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God Challenges Israel

6Hear what the Lord says:
   Rise, plead your case before the mountains,
   and let the hills hear your voice.
² Hear, 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!
⁴ For 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.
⁵ O 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.’

What God Requires

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?
⁷ Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,
   with tens of thousands of rivers of oil?
Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression,
   the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?’
⁸ He 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?

Cheating and Violence to Be Punished

⁹ The voice of the Lord cries to the city
   (it is sound wisdom to fear your name):
Hear, O tribe and assembly of the city!^*
10   Can I forget^* the treasures of wickedness in the house of the wicked,
   and the scant measure that is accursed?
¹¹ Can I tolerate wicked scales
   and a bag of dishonest weights?
¹² Your^* wealthy are full of violence;
   your^* inhabitants speak lies,
   with tongues of deceit in their mouths.
¹³ Therefore I have begun^* to strike you down,
   making you desolate because of your sins.
¹⁴ You shall eat, but not be satisfied,
   and there shall be a gnawing hunger within you;
you shall put away, but not save,
   and what you save, I will hand over to the sword.
¹⁵ You shall sow, but not reap;
   you shall tread olives, but not anoint yourselves with oil;
   you shall tread grapes, but not drink wine.
¹⁶ For you have kept the statutes of Omri^*
   and all the works of the house of Ahab,
   and you have followed their counsels.
Therefore I will make you a desolation, and your^* inhabitants an object of hissing;
   so you shall bear the scorn of my people.

Micah

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.

Judgement Pronounced against Samaria

² Hear, 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.
³ For lo, the Lord is coming out of his place,
   and will come down and tread upon the high places of the earth.
⁴ Then the mountains will melt under him
   and the valleys will burst open,
like wax near the fire,
   like waters poured down a steep place.
⁵ All 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?
⁶ Therefore 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.
⁷ All 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.

The Doom of the Cities of Judah

⁸ For this I will lament and wail;
   I will go barefoot and naked;
I will make lamentation like the jackals,
   and mourning like the ostriches.
⁹ For her wound^* is incurable.
   It has come to Judah;
it has reached to the gate of my people,
   to Jerusalem.

¹⁰ Tell it not in Gath,
   weep not at all;
in Beth-leaphrah
   roll yourselves in the dust.
¹¹ Pass 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.
¹² For the inhabitants of Maroth
   wait anxiously for good,
yet disaster has come down from the Lord
   to the gate of Jerusalem.
¹³ Harness 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.
¹⁴ Therefore you shall give parting gifts
   to Moresheth-gath;
the houses of Achzib shall be a deception
   to the kings of Israel.
¹⁵ I will again bring a conqueror upon you,
   inhabitants of Mareshah;
the glory of Israel
   shall come to Adullam.
¹⁶ Make 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.

Social Evils Denounced

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.
² They covet fields, and seize them;
   houses, and take them away;
they oppress householder and house,
   people and their inheritance.
³ Therefore, 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.
⁴ On 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.’
⁵ Therefore 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.’
⁷ Should 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?
⁸ But 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.
⁹ The women of my people you drive out
   from their pleasant houses;
from their young children you take away
   my glory for ever.
¹⁰ Arise and go;
   for this is no place to rest,
because of uncleanness that destroys
   with a grievous destruction.^*
11 If 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!

A Promise for the Remnant of Israel

¹² I 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.
¹³ The 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.

Wicked Rulers and Prophets

3And I said:
Listen, you heads of Jacob
   and rulers of the house of Israel!
Should you not know justice?—
²   you who hate the good and love the evil,
who tear the skin off my people,^*
   and the flesh off their bones;
³ who 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 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 acted wickedly.

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 those
   who put nothing into their mouths.
⁶ Therefore 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;
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.