Micah 1-4

Amplified Bible, Classic Edition

1 The word of the Lord that came to Micah of Moresheth in the days of Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, which he saw [through divine revelation] concerning Samaria and Jerusalem.

² Hear, all you people; listen closely, O earth and all that is in it, and let the Lord God be witness among you and against you, the Lord from His holy temple.^(A)

³ For behold, the Lord comes forth out of His place and will come down and tread upon the high places of the earth.^(B)

⁴ And the mountains shall melt under Him and the valleys shall be cleft like wax before the fire, like waters poured down a steep place.

⁵ All this is because of the transgression of Jacob and the sins of the house of Israel. What is the transgression of Jacob? Is it not [the idol worship of] Samaria? And what are the high places [of idolatry] in Judah? Are they not Jerusalem?

⁶ Therefore I [the Lord] will make Samaria a ^[a]heap in the open country, a place for planting vineyards; and I will pour down into the ravine her stones and lay bare her foundations.^(C)

⁷ And all her carved images shall be broken in pieces, and all her hires [all that man would gain from desertion of God] shall be burned with fire, and all her idols will be laid waste; for from the hire of [one] harlot she gathered them, and to the hire of [another] harlot they shall return.

⁸ Therefore I [Micah] will lament and wail; I will go stripped and [virtually] naked; I will make a wailing like the jackals and a lamentation like the ostriches.

⁹ For [Samaria’s] wounds are incurable and they come even to Judah; He [the Lord] has reached to the gate of my people, to Jerusalem.

¹⁰ In Gath [a city in Philistia] announce it not; in ^[b]Acco weep not at all, [betraying your grief to foreigners; but among your own people] in Beth-le-aphrah [house of dust] roll yourself in the dust.

¹¹ Pass on your way [into exile], dwellers of Shaphir, in shameful nakedness. The dwellers of Zaanan dare not come forth; the wailing of Beth-ezel takes away from you the place on which it stands.

¹² For the inhabitant of Maroth [bitterness] writhes in pain [at its losses] and waits anxiously for good, because evil comes down from the Lord to the gate of Jerusalem.

¹³ Bind the chariot to the swift steed, O lady inhabitant of Lachish; you were the beginning of sin to the Daughter of Zion, for the transgressions of Israel were found in you.

¹⁴ Therefore you must give parting gifts to Moresheth-gath [Micah’s home town]; the houses of Achzib [place of deceit] shall be a deception to the kings of Israel.

¹⁵ Yet will I bring a conqueror upon you, O lady inhabitant of Mareshah, who shall possess you; the glory and nobility of Israel shall come to Adullam [to hide in the caves, as did David].^(D)

¹⁶ Make yourself bald in mourning and cut off your hair for the children of your delight; enlarge your baldness as the eagle, for [your children] shall be carried from you into exile.

2 Woe to those who devise iniquity and work out evil upon their beds! When the morning is light, they perform and practice it because it is in their power.

² They covet fields and seize them, and houses and take them away; they oppress and crush a man and his house, a man and his inheritance.^(E)

³ Therefore thus says the Lord: Behold, against this family I am planning a disaster from which you cannot remove your necks, nor will you be able to walk erect; for it will be an evil time.

⁴ In that day shall they take up a [taunting] parable against you and wail with a doleful and bitter lamentation and say, We are utterly ruined and laid waste! [God] changes the portion of my people. How He removes it from me! He divides our fields [to the rebellious, our captors].

⁵ Therefore you shall have no one to cast a line by lot upon a plot [of ground] in the assembly of the Lord.^(F)

⁶ Do not preach, say the prophesying false prophets; one should not babble and harp on such things; disgrace will not overtake us [the reviling has no end].

⁷ O house of Jacob, shall it be said, Is the Spirit of the Lord restricted, impatient, and shortened? Or are these [prophesied plagues] His doings? Do not My words do good to him who walks uprightly?

⁸ But lately (yesterday) My people have stood up as an enemy [and have made Me their antagonist]. Off from the garment you strip the cloak of those who pass by in secure confidence of safety and are averse to war.

⁹ The women of My people you cast out from their pleasant houses; from their young children you take away My glory forever.

¹⁰ Arise and depart, for this is not the rest [which was promised to the righteous in Canaan], because of uncleanness that works destruction, even a sharp and grievous destruction.

¹¹ If a man walking in a spirit [of vanity] and in falsehood should lie and say, I will prophesy to you of wine and strong drink, O Israel, he would even be the acceptable prophet of this people!^(G)

¹² I will surely gather all of you, O Jacob; I will surely collect the remnant of Israel. I will bring them [Israel] together like sheep in a fold, like a flock in the midst of their pasture. They [the fold and the pasture] shall swarm with men and hum with much noise.

¹³ The ^[c]Breaker [the Messiah] will go up before them. They will break through, pass in through the gate and go out through it, and their King will pass on before them, the Lord at their head.^(H)

3 And I [Micah] said, Hear, I pray you, you heads of Jacob and rulers of the house of Israel! Is it not for you to know justice?—

² You who hate the good and love the evil, who pluck and steal the skin from off [My people] and their flesh from off their bones;

³ Yes, you who eat the flesh of my people and strip their skin from off them, who break their bones and chop them in pieces as for the pot, like meat in a big kettle.

⁴ Then will they cry to the Lord, but He will not answer them; He will even hide His face from them at that time, because they have made their deeds evil.^(I)

⁵ Thus says the Lord: Concerning the false prophets who make My people err, when they have anything good to bite with their teeth they cry, Peace; and whoever gives them nothing to chew, against him they declare a sanctified war.

⁶ Therefore it shall be night to you, so that you shall have no vision; yes, it shall be dark to you without divination. And the sun shall go down over the false prophets, and the day shall be black over them.

⁷ And the seers shall be put to shame and the diviners shall blush and be confounded; yes, they shall all cover their lips, for there is no answer from God.

⁸ But truly I [Micah] am full of power, of the Spirit of the Lord, and of justice and might, to declare to Jacob his transgression and to Israel his sin.

⁹ Hear this, I pray you, you heads of the house of Jacob and rulers of the house of Israel, who abhor and reject justice and pervert all equity,

¹⁰ Who build up Zion with blood and Jerusalem with iniquity.

¹¹ Its heads judge for reward and a bribe and its priests teach for hire and its prophets divine for money; yet they lean on the Lord and say, Is not the Lord among us? No evil can come upon us.^(J)

¹² Therefore shall Zion on your account be ^[d]plowed like a field, Jerusalem shall become heaps [of ruins], and the mountain of the house [of the Lord] like a densely wooded height.^(K)

4 But in the latter days it shall come to pass that the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be established as the highest of the mountains; and it shall be exalted above the hills, and peoples shall flow to it.

² And many nations shall come and say, Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob, that He may teach us His ways, and we may walk in His paths. For the law shall go forth out of Zion and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.

³ And He shall judge between many peoples and shall decide for strong nations afar off, and they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.^(L)

⁴ But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree, and none shall make them afraid, for the mouth of the Lord of hosts has spoken it.^(M)

⁵ For all the peoples [now] walk every man in the name of his god, but we will walk in the name of the Lord our God forever and ever.

⁶ In that day, says the Lord, I will assemble the lame, and I will gather those who have been driven away and those whom I have afflicted.

⁷ And I will make the lame a remnant, and those who were cast off a strong nation; and the Lord shall reign over them in Mount Zion from this time forth and forever.

⁸ And you, O tower of the flock, the hill and stronghold of the Daughter of Zion, unto you the former dominion shall come, the kingdom of the Daughter of Jerusalem.

⁹ Now why do you cry aloud? Is there no king among you? Has your counselor perished, that pains have taken you like a woman in labor?

¹⁰ Writhe in pain and labor to bring forth, O Daughter of Zion, like a woman in childbirth; for now you shall go forth out of the city and you shall live in the open country. You shall go to Babylon; there you shall be rescued. There the Lord shall redeem you from the hand of your enemies.

¹¹ Now many nations are assembled against you, saying, Let her be profaned and let our eyes gaze upon Zion.

¹² But they know not the thoughts of the Lord, neither do they understand His plan, for He shall gather them as the sheaves to the threshing floor.

¹³ Arise and thresh, O Daughter of Zion! For I will make your horn iron and I will make your hoofs bronze; you shall beat in pieces many peoples, and I will devote their gain to the Lord and their treasure to the Lord of all the earth.^(N)