This text is about God’s exercise of justice and his delight in mercy. Dale Ralph Davis tells of Alexander Whyte who was asked by a friend and church member, Have ye any word for an old sinner? He said, [God] delights in mercy (7:18c).1 This text says that in verse 18.
Israel had failed in the very basics of the covenant—doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly with God. In Micah’s day, their society had decayed to the point that justice and mercy were nowhere to be found (7:2). Like the Pharisees of Jesus’s day, ancient Israel had left off the weightier matters of the law—justice and mercy and faithfulness. They were meticulous in their measuring of things that had no weight¬—mint and dill and cumin, but to the things that tipped the scales of covenant faithfulness, they turned a blind eye (Matt. 23:23).
In this section, Micah brings YHWH’s charges of covenant unfaithfulness against the people themselves (6:2b) and shows how God will save a remnant from Israel and the nations through judgment.2 Micah’s purpose is to help the faithful navigate living in an unjust world that is justly experiencing the judgment of God.
We live a time of religious, social, and moral decay. Probably, many of us are at a loss as to how to navigate these times as Christians. Micah shows us how to live in a world absent of justice and mercy that is under God’s wrath.
We can’t fight God’s battles with the world’s methods. Rather we must live in this world doing justice, loving kindness and walking humbly with God.
In 6:1-8 YHWH presents his case calling on the mountains to hear the charges he will bring against his people (cf. 6:1-2). The case he brings is not simply that of a divine prosecutor but a compassionate Savior, who argues his faithfulness to the covenant over against their unfaithfulness. His appeal in verses 3 and 5, O my people, O my people reminds us of Jesus’s lament over Jerusalem (Matt 23:37).
To present his case, YHWH outlines the history of redemption and its gracious purpose (6:3-5) and confronts Israel’s failure in relation to God (6:6-8) and man (6:9-16).
A. Israel was redeemed to know the LORD (6:3-5)
God’s saving work has implications for our lives. We are to know Him and live in relationship with him. YHWH begins by asking two questions about his salvific performance and demanding an answer. Notice the questions, What have I done to you? and How have I wearied you? Answer me (3)! YHWH then outlines his redemptive activity for them. He redeemed them from slavery (4a), guided them through the wilderness years with Moses, Aaron, and Miriam (4b), turned the intended curse of Balak and Balaam into a blessing (5a), and rather than obliterating them for their Moabite foray at Shittim, he brought them to Gilgal to possess the land (5b).
What possible complaint could they have? The simple reason YHWH acted redemptively among them was so they would know his righteous acts (5c), that is, that they would experience the saving righteousness of God. What reason could they offer for not loving and trusting YHWH?
B. Israel opted for ritual over walking humbly with God (6:6-7)
Ritual is much easier than relationship, less complicated, and requires no real commitment or challenge to our desired way of life. We simply go through the motions as we like to say. Perhaps, the people are offering a defense in verse 6: With what shall I come before the LORD? We offer sacrifices?
The people raise three questions of their own, each one increasing the intensity of their ritual practice. First, will the LORD be pleased with the offering of calves (plural, 6)? Then, how about thousands of rams or 10 thousands rivers of oil (7a)? Finally, how about my firstborn, the fruit of my body, for the sin of my soul (7b)? The idea is if I fill my life with religious activity to the point of the absurd God will be pleased.
Our metrics are of spirituality are How much and How many. All of the things Israel was doing to show their devotion were things that any unbeliever could do. They were measuring the mint, dill, and cumin as if they were weightier matters than knowing God.
C. Walking humbly with God gives meaning to ritual (6:8)
It’s not that they could leave off sacrifice, but YHWH was not after more sacrifices devoid of meaning and devotion of heart. He had already told Israel in the covenant documents what is good, what he requires—do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God (8). This is Micah’s summary of Deuteronomy 10:12-13: And now, Israel, what does the LORD your God require of you, but to fear the LORD your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments and statutes of the LORD, which I am commanding you today for your good?
Micah reduced the covenant to its weightier matters: doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly with God. To do justice speaks to our actions. Justice is not some abstract notion, but it is to obey the stipulations of the covenant. To love kindness (hesed—loyalty, faithfulness) gets to the motive, to the heart, to the affections. To love kindness is to feel the same way about covenant loyalty as God does (cf. 7:18c). To walk humbly with God speaks of being careful to live life in communion with God.3 You share God’s actions, his affections, and his company. Micah in essence is saying, God requires his people to be like him. This is the power of their witness in the world.
D. Walking humbly with God impacts every area of life (9-16)
For Micah the historical period most like the present situation in Judah was the reigns of Omri and Ahab.4 They should have walked humbly with God, but they walked arrogantly in the counsels of Omri and Ahab (cf. 8 and 16).
In total disregard for the covenant stipulations, the people were amassing wealth by wicked schemes: scant measures, violence, and deceit (10-12). Did they think that the God of justice and steadfast love would overlook their sin? Rather he would make them desolate (cf. 13 and 16, an astonishment) because of their sin (13). A people who had the high calling to represent God in the world would be taunted by the nations (16 bear the scorn (shame) of my people). The nations would gasp at a people who threw away so much for so little.
Israel would experience the covenant curse of futility in answer to their sin: eat and not be satisfied, put away but not preserve, sow but not reap, tread olives but not anoint themselves, make wine but not drink. They would experience the futility of a life of sin. We could have asked them, How is that working for you?
The futility of sin is the judgment of God. Perhaps you keep doing the same things and experiencing the same futility. What is the constant in your life? The futility of the sinful life is the judgment of God.
We need to take an honest look at the society of humans and lament the absence justice, kindness, and walking with God. Such an honest view of the society of men should lead us to lament the injustice in this world and not to hope in the world, but rather to hope in God who alone can save. Lament that leads to perpetual despair is lament that has no hope in God.
In what is the darkest section of the book, Micah laments5 the dissolution of Israelite society. While the demise of society would be overwhelming, the realization that we are personally impacted by it intensifies our grief.
Micah describes his feeling of despair as his looking where he could righty expect to find food and finding nothing (1). Perhaps, you have been disappointed on going to frig and finding someone beat you to the leftovers. This is worse. It’s like going to Kroger when the pandemic started and feeling the shock of bare-shelves perhaps for the first time in your life. You get the feeling that something ominous is happening.
Micah grieves because the society of mankind is absent the godly (hacid) and upright (yasar) (2a). Godly (hacid) is in the same word group as hesed (cf. 6:8; 7:18c). The godly are the ones who love kindness. The upright or righteous are the ones who do justice (cf. 6:8). Obviously, the reason for the absence of those who love kindness and do just is because no one is walking humbly with God (cf. 6:8). Rather they hunt each other (2b), look for evil to do (3a), and pervert justice to get what they desire (3b).
They have pillaged the upright to the point that their society has completely broken down. It has become impossible to trust anyone, even those in your own house (4b-6). The imperatives of Micah’s instructions are alarming: put no trust, have no confidence, guard the doors of your mouth (5). Jesus used this very text to strengthen his disciples because the message of the gospel is divisive in this wicked world (cf. Matt. 10:34-38). When you live in a world divorced from transcendent reality, it is unhinged from any moral imperative except what one desires (cf. 3b evil desire). Insert the gospel of the risen Christ into that context, and you can trust no one but God.
One of the problems with the social justice conversation today is it locates all the injustice of the world in the narrow spaces of its understanding of the poor, limits it to one country, and colors it black and white. Micah says, Not so fast. The world of mankind is thoroughly unjust and unkind.
What are we to do? Micah’s message is absolute: you cannot hope in this world. Is the world that bad? Yes, it’s gone.
In response to the breakdown of human society, Micah sores in hope, But as for me, I will look to the LORD, I will wait for the God of my salvation; my God will hear me (7).
You have to love God. He cannot help but be who he is. That’s no character flaw.
A. God is working to save his people and judge his enemies (8-10)
The suffering of God’s people in the world leads their enemies to taunt them: Where is the LORD your God? It’s not like we live in a protective bubble and are unaffected by God’s judgment on the world. Both the righteous and the wicked suffer from COVID. The faithful in Israel went into exile just like the unjust did.
It is difficult for us to come to terms with the reality that we often suffer the same fate in this world as the wicked. Many of us grow up with the mistaken idea that God’s job is to keep bad things from happening to us. We may have no category for suffering personal loss. Others struggle at the injustice of the prosperity of the wicked. They prosper, and we suffer. Indeed, the wicked may even prosper at the expense of the righteous.
Micah faced this very thing. The faithful were going into exile with the wicked, and a nation more wicked than Israel was taking them there. Micah answers the taunts of the wicked, Rejoice not over me, O my enemy(8).7 He knew the LORD would see him through the darkness.
Judgment on the unbelieving was the LORD’s discipline for the faithful. Micah had a sense of his own sin, and he understood the character of God. His anger is temporary toward his people. The same God whose discipline Micah must bear is the same one who will plead his case and justify him (9). The end result for his enemies will be shame, but for Micah vindication (9c, 10).
As believers, our faith must sore to the heights of Job when he said, Though he slay me, I will hope in him (Job. 13:15a).8 This is at least part of what it means to walk humbly with God.
B. God’s saving and judging work is more comprehensive than we might think (11-13).
In that day (11,12) connects this text with Micah’s view of the far distant future. The last days is a program that began with incarnation of the Son of God (5:2). That day is a day of restoration and expansion (11). It’s not about re-establishment of the commonwealth of Israel under the Mosaic code, but it is about God fulfilling his global redemptive purpose that he has had from the beginning. From among Judah’s ancestral enemies and beyond, the nations will come under the rule of the Shepherd King from Bethlehem (12). We should read verses like verse 12 and feel marvel and thankfulness that God would include us in his plan.
God has plan of redemption that he is working out in history. To lose sight of God’s global redemptive plan can cause us to have a skewed view of God and of salvation. The wonder of salvation is that we get to participate in his saving plan at all. The same problem that Israel had with her election is the same problem the church has with hers. We have forgotten that election us unconditional, that is, God did not choose us because we deserve it or we are special or to make much of us, but rather to show his own mercy and grace.
This does not mean, however, that all people everywhere will believe. Rather some will persist in unbelief and come under the judgment of God (13). It is in the last days that the Gospel of the Kingdom is preached to all nations. Faith in Christ is what distinguishes one man from another, the one who knows the grace of God and the one who suffers the wrath of God.
C. The LORD shepherds his people in this hostile world as he works out his redemptive purpose (14-17)
In this hostile world, Micah calls on the LORD to Shepherd his own. It is remarkable how the LORD provides for his people in this contrary world. Micah knows God’s purpose is to shepherd his people in this hostile world, and he prays that God will do it (14).
The LORD responds to the prophet’s prayer by showing he is as committed to miraculously saving his people now as he was in the exodus (15). God is at work powerfully and savingly among the nations. Did you know that there are more evangelical Christians in China than there are members of the Chinese Communist Party?9 The nations will be brought to shame over their self-reliance (16) and turn in dread to the LORD (17, cf. 4:1-4).
D. God’s saving work for his people is an expression of his character (18-20)
When Micah surveys the gracious saving plan of God for the remnant and the nations, he erupts in praise, Who is a God like you (18)? He then lists 7 gracious characteristics of God toward sinners: pardoning iniquity, passing over transgression, not retaining anger, delighting in steadfast love, showing compassion, treading our iniquity underfoot, and casting our sins in the depths of the sea (18-19).10 The very center of these is that He delights in steadfast love.
This language is rich and every note of grace in this final hymn deserves our praise. Just take for example how casting our sins in the depth of the see draws on the Exodus 15 language of Pharaoh and his army drowning the depth of the sea (Ex. 15:4-5, 10). It is remarkable that every category sin is mentioned here: iniquity, transgression, and sins.11 There was no sacrifice for willful rebellion. Yet, Micah says, God passes over transgression.
How can it be that the God whose presence melts the mountains will so thoroughly take away the sin of his people? He set his steadfast love on Abraham and promised through his seed to save the world. God can forgive sin because the Son of God came to give his life to save us from our sins. Why would he do that? He delights in steadfast love.