Chronological

1 ¶ The word of the LORD that came to Micah the Morasthite in the days of Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, which he saw concerning Samaria and Jerusalem.

² Hear, all ye peoples; hearken, O earth, and all that is therein: and the Lord GOD, the Lord from his holy temple shall be a witness against you.

³ For, behold, the LORD comes forth out of his place and will come down and tread upon the high places of the earth.

⁴ And the mountains shall melt under him, and the valleys shall be split, as wax before the fire, and as the waters that run down a steep place.

⁵ All this for the rebellion of Jacob and for the sins of the house of Israel. What is the rebellion of Jacob? is it not Samaria? and what are the high places of Judah? are they not Jerusalem?

⁶ Therefore I will make Samaria into heaps in the field, into a land of vineyards: and I will scatter her stones throughout the valley, and I will uncover her foundations.

⁷ And all her graven images shall be broken to pieces, and all her gifts shall be burned in the fire, and I will destroy all her idols, for she gathered it of the gifts of harlots, and they shall return unto gifts of harlots.

⁸ ¶ Therefore I will wail and howl, I will go stripped and naked: I will make a wailing like the dragons and mourning as the owls.

⁹ For her wound is painful, for it is come unto Judah; it is come unto the gate of my people, even to Jerusalem.

¹⁰ Do not declare it in Gath, weep little; roll thyself in the dust for the house of Aphrah.

¹¹ Pass away naked with shame, thou inhabitant of Saphir: the inhabitant of Zaanan did not come forth in the mourning of Bethezel; he shall receive of you for his lateness.

¹² For the inhabitant of Maroth was pained because of good; therefore evil came down from the LORD unto the gate of Jerusalem.

¹³ O thou inhabitant of Lachish, hitch the chariot to dromedaries: for thou wert the beginning of the sin to the daughter of Zion, for in thee the rebellions of Israel were invented.

¹⁴ Therefore shalt thou give gifts to Moreshethgath; the houses of Achzib shall be a lie to the kings of Israel.

¹⁵ Yet will I bring an heir unto thee, O inhabitant of Mareshah; the glory of Israel shall come unto Adullam.

¹⁶ Make thee bald, and shave thee for the sons of thy delight; enlarge thy baldness as the eagle, for they are gone into captivity from thee.

2 ¶ Woe unto those that devise iniquity and fabricate evil upon their beds! when the morning is light, they put it into effect because they have power in their hands.

² And they coveted fields and stole them, and houses and took them away; so they oppressed the man and his house, even the man and his heritage.

³ Therefore thus hath the LORD said; Behold, I devise an evil against this family, from which ye shall not remove your necks; neither shall ye walk haughtily; for the time shall be evil.

⁴ In that time shall one take up a saying against you and lament with a doleful lamentation and say, We have been utterly destroyed; he has changed the portion of my people; how has he taken our fields! He has given and divided our fields unto others.

⁵ Therefore thou shalt have no one to cast a cord by lot in the congregation of the LORD.

⁶ ¶ Do not prophesy, they say to those that prophesy: Do not prophesy unto them that they are to understand shame.

⁷ O thou that calls thyself the house of Jacob, is the spirit of the LORD shortened? are these his doings? do not my words do good to him that walks uprightly?

⁸ He who yesterday was my people is risen up as an enemy; ye pull off the robe with the garment from those that pass by as those who return from war.

⁹ Ye have cast the women of my people out from their pleasant houses; from their children ye have taken away my continual praise.

¹⁰ Arise and depart, for this is not your rest because it is polluted; it has become corrupted and with a great corruption.

¹¹ If there is one walking in the spirit of falsehood, he shall lie, saying, I will prophesy unto thee of wine and of strong drink; he shall even be the prophet of this people.

¹² ¶ I will surely assemble, O Jacob, all of thee; I will surely gather the remnant of Israel; I will put them together as the sheep of Bozrah as the flock in the midst of their fold; they shall make great noise by reason of the multitude of men.

¹³ The breaker shall go up before them; they shall break through and pass through the gate and go out by it; and their king shall pass before them, the LORD at the head of them.

3 ¶ And I said, Hear, I pray you, O princes of Jacob, and ye heads of the house of Israel. Did it not pertain to you to know that which is right?

² Who hate the good, and love the evil, who steal their skin from off them, and their flesh from off their bones;

³ and eat the flesh of my people, and flay their skin from off them; and they break their bones and chop them in pieces as for the pot and as flesh within the caldron.

⁴ Then they shall cry unto the LORD, but he will not respond to them: he will even hide his face from them at that time because of their evil doings.

⁵ Thus hath the LORD said concerning the prophets that make my people err, that bite with their teeth, and cry, Peace; and he that does not give them something to eat, they even prepare war against him.

⁶ Therefore the vision shall be made night unto you, and darkness unto those that divine, and the sun shall go down over the prophets, and the day shall be dark over them.

⁷ Then the prophets shall be ashamed, and the diviners confounded; and they shall all cover their lips because they shall have no answer from God.

⁸ ¶ But truly I am full of power by the Spirit of the LORD, and of judgment, and of might, to declare unto Jacob his rebellion, and to Israel his sin.

⁹ Now hear this, ye heads of the house of Jacob and captains of the house of Israel, that abhor judgment and pervert all equity;

¹⁰ that build up Zion with blood and Jerusalem with iniquity;

¹¹ the heads thereof judge for bribes, and the priests thereof teach for hire, and the prophets thereof divine for money: yet they come near unto the LORD, and say, Is not the LORD among us? No evil can come upon us.

¹² Therefore for your sake Zion shall be plowed as a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps of ruins and the mountain of the house as the high places of the forest.

4 ¶ But it shall come to pass in the last of the times that the mountain of the house of the LORD shall be established as the top of the mountains and higher than all the hills, and peoples shall flow unto it.

² And many Gentiles shall come and say, Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the LORD and to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for the law shall go forth from Zion and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.

³ And he shall judge among many peoples and correct strong nations even afar off; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruninghooks; nation shall not lift up a sword against nation, neither shall they train for war any more.

⁴ But each one shall sit under their vine and under their fig tree, and no one shall make them afraid, for the mouth of the LORD of the hosts has spoken it.

⁵ Even if all the peoples should walk each one in the name of their gods; with all this we will walk in the name of the LORD our God for ever and eternally.

⁶ In that day, saith the LORD, I will assemble her that is lame, and I will gather her that is driven out, and her that I have afflicted,

⁷ and I will make her that is lame to be heirs, and her that was cast off a strong nation, and the LORD shall reign over them in the mount of Zion from now, and for evermore.

⁸ ¶ And thou, O tower of the flock, the stronghold of the daughter of Zion shall come unto thee; and the dominion shall come first, the kingdom, to the daughter of Jerusalem.

⁹ Now why dost thou cry out aloud? is there no king in thee? is thy counsellor perished? for pangs have taken thee as a woman in travail.

¹⁰ Be in pain, and labour to bring forth, O daughter of Zion, like a woman in travail; for now thou shalt go forth out of the city, and thou shalt dwell in the field, and thou shalt go even to Babylon; there shalt thou be delivered; there the LORD shall redeem thee from the hand of thine enemies.

¹¹ But now many nations are gathered against thee that say, Let her be defiled, and let our eyes see our desire carried out upon Zion.

¹² But they did not know the thoughts of the LORD, neither did they understand his counsel by which he gathered them as sheaves onto the threshing floor.

¹³ Arise and thresh, O daughter of Zion; for I will make thine horn iron, and I will make thy hoofs bronze; and thou shalt break in pieces many peoples; and thou shalt consecrate their spoil unto the LORD and their riches unto the Lord of the whole earth.

5 ¶ Now thou shalt be besieged by armies, O daughter of the army: he shall lay siege against us; they shall smite the judge of Israel with a rod upon the cheek.

² But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be Lord in Israel; and his goings forth are from the beginning, from the days of the ages.

³ Therefore he will give them up until the time that she who travails has brought forth; then the remnant of his brethren shall return with the sons of Israel.

⁴ And he shall stand and feed in the strength of the LORD, in the majesty of the name of the LORD his God; and they shall abide; for now he shall be great unto the ends of the earth.

⁵ And he shall be our peace when the Assyrian shall come into our land: and when he shall tread in our palaces, then we shall raise against him seven shepherds and eight principal men.

⁶ And they shall waste the land of Assyria with the blade, and the land of Nimrod with their swords; and he shall deliver us from the Assyrian when he comes against our land and when he treads within our borders.

⁷ ¶ And the remnant of Jacob shall be in the midst of many peoples as the dew of the LORD, as the rains upon the grass, which did not expect a man, nor did they expect the sons of men.

⁸ And the remnant of Jacob shall be among the Gentiles in the midst of many peoples as a lion among the beasts of the forest, as a young lion among the flocks of sheep, who, if he goes through and treads down and tears in pieces, there are none that can escape.

⁹ Thine hand shall be lifted up upon thine enemies, and all thine adversaries shall be cut off.

¹⁰ And it shall come to pass in that day, said the LORD, that I will cause thy horses to be killed out of the midst of thee, and I will cause thy chariots to be destroyed:

¹¹ and I will cause all the cities of thy land to be destroyed, and I will cause all thy fortresses to be destroyed:

¹² and I will cause the witchcrafts to be destroyed by thy hand; and no more soothsayers shall be found in thee:

¹³ and I will cause thy graven images and thy images to be destroyed out of the midst of thee; and never again shalt thou worship the work of thine hands.

¹⁴ And I will pluck up thy groves out of the midst of thee; so will I destroy thy cities.

¹⁵ And I will execute vengeance in anger and fury in the Gentiles who have not heard.

6 ¶ Hear ye now what the LORD saith: Arise, contend thou with the mountains, and let the hills hear thy voice.

² Hear ye, O mountains, the LORD’s controversy, and ye strong foundations of the earth; for the LORD has a controversy with his people, and he will reprove Israel.

³ O my people, what have I done unto thee? and in what have I wearied thee? testify against me.

⁴ For I brought thee up out of the land of Egypt and ransomed thee out of the house of slaves; and I sent before thee Moses, Aaron, and Miriam.

⁵ O my people, remember now what Balak king of Moab consulted and what Balaam the son of Beor answered him from Shittim unto Gilgal: that ye may know the righteousness of the LORD.

⁶ ¶ With what shall I present myself before the LORD, and how shall I worship the high God? shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves of a year old?

⁷ Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? shall I give my firstborn for my rebellion, the fruit of my bowels for the sin of my soul?

⁸ He has declared unto thee, O man, what is good and what the LORD requires of thee: only to do right judgment, and to love mercy, and to humble thyself to walk with thy God.

⁹ ¶ The LORD’s voice cries out unto the city, and the man of wisdom shall see thy name: hear ye the rod, and he who has established it.

¹⁰ Are there yet the treasures of wickedness in the house of the wicked and the scant measure that is abominable?

¹¹ Can I be pure with false balances and with a bag of deceitful weights?

¹² With which their rich men are full of violence, and the inhabitants thereof have spoken lies, and their tongue is deceitful in their mouth.

¹³ Therefore I have also made thee weak in smiting thee, in making thee desolate because of thy sins.

¹⁴ Thou shalt eat, but not be satisfied; and thy casting down shall be in the midst of thee; and thou shalt take, but shalt not be saved; and that which thou dost save, I will give it up to the sword.

¹⁵ Thou shalt sow, but thou shalt not reap; thou shalt tread the olives, but thou shalt not anoint thee with the oil; and sweet wine, but shalt not drink the wine.

¹⁶ For the statutes of Omri have been kept and all the works of the house of Ahab, and ye have walked in their counsels that I should make thee a desolation, and the inhabitants thereof a hissing: therefore ye shall bear the reproach of my people.

7 ¶ Woe is me! for I am as when they have gathered the summer fruits, as the grapegleanings of the vintage: there is no cluster to eat: my soul desired the firstripe fruit.

² The merciful man of the earth is missing: and there is no one upright among men: they all lie in wait for blood; they hunt each man his brother with a net.

³ To complete the evil with their hands, the prince demands, and the judge judges for a reward; and the great man speaks the desires of his heart: and they confirm it.

⁴ The best of them is as a brier; the most upright as a thorn hedge: the day of thy watchmen, thy visitation, comes; now shall be their confusion.

⁵ Do not believe in a friend, do not trust in a prince; from her that lies at thy side, take care, open not thy mouth.

⁶ For the son dishonours the father, the daughter rises up against her mother, the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man’s enemies are those of his own house.

⁷ ¶ Therefore I will wait for the LORD; I will wait for the God of my saving health; my God will hear me.

⁸ Do not rejoice against me, O my enemy; for if I have fallen, I shall arise; if I sit in darkness, the LORD is my light.

⁹ I will bear the indignation of the LORD because I have sinned against him, until he has judged my cause and executed my judgment; he will bring me forth to the light, and I shall behold his righteousness.

¹⁰ Then she that is my enemy shall see it, and shame shall cover her who said unto me, Where is the LORD thy God? my eyes shall behold her: now she shall be trodden down as the mire of the streets.

¹¹ In the day that thy walls shall be built unto thee, in that day shall the decree of thy slavery be far removed.

¹² In that day also he shall come even to thee from Assyria and from the fortified cities and from the fortress even to the river, and from sea to sea, and from mountain to mountain.

¹³ And the land with those that dwell therein shall be made desolate, for the fruit of their doings.

¹⁴ ¶ Feed thy people with thy rod, the flock of thine heritage, which dwell only in the mountain, in the midst of Carmel; let them feed in Bashan and Gilead, as in the time of old.

¹⁵ I will show you marvellous things as in the day when thou came out of Egypt.

¹⁶ The Gentiles shall see and be ashamed at all thy mighty acts: they shall lay their hand upon their mouth, their ears shall become deaf.

¹⁷ They shall lick the dust like a serpent; as the serpents of the earth, they shall tremble in their holes; they shall be filled with fear of the LORD our God and shall also fear thee.

¹⁸ Who is a God like unto thee that pardons iniquity, and passes over the rebellion with the remnant of his heritage? He did not retain his anger for ever because he delights in mercy.

¹⁹ He will turn again, he will have mercy on us; he will subdue our iniquities; and will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea.

²⁰ Thou wilt perform the truth to Jacob and the mercy to Abraham, which thou hast sworn unto our fathers from the times of old.