Micah 1–7

Samaria and Israel to Be Punished

1During the time that Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah were kings of Judah, the word of the Lord came to Micah, who was from Moresheth. He saw these visions about Samaria and Jerusalem.

²Hear this, all you nations;

listen, earth and all you who live on it.

The Lord God will be a witness against you,

the Lord from his Holy Temple.

³See, the Lord is coming out of his place;

he is coming down to walk on the tops of the mountains.

⁴The mountains will melt under him,

and the valleys will crack open,

like wax near a fire,

like water running down a hillside.

⁵All this is because of Jacob’s sin,

because of the sins of the nation of Israel.

What is the place of Jacob’s sin?

Isn’t it Samaria?

What is Judah’s place of idol worship?

Isn’t it Jerusalem?

The Lord Speaks

⁶“So I will make Samaria a pile of ruins in the open country,

a place for planting vineyards.

I will pour her stones down into the valley

and strip her down to her foundations.

⁷All her idols will be broken into pieces;

all the gifts to her idols will be burned with fire.

I will destroy all her idols,

and because Samaria earned her money by being unfaithful to me,

this money will be carried off by others who are not faithful to me.”

Micah’s Great Sadness

⁸I will moan and cry because of this evil,

going around barefoot and naked.

I will cry loudly like the wild dogs

and make sad sounds like the owls do,

⁹because Samaria’s wound cannot be healed.

It will spread to Judah;

it will reach the city gate of my people,

all the way to Jerusalem.

¹⁰Don’t tell it in Gath. ⁿ

Don’t cry in Acco. ⁿ

Roll in the dust

at Beth Ophrah. ⁿ

¹¹Pass on your way, naked and ashamed,

you who live in Shaphir. ⁿ

Those who live in Zaanan ⁿ

won’t come out.

The people in Beth Ezel ⁿ will cry,

but they will not give you any support.

¹²Those who live in Maroth ⁿ

will be anxious for good news to come,

because trouble will come from the Lord,

all the way to the gate of Jerusalem.

¹³You people living in Lachish, ⁿ

harness the fastest horse to the chariot.

Jerusalem’s sins started in you;

yes, Israel’s sins were found in you.

¹⁴So you must give farewell gifts

to Moresheth ⁿ in Gath.

The houses in Aczib ⁿ will be false help

to the kings of Israel.

¹⁵I will bring against you people who will take your land,

you who live in Mareshah. ⁿ

The glory of Israel

will go in to Adullam.

¹⁶Cut off your hair to show you are sad

for the children you love.

Make yourself bald like the eagle,

because your children will be taken away to a foreign land.

The Evil Plans of People

2How terrible it will be for people who plan wickedness,

who lie on their beds and make evil plans.

When the morning light comes, they do what they planned,

because they have the power to do so.

²They want fields, so they take them;

they want houses, so they take them away.

They cheat people to get their houses;

they rob them even of their property.

³That is why the Lord says:

“Look, I am planning trouble against such people,

and you won’t be able to save yourselves.

You will no longer walk proudly,

because it will be a terrible time.

⁴At that time people will make fun of you

and sing this sad song about you:

‘We are completely ruined;

the Lord has taken away my people’s land.

Yes, he has taken it away from me

and divided our fields among our enemies!’ ”

⁵So you will have no one from the Lord’s people

to throw lots to divide the land.

Micah Is Asked Not to Prophesy

⁶The prophets say, “Don’t prophesy to us!

Don’t prophesy about these things!

Nothing to make us feel bad will happen!”

⁷But I must say this, people of Jacob:

The Lord is becoming angry about what you have done.

My words are welcome

to the person who does what is right.

⁸But you are fighting against my people like an enemy.

You take the coats from people who pass by;

you rob them of their safety;

you plan war.

⁹You’ve forced the women of my people

from their nice houses;

you’ve taken my glory

from their children forever.

¹⁰Get up and leave.

This is not your place of rest anymore.

You have made this place unclean,

and it is doomed to destruction.

¹¹But you people want a false prophet

who will tell you nothing but lies.

You want one who promises to prophesy good things for you

if you give him wine and beer.

He’s just the prophet for you.

The Lord Promises to Rescue His People

¹²“Yes, people of Jacob, I will bring all of you together;

I will bring together all those left alive in Israel.

I will put them together like sheep in a pen,

like a flock in its pasture;

the place will be filled with many people.

¹³Someone will open the way and lead the people out.

The people will break through the gate and leave the city where they were held captive.

Their king will go out in front of them,

and the Lord will lead them.”

The Leaders of Israel Are Guilty of Evil

3Then I said,

“Listen, leaders of the people of Jacob;

listen, you rulers of the nation of Israel.

You should know how to decide cases fairly,

²but you hate good and love evil.

You skin my people alive

and tear the flesh off their bones.

³You eat my people’s flesh

and skin them and break their bones;

you chop them up like meat for the pot,

like meat in a cooking pan.

⁴They will cry to the Lord,

but he won’t answer them.

At that time he will hide his face from them,

because what they have done is evil.”

⁵The Lord says this about the prophets who teach his people the wrong way of living:

“If these prophets are given food to eat,

they shout, ‘Peace!’

But if someone doesn’t give them what they ask for,

they call for a holy war against that person.

⁶So it will become like night for them, without visions.

It will become dark for them, without any way to tell the future.

The sun is about to set for the prophets;

their day will become dark.

⁷The seers will be ashamed;

the people who see the future will be embarrassed.

Yes, all of them will cover their mouths,

because there will be no answer from God.”

Micah Is an Honest Prophet of God

⁸But I am filled with power,

with the Spirit of the Lord,

and with justice and strength,

to tell the people of Jacob how they have turned against God,

and the people of Israel how they have sinned.

⁹Leaders of Jacob and rulers of Israel,

listen to me,

you who hate fairness

and twist what is right.

¹⁰You build Jerusalem by murdering people;

you build it with evil.

¹¹Its judges take money

to decide who wins in court.

Its priests only teach for pay,

and its prophets only look into the future when they get paid.

But they lean on the Lord and say,

“The Lord is here with us,

so nothing bad will happen to us.”

¹²Because of you,

Jerusalem will be plowed like a field.

The city will become a pile of rocks,

and the hill on which the Temple stands will be covered with bushes.

The Mountain of the Lord

4In the last days

the mountain on which the Lord’s Temple stands

will become the most important of all mountains.

It will be raised above the hills,

and people from other nations will come streaming to it.

²Many nations will come and say,

“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,

to the Temple of the God of Jacob,

so that he can teach us his ways,

and we can obey his teachings.”

His teachings will go out from Jerusalem,

the word of the Lord from that city.

³The Lord will judge many nations;

he will make decisions about strong nations that are far away.

They will hammer their swords into plow blades

and their spears into hooks for trimming trees.

Nations will no longer raise swords against other nations;

they will not train for war anymore.

⁴Everyone will sit under his own vine and fig tree,

and no one will make him afraid,

because the Lord All-Powerful has said it.

⁵All other nations may follow their own gods,

but we will follow the Lord our God forever and ever.

⁶The Lord says, “At that time,

I will gather the crippled;

I will bring together those who were sent away,

those whom I caused to have trouble.

⁷I will keep alive those who were crippled,

and I will make a strong nation of those who were sent away.

The Lord will be their king in Mount Zion from now on and forever.

⁸And you, watchtower of the flocks, ⁿ hill of Jerusalem,

to you will come the kingdom as in the past.

Jerusalem, the right to rule will come again to you.”

Why the Israelites Must Go to Babylon

⁹Now, why do you cry so loudly?

Is your king gone?

Have you lost your helper,

so that you are in pain, like a woman trying to give birth?

¹⁰People of Jerusalem, strain and be in pain.

Be like a woman trying to give birth,

because now you must leave the city

and live in the field.

You will go to Babylon,

but you will be saved from that place.

The Lord will go there

and buy you back from your enemies.

¹¹But now many nations

have come to fight against you,

saying, “Let’s destroy Jerusalem.

We will look at her and be glad we have defeated her.”

¹²But they don’t know

what the Lord is thinking;

they don’t understand his plan.

He has gathered them like bundles of grain to the threshing floor.

¹³“Get up and beat them, people of Jerusalem.

I will make you strong as if you had horns of iron

and hoofs of bronze.

You will beat many nations into small pieces

and give their wealth to the Lord,

their treasure to the Lord of all the earth.”

5So, strong city, gather your soldiers together,

because we are surrounded and attacked.

They will hit the leader of Israel

in the face with a club.

The Ruler to Be Born in Bethlehem

²“But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah,

though you are too small to be among the army groups from Judah,

from you will come one who will rule Israel for me.

He comes from very old times,

from days long ago.”

³The Lord will give up his people

until the one who is having a baby gives birth;

then the rest of his relatives will return

to the people of Israel.

⁴At that time the ruler of Israel will stand

and take care of his people

with the Lord’s strength

and with the power of the name of the Lord his God.

The Israelites will live in safety,

because his greatness will reach all over the earth.

⁵He will bring peace.

Rescue and Punishment

Assyria will surely come into our country

and walk over our large buildings.

We will set up seven shepherds,

eight leaders of the people.

⁶They will destroy the Assyrians with their swords;

they will conquer the land…