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The word of the L ord that came to Micah of Moresheth in the days of Kings Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah of Judah, which he saw concerning Samaria and Jerusalem.

Judgment Pronounced against Samaria

Hear, you peoples, all of you;

listen, O earth, and all that is in it;

and let the Lord G od be a witness against you,

the Lord from his holy temple.

For lo, the L ord is coming out of his place,

and will come down and tread upon the high places of the earth.

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.

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?

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.

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

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.

For her wound is incurable.

It has come to Judah;

it has reached to the gate of my people,

to Jerusalem.

Tell it not in Gath,

weep not at all;

in Beth-leaphrah

roll yourselves in the dust.

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.

For the inhabitants of Maroth

wait anxiously for good,

yet disaster has come down from the L ord

to the gate of Jerusalem.

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.

Therefore you shall give parting gifts

to Moresheth-gath;

the houses of Achzib shall be a deception

to the kings of Israel.

I will again bring a conqueror upon you,

inhabitants of Mareshah;

the glory of Israel

shall come to Adullam.

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.

New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Though Micah intended especially to devote his services to the Jews, as we have said yesterday, he yet, in the first place, passes judgment on Samaria; for it was his purpose afterwards to speak more fully against Jerusalem and the whole of Judea. And this state of the case ought to be borne in mind; for the Prophet does not begin with the Israelites, because he directs his discourse peculiarly to them; but his purpose was briefly to reprove them, and then to address more especially his own people, for it was for this purpose that he was called. Now, as he threatens destruction to Samaria and the whole kingdom of Israel on account of their corrupted forms of worship, we may hence learn how displeasing to God is superstition, and that he regards nothing so much as the true worship of his name. There is no reason here for men to advance this position — that they do not designedly sin; for God shows how he is to be worshipped by us. Whenever, then, we deviate in any thing from the rule which he has prescribed, we manifest, in that particular, our rebellion and obstinacy. Hence the superstitious ever act like fools with regard to God, for they will not submit to his word, so as to be thereby alone made wise.

And he says, I will set Samaria as an heap of the field, that is, such shall be the ruins that they shall differ nothing from the heaps of the fields: for husband men, we know, when they find stones in their fields, throw them into some corner, that they may not be in the way of the slough. Like such heaps then, as are seen in the fields, Samaria would be, according to what God declared. He then says, that the place would be empty, so that vines would be planted there; and, in the third place, that its stones would be scattered through the valley; as when one casts stones where there is a wide plain, they run and roll far and wide; so would be the scattering of Samaria according to what the Prophet says, it was to be like the rolling of stones in a wide field. He adds, in the fourth place, I will uncover her foundations, that is, I will entirely demolish it, so that a stone, as Christ says, may not remain on a stone, (Matthew 24:2.) We now perceive the import of the words; and we also perceive that the reason why the Prophet denounces on Samaria so severe a judgment was, because it had corrupted the legitimate worship of God with its own inventions; for it had devised, as we well know, many idols, so that the whole authority of the law had been abolished among the Israelites. It now follows —