Second series of prophecies: God restores Jerusalem’s former dominion to the purified remnant

3:1-5:15 Second series of prophecies: God restores Jerusalem’s former dominion to the purified remnant

Rulers and Prophets Denounced

3:1 And I said:
Hear, you heads of Jacob
and rulers of the house of Israel!
Is it not for you to know justice?—
2 you who hate the good and love the evil,
who tear the skin from off my people [1]
and their flesh from off their bones,
3 who eat the flesh of my people,
and flay their skin from off them,
and break their bones in pieces
and chop them up like meat in a pot,
like flesh in a cauldron.

4 Then they will cry to the Lord,
but he will not answer them;
he will hide his face from them at that time,
because they have made their deeds evil.

5 Thus says the Lord concerning the prophets
who lead my people astray,
who cry “Peace”
when they have something to eat,
but declare war against him
who puts nothing into their mouths.
6 Therefore it shall be night to you, without vision,
and darkness to you, without divination.
The sun shall go down on the prophets,
and the day shall be black over them;
7 the seers shall be disgraced,
and the diviners put to shame;
they shall all cover their lips,
for there is no answer from God.
8 But as for me, I am filled with power,
with the Spirit of the Lord,
and with justice and might,
to declare to Jacob his transgression
and to Israel his sin.

9 Hear this, you heads of the house of Jacob
and rulers of the house of Israel,
who detest justice
and make crooked all that is straight,
10 who build Zion with blood
and Jerusalem with iniquity.
11 Its heads give judgment for a bribe;
its priests teach for a price;
its prophets practice divination for money;
yet they lean on the Lord and say,
“Is not the Lord in the midst of us?
No disaster shall come upon us.”
12 Therefore because of you
Zion shall be plowed as a field;
Jerusalem shall become a heap of ruins,
and the mountain of the house a wooded height.

3:1-12 Old Jerusalem and its corrupt leaders fall
Three doom oracles share a common topic (justice; see vs 1, 8, 9), common length (four verses) and a common form consisting of naming those addressed (1, 5, 9-10). Each is followed by an accusation introduced by who (2-3, 5, 9, 11) and a sentence introduced by then (4) or therefore (6-7, 12). The first two oracles move to the climax of the third. Those addressed move from the unjust magistrates (1), to the unjust prophets (5), to these two plus unjust priests (11). The judicial sentences develop from God’s silence (4), to his silence plus [p. 825] darkness (6-7), to his absence when the temple is destroyed (12). Jerusalem falls because its leaders failed.
   
3:1-4 Shepherds turned cannibals.

3:1 And I said:
Hear, you heads of Jacob
and rulers of the house of Israel!
Is it not for you to know justice?—
2 you who hate the good and love the evil,
who tear the skin from off my people [1]
and their flesh from off their bones,
3 who eat the flesh of my people,
and flay their skin from off them,
and break their bones in pieces
and chop them up like meat in a pot,
like flesh in a cauldron.

4 Then they will cry to the Lord,
but he will not answer them;
he will hide his face from them at that time,
because they have made their deeds evil.

1 With an emphatic Listen, Micah brings first into the dock the leaders and rulers (both terms signify judges) of Jacob and Israel (meaning the nation). These judges had the responsibility to know justice both in their heads and hearts. This was based on the case laws collected in the Mosaic law (Ex. 21:1-23:19; cf. Dt. 17:8-11) and, in their light, the judges were to formulate new laws and decide cases fairly (cf. 1 Ki. 3:28; 7:7). 2 Without regenerate hearts, however, the depraved judges in fact hate good and love evil (cf. Is. 1:17, 21-23, 26; 5:7; and see Pss. 1:2; 19:7-11). In a grotesque and sustained picture Micah portrays the magistrates as cannibals. By reducing their subjects (my [Micah’s] people) to grinding poverty and living off their fields and labours (see 2:1-2, 8-9), they were sending them as skeletons to an early grave. 3 By repeating the gruesome picture, God underscores its truth.
    4 As the heartless rulers refused to relent when their subjects cried out to them for mercy, so also at the time of judgment (see 2:3-5) they will cry out to the Lord, but he will not answer them; rather he will hide his face from them, the sign of no mercy. The worst form of judgment is not affliction but the absence of God in it (cf. Heb. 12:15-17).
   
3:5-8 Greedy prophets. 

5 Thus says the Lord concerning the prophets
who lead my people astray,
who cry “Peace”
when they have something to eat,
but declare war against him
who puts nothing into their mouths.
6 Therefore it shall be night to you, without vision,
and darkness to you, without divination.
The sun shall go down on the prophets,
and the day shall be black over them;
7 the seers shall be disgraced,
and the diviners put to shame;
they shall all cover their lips,
for there is no answer from God.

8 But as for me, I am filled with power,

with the Spirit of the Lord,

and with justice and might,

to declare to Jacob his transgression

and to Israel his sin.

Instead of ‘barking’ against the greedy and grasping overlords, the prophets (who should have been the moral watchdogs of God’s nation) ‘wagged their tails’ and joined the cannibals to gratify their own swollen appetites (cf. Je. 2:26; Ezk. 22:25-29; Zp. 3:3-4). ‘Eating’ indicates the love of money by both parties.
5  This is what the Lord  says: Micah’s authority lies in God, not in himself (cf. v 8). The professional clergy lead the people astray from God’s covenant by rewarding the evil and punishing the good (cf. Dt. 13:1-5), turning the moral order on its head. If one feeds them represents the Hebrew ‘those who bite like a snake with their teeth’. Like evil serpents they kill their victims to feed themselves. To those who satisfy their appetites they solemnly proclaim ‘peace’ (cf. 2:11). If he does not (lit. ‘whoever does not give what they demand’), they prepare (lit. ‘they consecrate’) to wage war against him. Rulers looked for divine guidance from prophets, whether to keep the peace or to wage war (1 Ki. 22:1-29). Money talked louder than God to these false prophets.
6  Therefore God will take away their clairvoyancy, the source of their illicit gain. They will experience night and darkness instead of visions (revelations) and divination (forbidden omens of the occult; cf. Dt. 18:10; Ezk 21:21-22). The sun setting and the day going dark is a picture of the loss of the prophets’ gift of visions. 7 Deprived of divine revelations they will be ashamed and disgraced and regarded as unclean (cf. La. 4:13-15). Like unclean lepers they will all cover their faces (lit. ‘moustaches’ = mouths) (cf. Lv. 13:45; Ezk. 24:17-22), the very area of their misused talents. Micah speaks here of God, not ‘the LORD’, so as not to associate their unholy activity with the sacred name.
    8 In contrast to his deflated opponents, Micah says of himself: I am filled (i.e. endowed) with power (i.e. dynamism from the Spirit of the LORD; cf. Ezk 2:2; 3:12, 14, 24) and might (i.e. triumphant valour), making him equal to his adversaries who also wage war against him (cf. 2:6) as he involves himself in the cause of justice.

3:9-12 Jerusalem to be levelled.
9 Hear this, you heads of the house of Jacob
and rulers of the house of Israel,
who detest justice
and make crooked all that is straight,
10 who build Zion with blood
and Jerusalem with iniquity.
11 Its heads give judgment for a bribe;
its priests teach for a price;
its prophets practice divination for money;
yet they lean on the Lord and say,
“Is not the Lord in the midst of us?
No disaster shall come upon us.”
12 Therefore because of you
Zion shall be plowed as a field;
Jerusalem shall become a heap of ruins,
and the mountain of the house a wooded height.

9 Micah again summons the depraved leaders and rulers (see 3:1) and accuses them that they despise (i.e regard as destestable) justice and distort all that is right in legal matters. 10 They build the monumental edifices of Zion with bloodshed (i.e. through their corrupt courts that took away the life of their defenceless victims). 11 In an aside Micah elaborates upon his accusation. Leaders (civil magistrates who were to execute the law), priests (who were supposed to teach it; Dt. 17:8-10; 33:10; Ho. 4:6) and prophets (who were to apply it through revelation) were Israel’s safety nets against injustice, but they broke under the strain of the love of money (cf. 1 Tim. 6:3-10) and the false theology that because they blasphemously profess to lean upon the LORD they are secure (cf. 2:7). God’s covenant, however, is based on ethics and truth.

12  Therefore: God’s sentence will match the crime (cf. Je. 26:18). On account of you (the magistrates; cf. vs 9-10), their proud and profaned buildings will become a heap of rubble and the [no longer the LORD’s] temple hill, will become a mound in thickets where unclean animals roam.

Applying the Word

• God sometimes calls us to stand against our culture as Micah did (especially v. 8). Where is he calling you to take a stand?
  ESVSB: Mic. 3:8 But as for me distinguishes Micah and his unpopular message from that of the false prophets. to declare. The true prophet is filled with (i.e., empowered by) the Spirit of the Lord.
  
• How can you guard yourself from using God's gifts for the wrong purpose?
• All of us have the ability to be self-deluded like the leaders of Israel (v. 11). How can you guard yourself from thinking this way?