Warnings to the Northern Kingdom and to Jerusalem

Micah 1, 3 (selections)

Biblical Period

Chapter 1

1The word of the Lord that came to Micah the Morashtite, who prophesied concerning Samaria and Jerusalem in the reigns of Kings Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah of Judah.

2Listen, all you peoples,
Give heed, O earth, and all it holds;
And let my Lord God be your accuser—
My Lord from His holy abode.
3For lo! the Lord
Is coming forth from His dwelling-place,
He will come down and stride
Upon the heights of the earth.
4The mountains shall melt under Him
And the valleys burst open—
Like wax before fire,
Like water cascading down a slope.
5All this is for the transgression of Jacob,
And for the sins of the House of Israel.
What is the transgression of Jacob
But Samaria,
And what the shrinesa of Judah
But Jerusalem?
6So I will turn Samaria
Into a ruin in open country,
Into ground for planting vineyards;
For I will tumble her stones into the valley
And lay her foundations bare.
7All her sculptured images shall be smashed,
And all her harlot’s wealth be burned,
And I will make a waste heap of all her idols,
For they were amassed from fees for harlotry,
And they shall become harlots’ fees again.
8Because of this I will lament and wail;
I will go stripped and naked!
I will lament as sadly as the jackals,
As mournfully as the ostriches.
9For herb wound is incurable,
It has reached Judah,
It has spread to the gate of my people,
To Jerusalem. [ . . . ]

Chapter 3

1I said:
Listen, you rulers of Jacob,
You chiefs of the House of Israel!
For you ought to know what is right,
2But you hate good and love evil.
3You have devoured My people’s flesh;
You have flayed the skin off them,
And their flesh off their bones.
c-And after tearing their skins off them,
And their flesh off their bones,-c
And breaking their bones to bits,
You have cut it up as into a pot,
Like meat in a caldron.
4Someday they shall cry out to the Lord,
But He will not answer them;
At that time He will hide His face from them,
In accordance with the wrongs they have done.
5Thus said the Lord to the prophets
Who lead My people astray,
Who cry “Peace!”
When they have something to chew,
But launch a war on him
Who fails to fill their mouths:
6Assuredly,
It shall be night for you
So that you cannot prophesy,
And it shall be dark for you
So that you cannot divine;
The sun shall set on the prophets,
And the day shall be darkened for them.
7The seers shall be shamed
And the diviners confounded;
They shall cover their upper lips,d
Because no response comes from God.
8But I,
I am filled with strength by the spirit of the Lord,
And with judgment and courage,
To declare to Jacob his transgressions
And to Israel his sin.
9Hear this, you rulers of the House of Jacob,
You chiefs of the House of Israel,
Who detest justice
And make crooked all that is straight,
10Who build Zion with crime,
Jerusalem with iniquity!
11Her rulers judge for gifts,
Her priests give rulings for a fee,
And her prophets divine for pay;
Yet they rely upon the Lord, saying,
“The Lord is in our midst;
No calamity shall overtake us.”
12Assuredly, because of you
Zion shall be plowed as a field,
And Jerusalem shall become heaps of ruins,
And the Temple Mount
A shrine in the woods.

Notes

Emendation yields “sins.”

I.e., the nation’s.

Brought down from v. 2 for clarity.

As a sign of mourning.

Credits

Reprinted from Tanakh: The Holy Scriptures by permission of the University of Nebraska Press. Copyright 1985 by the Jewish Publication Society, Philadelphia.

Published in: The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 1.

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