Christ in Micah

Micah opens his book with a vision of God in motion: For, behold, the LORD cometh forth out of his place, and will come down, and tread upon the high places of the earth (v. 3), and at His coming the mountains melt and the valleys split as wax before the fire (v. 4). The God of Micah does not stay remote from a world gone wrong; He leaves His dwelling and comes down into it. That descent runs like a thread through all of Scripture - the LORD who came down upon mount Sinai…

Micah 2 sets a brutal indictment beside an unlooked-for hope, and Christ stands at the seam between them. The chapter opens with men who devise iniquity, and work evil upon their beds and, the moment the morning is light… practise it (v. 1), coveting fields and houses and taking them by violence (v. 2) - the very sin against which the Gospel warns, Take heed, and beware of covetousness (Luke 12:15), and against which the cry of the dispossessed rises to God who hear…

Micah 3 sets one true voice against a city full of false ones, and the New Testament hears in that contrast the very pattern of Christ’s ministry. The rulers eat the flesh of my people, and flay their skin from off them (v. 3), and the prophets bite with their teeth, and cry, Peace for whoever feeds them (v. 5) - shepherds who devour the flock and hirelings who prophesy for pay, the very figures God denounces from Ezekiel to the apostles: Woe be to the shepherds of Israel…

Micah 4 opens onto the last days , when the mountain of the house of the LORD shall be established in the top of the mountains… and people shall flow unto it (v. 1), the nations saying, Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the LORD… and he will teach us of his ways (v. 2). From that mountain a word goes out: the law shall go forth of Zion, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem (v. 2) - the very shape of the gospel the risen Christ sends out, that repen…

Micah 5 holds one of the most precise messianic prophecies in all of Scripture, and the New Testament reaches straight for it. Out of a besieged and humiliated nation - its judge struck with a rod upon the cheek (v. 1) - the prophet lifts his eyes to a single small town: But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from e…

Micah 6 builds to one of the most quoted verses in all the prophets, and the New Testament takes it straight onto the lips of Jesus. The LORD pleads His case before the mountains - O my people, what have I done unto thee? and wherein have I wearied thee? testify against me (v. 3) - rehearsing the rescue from Egypt and the gift of Moses, Aaron, and Miriam (vv. 4-5). The human answer is a frantic question of approach: Wherewith shall I come before the LORD, and bow myself be…

Micah closes his book the way the whole of Scripture leans - out of the wreckage of human sin and into the mercy of the one pardoning God. The prophet first stands in a society rotted through ( the good man is perished out of the earth: and there is none upright among men , v. 2) and turns, by faith, to the only One left to trust: Therefore I will look unto the LORD; I will wait for the God of my salvation: my God will hear me (v. 7). From that resolve rises a confidence t…