The people to whom Micah prophesied were deeply religious. They attended well-programmed, colorful services in a magnificent Temple. Their activities included observance of divinely appointed holy days intended to remind them of God's long faithfulness and of their continuing duty to serve Him. They participated in numerous sacred rites pointing forward to the Christ.
Micah's contemporaries were, however, not godly. They felt confident in merely taking part in the ceremonies. It did not occur to them that it might matter how they conducted themselves outside the Temple.
This situation of being religious and at the same time ungodly disturbed Micah. Against such an attitude he cried out. In doing so he speaks pointedly to our own day.
He faithfully warned of divine judgment; but Micah is remembered most for his positive, comprehensive definition of true religion. In a single terse statement he includes Amos' emphasis on justice (Amos 5:24), Hosea's concern for mercy (Hos. 6:6) and Isaiah's plea for a humble walk with God (Isa. 2:11; 6:1-8). He declared: “He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?” (Mic. 6; 8) Thus he taught that true religion brings one into an intimate fellowship with God, and that out from that fellowship flows righteous conduct toward one's fellowmen.
Micah, living in the last half of the eighth century B.C., was one of that century's brilliant galaxy of prophets, among whom Isaiah was the most notable. The messages of the two men of God are in harmony. Some have suggested that Micah was a disciple of Isaiah, and it is interesting to note the similarity between Mic. 4:1-5 and Isa. 2:1-4. But the two prophets are very different. Isaiah was a member of the aristocracy. Micah was a commoner. Isaiah was polished, familiar with the manners of the capital, and moved in royal circles. Micah was a rough man of the countryside, a prophet of the humble.
His own background probably made Micah sensitive to the burdens of the poor. He was doubtless aware of corrupt politics in the capital, of which Isaiah spoke. He must also have known something of the luxury and hidden vices in the Northern Kingdom against which Amos and Hosea, two of his contemporaries, protested. He was aware of the religious apostasy of the land. But it was the suffering of the oppressed poor which wrung his heart.
He was a native of Moresheth, a foothill town some twenty miles west of Jerusalem on the edge of the maritime plain between the Judean hills and Philistia by the sea.1 While the area was well watered and fertile, a place of grainfields, olive groves, and grasslands, the farmers among whom Micah grew up were almost always in economic distress. Debt-ridden, they were forced to mortgage their farms to rich men of Samaria and Jerusalem, who finally dispossessed them of their land. So it was that they became tenant farmers, oppressed by greedy absentee overlords. This exploitation of the poor was in the eyes of Micah one of the most heinous crimes of his day, and he fiercely denounced the exploiters (Mic. 2:2).
Micah's world was in revolution. And the prophet was acquainted with the ominous situation. He lived in a region of small villages remote from the political activities of the capitals, but his broad, open valley must bear the brunt of any attack from an invader who would undertake the conquest of Judah. So it was that he saw and felt the terrors of his world's grim drama.
The secure, prosperous half-century enjoyed by the Northern Kingdom ended with the death of Jeroboam II and the westward advance of the Assyrians. Damascus, the capital of Syria, fell in 731 B.C. (II Kings 16:9). Samaria, the capital of Israel, was overcome by the Assyrian armies under Shalmaneser and Sargon in 721 B.C. (II Kings 17:5-6). The fall of the northern capital left Jerusalem and Micah's beloved countryside exposed to the attackers who swept all before them in their determined advance upon Egypt. The prophet must have suffered unspeakable anguish of spirit as he saw the Assyrian king Sennacherib invade Judah and in 701 B.C. lay siege to Jerusalem (II Kings 18:13- 19:37).
The prevailing ungodliness and the tragic deterioration of Israel and Judah did not, however, cause Micah to despair. He knew full well that the last word would not be spoken by the cruel moneylenders who kept him and his neighbors in bondage, nor even by the heartless pagan kings and their armies who swept high-handedly across his world. He was sure that Jehovah still had a final word. He looked forward to a purified and restored nation. Micah saw the fulfillment of the Lord's purpose in the coming of the Messiah. And it must have delighted him to learn that the Anointed One would be raised up from the humble Judean hill country, out of the little village of Bethlehem.
Outline
I. God's Judgment Is Coming, 1:1—3:12
II. God's People Have a Future, 4:1—5:15
A. The Coming Glory of the Lord's House, 4:1-8
B. The Sorrows of the Present, 4:9—5:1
C. The Coming of Christ to Redeem, 5:2-15
III. God's Controversy with His People, 6:1—7:20
A. God Makes a Supreme Appeal, 6:1-8
C. Micah Laments the Nation's Corruption, 7:1-6