Old/New Testament
God will destroy the city of Samaria
1 These are the messages that the Lord gave to Micah.[a] Then Micah told them to the people during the times that Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah ruled the country called Judah. Micah was born in a small town called Moresheth. God showed Micah about what would happen to the cities called Samaria and Jerusalem.[b]
2 Listen, all of you people everywhere!
Hear this, everyone who lives on the earth!
The Lord God will speak against you.
You have done what is wrong. That is why he will speak against you.
He will speak from his special house.
3 Look! The Lord is leaving his place and he is coming down to the earth.
He will come to the high places (where you worship false gods).
He will destroy those places when he comes.
4 The mountains will melt when he comes,
like wax melts near a fire.
The valleys will also break into pieces.
They will move like water when it rushes down a hill.
5 All these bad things will happen because Jacob's people have refused to obey God.
These things will happen because Israel's people have done wrong things.
You may ask who has caused this.
It is the leaders in your capital cities, Samaria and Jerusalem.
They have kept the high places there for people to offer gifts to false gods.
6 So God says to you:
‘I will destroy Samaria so that just a few stones are lying in the fields there.[c]
Then people will plant vines in that place.[d]
I will throw the stones from the city down into the valley,
when I completely destroy all the buildings.
7 I will break all the false gods into pieces and I will destroy them.
I will burn all the gifts that the people brought for those false gods.
The people have paid so that they could have sex with bad women in those places.
Your enemies will come and they will take away this money.
They will give it to their gods in the same way.’
Micah is sad for the people in Israel and Judah
8 Because of what God has said, I will cry aloud. And I will weep.
I will walk about without shoes or clothes.
I will scream like a wild dog,
and I will cry like a bird in the night.
9 Because Samaria has such bad wounds it can never get well.
And the same will happen also to Judah's people.
The enemies have already reached the gates of my people, that is, Jerusalem itself.
10 Do not talk about this in the city of Gath.
Do not even weep there.
But you people at Beth-Leaphrah,
roll on the ground to show how sad you are.
11 You people who live in Shaphir, go on your way.
Your enemies will not let you wear any clothes while they take you away.
So you will be ashamed.
The people who live in Zaanan will be afraid to leave their city.
The people at Beth-Ezel will cry because nobody comes to help them.
12 The people at Maroth are in pain while they wait.
They were waiting and hoping for something good.
But the Lord sent only something bad.
He brought trouble even to the gates of Jerusalem.
13 You people who live in Lachish, get your chariots and horses ready to go!
You were the first people in Judah to do what is wrong.
You are exactly like Israel's people, because, like them, you refused to obey God.
14 You will need to give gifts to the people in Moresheth Gath,
because they must go away.
The houses in Akzib town will disappoint the kings of Israel.[e]
15 People in Mareshah, I (God) will bring an army against you,
to fight your town. And it will win.
And Israel's leaders will need to hide at Adullam.[f]
16 People in Judah, cut off all your hair.[g]
Make yourselves bald like vultures,[h]
because you will be very sad.
Your enemies will take your children away.
They will take your children, whom you love so much, away to another country!
God says that bad things will happen to the bad people
2 Micah continues:
People who prepare to do bad things should be afraid.
God will do bad things to them!
While they lie in bed, they think about bad things to do.
Then, when the morning comes, they do those bad things.
They have the authority to do whatever they want to do.
2 When they want fields, they take them from other people.
When they want houses, they take them.
These cruel people take other people's homes and fields;
then those people's families have nothing.
3 So the Lord says this to them:
‘I am against you.
You cannot save yourselves.
I will prepare trouble for you.
Then you will stop thinking that you are so very clever and important.
It will be a time of much trouble for you.
4 At that time, your enemies will laugh at you.
They will sing this sad song against you:
“God has completely destroyed us!
We no longer have any fields, because God has taken them away from us.
He has given them to our enemies, who have turned away from what is right.”
5 So, when the Lord's people measure the land again to give fields to everyone,
you will get none.[i]
You will have nobody to speak on your behalf.’
False prophets
6 The people say to me, ‘Do not prophesy against us![j]
Do not say that we will have trouble.
God will not make us ashamed!’
7 You should not talk like that, you who are descendants of Jacob.
Do you think that the Lord's Spirit will always be patient with you?
If you agree to do what is right, then you will accept that my message is good.
8 The Lord says:
‘You have become like enemies among my people.
You rob people of their coats when they pass by.
Even men who thought that they were safe now.
You even rob men who are returning home from war.
9 You rob the women among my people too.
You take away their happy homes.
So you take away what I want their children to enjoy.
10 Get up and go away!
You cannot remain in this place because you have made it bad.
It is so bad that it will completely destroy you.
11 When a person speaks false messages to you, then you believe them.
They might say that you would have plenty of wine and strong drink.
That is the message that you would like!’[k]
God promises to bring his people back together
12 ‘You people of Israel, I promise to bring all of you together.
I will bring back together all Israel's people who remain.
I will put all of you together like sheep in a field with a wall round it.
You will be like a field full of sheep.
There will be a loud noise because there will be so many of you.
13 The person who breaks open the way will go in front of you.
Then you will go out through the gate.
I am the Lord, your king, and I will lead you out.’
Micah speaks against the bad leaders of Israel
3 Then I spoke to the leaders:
Listen to me, I said.
You are the leaders of Jacob's people,
you are the rulers of Israel.
You ought to know what is right or wrong.
2 But you hate what is good.
And you love what is bad.
You would like to tear the skin off my people,
and pull the meat from their bones.
3 You look at my people and you are like butchers.
They strip the skin off an animal and they break its bones.
Then they cut the meat into pieces and they cook it in a pot.
They are happy when they eat the meat.
4 One day you will shout to the Lord for help,
but he will not answer you.
Instead, God will turn away from you at that time,
because you have done those bad things.
5 The Lord says this: ‘It will be very bad for the prophets who tell false messages. They lead my people the wrong way with false promises. If people give food to them, then they are happy. So they promise that there will be no war. But, if people do not feed them, they become angry. They promise that war will come.
6 Because of that, it will become like night for you.
I will not show you my messages.
You will no longer see what will happen in future times.
The sun will go down over you prophets,
and the day will become dark for you.
7 Then you prophets will be ashamed.
You who tell what will happen in future times will be confused.
You will hide your faces in shame because you have no message from me.’
8 But the Spirit of the Lord fills me, to make me powerful.
He helps me to know what is right and fair.
He makes me brave so that I can speak to you, Jacob's people.
I can tell you what you have done wrong.
You are Israel's people,
but you have not obeyed God.[l]
9 So listen to this, you leaders of Jacob's people.
You are Israel's rulers.
But you never do what is right and fair.
You take what is good.
And you make it seem bad.
10 You rule Zion city, which is Jerusalem.
But you are cruel, and you kill honest people.[m]
11 You are the city's rulers, but you accept bribes.
Then you do not judge people in a fair way.
You priests teach people only if they pay you.[n]
You prophets speak about what will happen in future times.
But you only speak if you receive money.
But you still say that you trust the Lord.
You say, ‘The Lord is with us, so nothing bad will happen to us.’
12 Because of how you live, Zion will be like a field that a farmer has dug.
Jerusalem will become a heap of stones.
Trees will cover the hill where the temple is now.[o]
God's two servants
11 Someone gave me a stick, like the sticks that people use to measure things. He told me, ‘Go and measure the size of the temple and the altar. Also count the number of people who worship God there. 2 But do not measure the yard that is outside God's house. Do not measure it, because God has given that yard to Gentiles who do not believe in him. They will stamp all over God's own city for 42 months and they will destroy it.
3 I will give authority to my two servants who speak my message clearly. They will tell people my messages for 1,260 days. They will wear rough clothes made from goats' hair.’[a]
4 These servants are the two olive trees and the two lampstands.[b] They stand in front of God who is the Lord of the earth. 5 If anyone tries to hurt them, fire comes out of the servants' mouths. This fire destroys their enemies. Anyone who wants to hurt the two servants must die in this way. 6 These servants of God have authority to shut up the sky. Then there will be no rain during the time that they tell their messages from God. They also have authority to cause the water on earth to become blood. They can cause many different kinds of trouble to happen on the earth. They can do this as often as they want to.
7 When these two servants of God have finished speaking God's messages, a wild animal will attack them. This is the animal that lives in the deep hole.[c] It will come up out of the hole. It will be stronger than the two servants and it will kill them. 8 Their dead bodies will lie in the street of the great city where people killed their Lord on a cross.[d] This city should be called Sodom or Egypt, because it is as bad as those places.[e]
9 People from everywhere in the world will look at the servants' dead bodies for three and a half days. Those are people from every nation, from every tribe and from every language. They will not agree to bury the bodies. 10 The people who live on the earth will be very happy because the two servants of God are now dead. They will send gifts to each other because they are so happy. These two prophets of God had caused bad trouble for them, but now they have died.
11 But after three and a half days, God breathed life into those dead bodies. They stood up. The people who saw them were very afraid. 12 Then God's two servants heard a loud voice that came from heaven. The voice said, ‘Come up here.’ They went up to heaven in a cloud, while their enemies watched them.[f]
13 At the same time the ground shook with a strong earthquake. One in every ten buildings in the city fell down. 7,000 people died because of the earthquake. The people who were still alive became very afraid. They praised the God of heaven and said that he is very powerful.
14 That is the second great trouble and it has now finished. But the third great trouble will come soon.
The seventh trumpet
15 The seventh angel made a sound with his trumpet. Then there was the sound of loud voices in heaven. They shouted:
‘Our Lord God and his Messiah now have all authority!
The whole world has become their kingdom.
God will rule as King for ever!’
16 The 24 leaders were sitting on their thrones in front of God. Now they threw themselves down on their faces and they worshipped God. 17 They said:
‘We thank you, Lord God, because you have all authority!
You are alive now and you have always been alive.
You have great power and now you have begun to rule the whole world!
18 The nations of the world were very angry.
But now it is time for you to be angry with them.
Now you will judge all the people who have died.
You will give good things to your servants, the prophets,
and to all your people.
You will bless everyone who respects and obeys you,
whether they are important people or not.
But you will destroy all those people who destroy the earth.
The time has now come for all this to happen.’
19 Then the door of the temple in heaven became open. Inside it, I saw God's Covenant Box.[g] There was a great storm with bright lightning and the loud noise of thunder. There was an earthquake and strong rain with stones of ice fell from the sky.
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