Micah 1

The Impending Doom of Samaria and Jerusalem

1The word of Yahweh that came to Micah the Morashtite in the days of Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, the kings of Judah, that he saw concerning Samaria and Jerusalem:

²Hear, all you peoples;

give heed, O earth and its fullness.

And let the Lord Yahweh be against you as a witness,

the Lord from his holy temple.^a

³For behold, Yahweh is coming out from his place,

and he will come down and tread upon the high places of the earth.

⁴The mountains will melt under him

and the valleys will burst open,

like wax before the fire,

like water rushing down a slope.

⁵All this is for the rebellion of Jacob,

and for the sins of the house of Israel.

What is the rebellion of Jacob?

Is it not Samaria?

And what are the high places of Judah?

Are they not Jerusalem?

⁶So I will make Samaria as a heap of rubble in the field,

a place for planting a vineyard.

And I will pour down her stones into the valley

and uncover her foundations.

⁷Then all her idols will be broken in pieces,

and all her prostitution wages will be burned in the fire,

and all her idols I will make a desolation,

For from the wage of a prostitute she gathered them,

and to the wage of a prostitute they will return.

⁸On account of this I will lament and wail.

I will go about barefoot and naked.

I will make a lamentation like the jackals,

and a mourning ceremony like the ostriches.^b

⁹For her wounds are incurable,

because it has come to Judah.

It has reached to the gate of my people, to Jerusalem.

¹⁰Do not tell it in Gath;

you must not weep at all.

In Beth-le-Aphrah

roll yourself in dust.

¹¹Pass on, you inhabitants of Shaphir,

in naked shame.

The inhabitants of Zaanan do not come forth;

the wailing of Beth-ha-Ezel will take its protection from you.

¹²For the inhabitants of Maroth

writhed for good,

because disaster has come down from Yahweh

to the gate of Jerusalem.

¹³Harness the chariot to the team of horses,

O inhabitants of Lachish;

it is the beginning of sin

for the daughter of Zion,

for the transgressions of Israel

were found in you.

¹⁴Therefore you will give parting gifts

to Moresheth-Gath;

the houses of Achzib will be a deception

to the kings of Israel.

¹⁵I will again bring the conqueror upon you,

O inhabitants of Mareshah;

the glory of Israel

will come to Adullam.

¹⁶Make yourselves bald

and cut off your hair

for the children of your pleasure.

Expand your baldness as the eagle,

for they will go into exile away from you.