Speaking truth to power1 is a tired phrase these days.2 For all of our truth-tellers today, little truth is told. Probably, what is being paraded as truth today is closer to what Harry says to Erica in the movie As Good As It Gets, “I have never lied to you, I have always told you some version of the truth.”3 Today, there is my truth and your truth, but what’s needed is the truth. Dale Ralph Davis tells of Robert Bruce (1631), who while preaching was being rudely and repeatedly interrupted by King James VI’s talking, said to the king, The Lion of the tribe of Judah is now roaring in the voice of His Gospel, and it becomes all the petty kings of the earth to be silent.4
This section of Micah takes up the same themes of judgment and salvation found in the first section, only amplified and clarified. The first section called on the nations to witness YHWH move out in judgment. In this section, Micah addresses Israel’s leaders, specifically the rulers, prophets, and priests. The power structure of ancient Israelite society had become corrupt. YHWH speaks truth to power, and when he speaks it becomes all the petty powers of the earth to be silent.
The truth YHWH speaks in this section is that the rulers of Israel have run the country in the ground. While there may be a temporary reprieve here and there, the nation is going into exile. There God will preserve a remnant that is pregnant with a Davidic king, the Messiah. He will bring about the restoration of the people God in a community in which the nations will share, a community he will purify from the sins that destroyed Israel.
Do wicked leaders corrupt a nation, or does a corrupt nation produce wicked leaders? Who knows? But in a constitutional republic, we have no one to blame but ourselves. A saying often attributed to John Calvin is, When God wants to judge a nation, he gives them wicked rulers.5 In Israelite society, justice was not some abstract notion; it was the upholding and enforcing the stipulations of the Old Covenant. The system of checks and balances—kings, rulers, prophets, and priests—in Micah’s day was corrupt through and through. The truth had fallen on hard times.
One thing that we have in common with ancient Israel is our politicians and preachers want to use religion to prop up their power. Every election cycle, our finest, deeply devout politicians6 misquote the words of the Almighty as they proceed to promise to be our sole savior from whatever we might be convinced by them is a threat to our health and welfare. That is politics American style.
Many preachers today who apparently desire notoriety more than truth interpret the prophets through the lens of critical theory and make the prophets lie. You don’t have to misuse the text to have plenty of fodder to preach against the injustice in our society.
God, however, will not be used to prop-up power. Micah gives 3 judgment speeches in equal length to take on the powers that be, each ending with the judgment of God’s absence (3:4,7,12).
First, Micah addressed the rulers (3:1-4). They had one job, and that was to know justice (1). The word know is not simply an intellectual understanding of the stipulations of the covenant. They were to love justice, to be preoccupied with it and to be careful to uphold it. But they hated what they were supposed to love and loved what they should have hated (2). They learned that they could profit off of injustice, so metaphorically they cannibalized the people of God (2-3 my people).
The day would come when they would cry to the Lord, but he will not answer them (4). The irony is that cry is a technical word for the appeals these judges heard from the people. Their own cries would justly go unanswered.
Second, Micah addresses the prosperity prophets (5-8). The prophets had to prop-up the rulers or their corrupt scheme would fail. For a price, the prophets would tell people what they wanted to hear. Otherwise they would attack the people (5).
Sadly, you get the sense from the text that their prophetic credentials were not in question, but they had gone bad. They would see the sunset on their prophetic careers. They would have no vision. Their usual practices of divination would be fruitless.7 In other words in Memphis language, they would lose their mojo (6). They would seek a word from the LORD, but God would not answer them (7).
How different Spirit anointed preaching! Unlike them, Micah was filled with power and the Spirit of the LORD and with justice and might to declare to Jacob his transgression and to Israel his sin. 8 The true prophet speaks true truth to power. Power in preaching is not in trying to be relevant or funny but is the Spirit’s illumination of the Word of God in our hearts and minds.
The third oracle (9-12) indicts all the leaders in Jerusalem. They hated justice, and if anything happened to be straight they would find a way to make it crooked (9). They built Jerusalem with blood and violent injustice (10). Jerusalem was to have been a light to the nations and city of hope and peace, but it was a place of corruption and violence.9 Whether ruler, priest, or prophet, all were for sale to the highest bidder (11).
To be abandoned by God is the worse fate a human can experience. The consequence of the absence of God reaches its highest intensity in verse 12 with the destruction of the temple. The prosperity prophets picked up on Micah’s theme of the absence of God, Is not the LORD in the midst of us? No disaster shall come upon us (11b). Micah, however, responds in effect saying, ?You think the LORD is among you and that is your insurance policy? Jerusalem will be a heap like Samaria (cf. heap 1:6). The temple was the symbol of God’s covenantal glory presence among his people. Conspicuously absent from the phrase mountain of the house is of the LORD. It is no longer his house. The glory presence is gone, and the blame lies with the rulers, priests, and prophets (12a).
Micah’s preaching that Jerusalem and the temple would be destroyed was preaching that would get you killed.10 What Micah does not record is that his preaching brought repentance. Hezekiah repented and the LORD spared Israel. We wouldn’t know this if not for Jeremiah’s preaching a hundred years later that the temple would be destroyed. Jeremiah was about to be killed for his message, when some of the elders recalled the preaching of Micah and quoted Micah 3:12 as precedent not to kill Jeremiah (26:18-19).
This shows the importance of preaching truth, not someone’s truth, not someone’s lived experience, but the truth. The way you speak truth to power is to preach the objective truth of the gospel and the need for repentance, so that judgment may be averted. Micah’s preaching changed history for a century, but the point of Micah’s preaching is not to tell us of his success. He has bigger fish to fry. He wants to contrast the Jerusalem that is with the one that will be—the Jerusalem without the glory presence and the one filled with the glory of the LORD.
Judgment does not have the last word. The present corrupt temple and the future temple are meant to be contrasted (cf. 3:12 and 4:1). The old temple became the mountain of the house a wooded height (3:12), no longer distinguished by the glory presence. The temple to come will be the mountain of the house of the LORD (4:1), the supreme manifestation of the glory presence. The place of corrupt leaders, false prophecy, and unfaithful priests built on violence and murder (3:1-12) will be transformed into the center of world peace into which the nations will flow to receive the LORD’s instruction.
Every high place among the world of men is an attempt of humanity to redo Babel—to unite around a religion of their own making, effort, and imagination. Such work of human hands will never be a point uniting mankind but is destined to implode and end in confusion.
For a moment Micah directs our attention from what is becoming obsolete to what will come in the latter days, a period of time near the end of history (4:1-4), in order to aid us to live in the present in anticipation of the new Jerusalem (4:5).
This is a remarkable vision. In the day of restoration, the nations will flow (1b) to the LORD’s house to be taught his way that they may walk in his paths. The word walk (halak) is used 5 times in 4:1-5 (2x3 trans. Come; 5x2). The central use is in verse 2—the nations living according to the word and way of the LORD. The concept of the people of God is expanded to include the nations. Such transformation among the nations leads to them turning their weapons into agricultural implements because every man is at peace and has no fear. This is the undoing of the scattering of Babel. The only way the nations will ever walk in peace is with YHWH at their head.
Restoration of Zion, the inclusion of the nations, and universal peace is God’s plan for the world.
Verse 5 brings us back to this present evil age in which the nations are given to idolatry, but the people of God are called on to walk in this world in light of the coming reality of the next world. The future vision is to impact your present living. Your eschatology will impact how you live. As the people of God, our lives are not to be fashioned after the world, but we must walk in the ways of our God. We are a sign of the future in the present.
When you read this oracle, you have to ask, How can Micah 4:1-5 become a reality?
The final section shows the means by which 4:1-5 will be achieved. This section argues that the latter day conditions will be brought about by the advent of the ideal Davidic King—the Son of God. This section forms a chiasm.12 The bookends to this section are (4:6-7 and 5:10-15) are tied to 4:1-5 with the heading, In that day (4:6; 5:10). These are conditions that will prevail in the latter days or the eschaton or the days of the Messiah. The two middle sections (4:8-5:1 and 5:2-9) both begin with references to a Davidic king (4:8; 5:2). The first middle section shows what must take place leading up to the birth of the Messiah (4:7-5:1), and the second middle section shows what must take place from the Messiah’s birth onwards (5:2-9).
Micah says to the Jerusalem of his day that at some point in the distant future those whom the LORD has afflicted in exile will be gathered under his reign forever (4:6-7). Micah shows them a future of glory before he describes the painful present that will give birth to it.
He introduces the section dealing with the painful present with a reference to the restoration of the Davidic Kingship marked by and you (we’atta 4:8). He posits the restoration of the Davidic Kingdom before it ever ends. Tower of the flock is a reference to Bethlehem and reminds us of the labor and death Rachel in giving birth (Gen 35:19-21). This introduces us to the idea that the restoration of the Davidic kingdom will come through suffering.
With the repetition of now (4:9, 11; 5:1), Micah describes the present suffering the people of God must endure for the KOG to come. Israel was pregnant with the Messiah from their beginning, and nothing would prevent the advent of the Savior. All the forces of hell would assemble against the Daughter of Zion, yet the LORD would preserve a remnant and accomplish his redemptive mission. They would lose their Davidic king (4:9). They would go to Babylon in exile, but there the LORD would redeem them (4:10b). The nations would gather against them unwittingly only furthering the LORD’s the redemptive plan (4:11-12). There would be occasional victories along the way (4:13), but ultimately they would lose their Davidic king (5:1) and would seem to be in the most impossible of circumstances imaginable to ever know the former glory (cf. 4:8).
If impossible circumstances are not enough—a kingless, defeated, dispersed people—Micah posits hope arising from the most obscure of places. Where the former section was introduced with and you (4:8) and a prophecy of the Davidic king (4:8), this section is in introduced with but you and the prophecy of Davidic king (5:2). The advent of the Davidic king is followed by 3 sections marked by then (5:3,5, 7), describing how salvation will happen or the Kingdom will be established (4:8-5:1). Bethlehem Ephrathah (5:2) recalls Tower of the Flock (4:8). Bethlehem was such an insignificant town that it was not listed among the cities allotted to Judah (cf. Josh. 15:21-63).13
We move from God accomplishing his plan of salvation even in seemingly impossible circumstances to the birth of the Messiah, the Davidic king, in the most obscure of places. Yet, he is no ordinary king. He comes from of old from ancient days (5:2). From the beginning, this has been the plan of God.
The point of the text is that the restoration the people of God will not occur until the ideal king, the eschatological David, is born (5:3a). When he comes, then the kingdom he ushers in is a united kingdom, one community (5:3b). As he shepherds his flock, his name is made great to the ends of the earth (5:4-5a). Matthew 2:6 quotes Micah 5:2 in the context of the visit of the Magi to Bethlehem. The point in Matthew is that when the Messiah comes the telltale sign is the nations streaming into the people of God.
There is opposition, however. Assyria and Nimrod are references to Babel (5:5-6). They are the antithesis of the people of God. They gather around the glory of man in the kingdom of men. Then people of God and are more than adequate (seven and eight) to withstand Babylon because he will deliver us. We call the nations out of Babylon to join the KOG.
In the time of the then, his people are a remnant among mankind dispersed among the nations (5:7-9). Their function in the world is to be both a blessing to the nations (5:7) and a ruthless opponent of evil wherever it is found (5:8-9).14 The church in the world is both a blessing to those who repent and the enemy of those who oppose God’s plan to save the world.
The coming of the Messiah and the establishment of his community ushers in the latter days. We see how God preserves his people in a hostile world and against all odds accomplishes his plan to save the world.
Yet the people of God are far from perfect. In that day, the LORD is also at work in his people sanctifying them. 5:10-15 describes God’s work in his people to bring about 4:1-5. Notice the repetition of I will cut off (5:10,11,12,13,14,15). This is God’s work of destroying everything that keeps us from trusting him fully. Trusting God should be our reflex not our last resort. As humans we will trust (idolize) anything and everything we think will give us security. We idolize our military defenses (5:10-11). They may keep Xi Jing Ping in Beijing, but they won’t save your soul. One day the nations will use those weapons to plow their fields.
God will systematically destroys our idols, every one of them (5:12-14). Chris Wright categorizes our idolatries as things that entice us, things we fear, things we trust, and things we need.15 These idols are the works of human hands (13b). We are dazzled by what entices us, we bow to our fears, we trust our defenses, and we try to manipulate God to meet our felt needs. We bow down what dazzles us hoping to be exalted, to our fears hoping they won’t destroy us, to what we trust hoping for security, and to our needs hoping for ease. We idolize our mates, our kids, our cars, our houses, our bank accounts, our jobs, our ideas, our pleasure, our ministries and are disappointed when these do not live up to our expectations. Idolatry never fails to fail. At the root of all idolatry is the rejection of the rule of God and the assertion of moral autonomy. God will root idolatry out from among his people.
He calls on us to trust him completely with a trust that obeys (5:15). You can hear the echo of the Great Commission in this text.
As a church, we must consider our mission on light of these verses. On what do we depend, in whom do we trust, what do we value? Many who desire to do ministry long for prestige, status, and praise. These things are enemies of the church. We live now between the incarnation and the consummation in the latter days as the people of God commissioned to both bless and oppose, to be holy and growing in holiness, and to trust and obey.