel had drifted. You can read the whole story in Judges 17 and 18.

Then we have the Micah we are interested in today: Micah the prophet. He was an eighth-century prophet from Moresheth, probably Moresheth-gath, in the lowland country of Judah. He was a contemporary of Isaiah. Isaiah was ministering in Jerusalem and the surrounding royal environment, while Micah came from a more rural setting. They were looking at many of the same problems from different locations and speaking into the same general period.

Then there is another Micah, the son of Mephibosheth and grandson of Jonathan, making him a great-grandson of Saul. We meet him in 2 Samuel 9. There are also references to people with the same or closely related name in Chronicles, although it is not always certain whether every reference is to the same individual. So when we say Micah today, we are talking about Micah the prophet from Moresheth.

Micah is placed among what English Bibles call the Minor Prophets. The word “minor” does not mean that Micah is less important than Isaiah or that his message is a minor one. The traditional distinction is largely based on the length of the prophetic books. The longer books are called Major Prophets and the shorter ones are called Minor Prophets.

That becomes interesting when you begin thinking chronologically. Jeremiah 26 gives us a beautiful little window into this. The elders are defending Jeremiah, and they bring up Micah as an example. They say that Micah of Moresheth prophesied in the days of Hezekiah and spoke against Jerusalem. They then quote the substance of Micah 3:12. Think about that for a moment. Jeremiah is recording people referring to something Micah had already said.

This is one of the reasons I keep encouraging us to study the Bible chronologically rather than assuming that the order of the books in our English Bible is the order in which everything happened or was written. The Bible is not arranged like a modern history textbook. Sometimes the story makes much more sense when you put the people, prophets and events into their historical setting. Micah therefore comes before Jeremiah in the historical story, even though the book of Micah appears much later in our Bibles.

There is another beautiful thing about Micah. He spoke a hard word, and one of the people who actually responded to the warning was a very influential man: King Hezekiah. Jeremiah 26 tells us that Hezekiah feared the Lord and sought Him when he heard Micah’s prophecy. Here is a prophet whose message could easily have been rejected, yet the king listened. That is something worth remembering as we begin.

The opening of the book tells us, “The word of the Lord that came to Micah of Moresheth in the days of Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, which he saw concerning Samaria and Jerusalem” (Micah 1:1). Notice that phrase: “which he saw.” We have talked before about how God communicated with His prophets. Sometimes through dreams while they slept, sometimes through visions while they were awake, sometimes through circumstances, observations and direct words from the Lord. Micah describes this particular message as something he saw.

Then he begins with a call for everyone to listen: “Hear, all you peoples! Listen, O earth, and all that is in it!” This is not a quiet little announcement. Micah comes with a lot of oomph. He calls the nations, the earth and everything in it to listen. He says the Lord is coming out of His place. He is coming down. The mountains melt before Him, and the valleys split like wax before fire and like water rushing down a steep place. This is prophetic language communicating the overwhelming presence and judgment of God.

Micah then tells us why: “All this is for the transgression of Jacob and for the sins of the house of Israel.” The question follows: “What is the transgression of Jacob?” His answer is, “Is it not Samaria?” Then, “And what are the high places of Judah?” “Are they not Jerusalem?” Micah is pointing directly at the centres of worship and power.

Samaria had become a centre of idolatry in the northern kingdom. Jerusalem, although it was the city where the temple stood, was also being confronted because Judah itself was not innocent. This is important. The prophet is not saying, “Those people up north are sinners and you people down south are fine.” No. The corruption had moved. The problem was spreading.

That is why Micah says Samaria will become a heap of ruins. Its idols will be destroyed. Its wealth, which had been accumulated through its unfaithfulness, would not save it.

Then something very interesting happens. Micah begins naming towns: Gath, Beth Aphrah, Shaphir, Zaanan, Beth Ezel, Maroth, Lachish, Moresheth-gath, Achzib, Mareshah and Adullam. If you simply read those names without understanding the geography, it can feel like Micah has suddenly started reading out a list from a telephone directory. Yet there is something happening here. Micah is tracing the movement of judgment through the land.

The language and locations create a sense of movement. The trouble is no longer something happening somewhere far away. It is getting closer. Closer. Closer. Until it reaches Jerusalem.

This is one of the things that helped me begin seeing Micah. The message is not simply, “You people are doing wrong.” The message is, “Look at how far this thing has travelled.” There was a time when the corruption was somewhere else. Then it came closer. Then closer. Then closer. Eventually, it reached the doorstep of Jerusalem.

Sin does not always announce itself by saying, “Today I am going to destroy everything.” Sometimes it moves gradually. A little compromise here. A little tolerance there. A little imitation of the nations around us. A little adjustment of what God said. A little more. A little more. Until one day you discover that the thing you thought was far away has arrived at your doorstep.

That is what makes the opening of Micah so piercing. God is not reacting to one isolated mistake. He is confronting a pattern that has been allowed to travel. The prophet is standing there and saying, in essence, “Guys, this thing has gone too far.” It started somewhere else. Now it is here. It started in Samaria. Now it has reached Judah. It was once far from Jerusalem. Now it is at the gate.

Micah begins his book with judgment, but before we rush into the next chapter, I think we need to pause here because there is a question for us: What has been getting closer? What have I tolerated because it was initially far away? What did I once say, “That can never happen in my life,” only to discover that, little by little, I have moved closer to it?

Who is God? What is going on? What is my place in what is going on? Perhaps Micah is giving us another reason to keep asking those three questions.

Sometimes the Lord does not confront us when the problem first appears at the doorstep. Sometimes He has been warning us while it is still far away. The question is whether we are listening before it gets here.