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1The word of the Lord that came to Micah of Moresheth in the days of Kings Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah of Judah, which he saw concerning Samaria and Jerusalem. ²Hear, you peoples, all of you; listen, O earth, and all that is in it; and let the Lord God be a witness against you, the Lord from his holy temple. ³For lo, the Lord is coming out of his place, and will come down and tread upon the high places of the earth. ⁴Then the mountains will melt under him and the valleys will burst open, like wax near the fire, like waters poured down a steep place. ⁵All this is for the transgression of Jacob and for the sins of the house of Israel. What is the transgression of Jacob? Is it not Samaria? And what is the high place of Judah? Is it not Jerusalem? ⁶Therefore I will make Samaria a heap in the open country, a place for planting vineyards. I will pour down her stones into the valley, and uncover her foundations. ⁷All her images shall be beaten to pieces, all her wages shall be burned with fire, and all her idols I will lay waste; for as the wages of a prostitute she gathered them, and as the wages of a prostitute they shall again be used.

⁸For this I will lament and wail; I will go barefoot and naked; I will make lamentation like the jackals, and mourning like the ostriches. ⁹For her wound is incurable. It has come to Judah; it has reached to the gate of my people, to Jerusalem. ¹⁰Tell it not in Gath, weep not at all; in Beth-leaphrah roll yourselves in the dust. ¹¹Pass on your way, inhabitants of Shaphir, in nakedness and shame; the inhabitants of Zaanan do not come forth; Beth-ezel is wailing and shall remove its support from you. ¹²For the inhabitants of Maroth wait anxiously for good, yet disaster has come down from the Lord to the gate of Jerusalem. ¹³Harness the steeds to the chariots, inhabitants of Lachish; it was the beginning of sin to daughter Zion, for in you were found the transgressions of Israel. ¹⁴Therefore you shall give parting gifts to Moresheth-gath; the houses of Achzib shall be a deception to the kings of Israel. ¹⁵I will again bring a conqueror upon you, inhabitants of Mareshah; the glory of Israel shall come to Adullam. ¹⁶Make yourselves bald and cut off your hair for your pampered children; make yourselves as bald as the eagle, for they have gone from you into exile.

2Alas for those who devise wickedness and evil deeds on their beds! When the morning dawns, they perform it, because it is in their power. ²They covet fields, and seize them; houses, and take them away; they oppress householder and house, people and their inheritance. ³Therefore thus says the Lord: Now, I am devising against this family an evil from which you cannot remove your necks; and you shall not walk haughtily, for it will be an evil time. ⁴On that day they shall take up a taunt song against you, and wail with bitter lamentation, and say, “We are utterly ruined; the Lord alters the inheritance of my people; how he removes it from me! Among our captors he parcels out our fields.” ⁵Therefore you will have no one to cast the line by lot in the assembly of the Lord.

⁶“Do not preach” —thus they preach— “one should not preach of such things; disgrace will not overtake us.” ⁷Should this be said, O house of Jacob? Is the Lord’s patience exhausted? Are these his doings? Do not my words do good to one who walks uprightly? ⁸But you rise up against my people as an enemy; you strip the robe from the peaceful, from those who pass by trustingly with no thought of war. ⁹The women of my people you drive out from their pleasant houses; from their young children you take away my glory forever. ¹⁰Arise and go; for this is no place to rest, because of uncleanness that destroys with a grievous destruction. ¹¹If someone were to go about uttering empty falsehoods, saying, “I will preach to you of wine and strong drink,” such a one would be the preacher for this people!

¹²I will surely gather all of you, O Jacob, I will gather the survivors of Israel; I will set them together like sheep in a fold, like a flock in its pasture; it will resound with people. ¹³The one who breaks out will go up before them; they will break through and pass the gate, going out by it. Their king will pass on before them, the Lord at their head.

3And I said: Listen, you heads of Jacob and rulers of the house of Israel! Should you not know justice?— ²you who hate the good and love the evil, who tear the skin off my people, and the flesh off their bones; ³who eat the flesh of my people, flay their skin off them, break their bones in pieces, and chop them up like meat in a kettle, like flesh in a caldron. ⁴Then 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 acted wickedly. ⁵Thus says the Lord concerning the prophets who lead my people astray, who cry “Peace” when they have something to eat, but declare war against those who put nothing into their mouths. ⁶Therefore it shall be night to you, without vision, and darkness to you, without revelation. The sun shall go down upon the prophets, and the day shall be black over them; ⁷the seers shall be disgraced, and the diviners put to shame; they shall all cover their lips, for there is no answer from God.

⁸But 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. ⁹Hear this, you rulers of the house of Jacob and chiefs of the house of Israel, who abhor justice and pervert all equity, ¹⁰who build Zion with blood and Jerusalem with wrong! ¹¹Its rulers give judgment for a bribe, its priests teach for a price, its prophets give oracles for money; yet they lean upon the Lord and say, “Surely the Lord is with us! No harm shall come upon us.” ¹²Therefore 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.

6Hear what the Lord says: Rise, plead your case before the mountains, and let the hills hear your voice. ²Hear, you mountains, the controversy of the Lord, and you enduring foundations of the earth; for the Lord has a controversy with his people, and he will contend with Israel. ³“O my people, what have I done to you? In what have I wearied you? Answer me! ⁴For I brought you up from the land of Egypt, and redeemed you from the house of slavery; and I sent before you Moses, Aaron, and Miriam. ⁵O my people, remember now what King Balak of Moab devised, what Balaam son of Beor answered him, and what happened from Shittim to Gilgal, that you may know the saving acts of the Lord.”

⁶“With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? ⁷Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?” ⁸He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

⁹The voice of the Lord cries to the city (it is sound wisdom to fear your name): Hear, O tribe and assembly of the city! ¹⁰Can I forget the treasures of wickedness in the house of the wicked, and the scant measure that is accursed? ¹¹Can I tolerate wicked scales and a bag of dishonest weights?