The Spirit of Micah
I was once asked by a professor at Oriel college what the book of Micah was about. His thinking was that if this young man was named Micah, he surely understood what this semi-obscure book of the Bible was about.
I was a deer caught in the headlights. I had read the book of Micah a couple of times, but I had no idea what the book was about in spite of having set out to try an piece an answer together for this.
I stumbled through an answer like, “Micah is about not faking your faith.” To which he replied, “Oh, that’s what every book in the Bible is about.” Also true, but I had failed to find the distinct message of Micah.
Usually when someone is asked what any book is about they go in one of two directions: either they try to remember a single passage or phrase and generalize around it or they pick a trendy cliches and somehow glom it onto the book.
This latter approach often turns out to be a politically correct platitude or -worse yet- a thinly veiled maneuver to push a political cause, which always seems to work as well as all the times people tried to co-opt Jesus into political rule at the expense of making him the ruler of their own life.
Micah is not a book about saying no to fear. It is not a book about better communication. Micah isn’t a book about being less selfish.
In some ways, finding the spirit of a book is a lot like finding the spirit of a person. You can’t find the answer in a straightforward way. Like a parable, the identity of a person is often how they respond to things or between the lines of their words and actions.
The purpose in a man’s heart is like deep water,
but a man of understanding will draw it out.
Proverbs 20:5 ESV
Years later, I ran into an older man who was headed to an Easter service who was excited to tell me about his Bible study. When I asked him what they were studying he mentioned he had loved reading through Micah.
Yes, I asked him what he thought the theme of the book was.
Although he didn’t seem to describe the book as a whole to me (he said it was ‘God does whatever He wants’ something that was probably in there but I’m not sure how it describes the book as a whole), I was taken by his enthusiasm about the book and what he got out of it and looked at it again to find the spirit of this book.
The verses everyone remembers about Micah are the prophecy about Bethlehem and the one that summarizes the three things God wants. Do these words summarize it as a complete expression of something?
The book has an unmistakably confrontational tone. Micah was writing to the people in Judah who had not abandoned God in all ways, but were outwardly holding on to some of the symbols and ceremonial aspects of their faith while not really living it out. Micah warns that the voice of the prophets is about to go dark, that God is descending to confront the people with His rod.
And I said:
Hear, you heads of Jacob
and rulers of the house of Israel!
Is it not for you to know justice? -
you who hate the good and love the evil,
who tear the skin from off my people
and their flesh from off their bones,
Micah 3:1 ESV
Several of the prophets in the Old Testament wrote with a confrontational tone, but after looking at Micah again, I think what Micah is distinctively confronting is the corruption of God’s people. You see extended indictments against them in chapters 3 and 6.
In addition to confronting the corrupt rulers, he also confronts the corruption of the prophets:
Thus says the Lord concerning the prophets
who lead my people astray,
who cry “Peace”
when they have something to eat,
but declare war against him
who puts nothing into their mouths.
Micah 3:5 ESV
Part of the confrontational tone of Micah is the good things God wants to do with them. He is planning to do amazing, nice things for them: they will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. The lion will dwell with the sheep. These things weigh heavily on the corrupt mind that has lost its earlier ideals.
In that day, declares the Lord,
I will assemble the lame
and gather those who have been driven away
and those whom I have afflicted;
Micah 4:6 ESV
The mental image I get of the book of Micah is like a spiritual version of Jim Gordon, the Gotham commissioner who despised the corruption of his city and pursued justice starting from his own life, then from within the police department, and then across the city.
Micah confronts the corruption of the people in Judah, but more specifically the corruption inside individuals: in each person’s thoughts, in each person’s ways, and in each person’s heart.
Put no trust in a neighbor;
have no confidence in a friend;
guard
the doors of your mouth
from her who lies in your arms;
the son treats the father with contempt,
the daughter rises up against her mother,
the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law;
a man’s enemies are the men of his own house.
But as for me, I will look to the Lord;
I will wait for the God of my salvation;
my God will hear me.
Micah 7:5–7 ESV
Micah is using his own example to call people to move from the half-baked standards people have in leaguing together with each other to having a direct, personal relationship with God, to which nothing can compare.
Instead of having alliances among men, Micah wants people to put their trust in the Lord. And this really ties into the identity of the man as well as the book. His name literally means:
Who is like Yahweh?
As long as the sun rises over the earth and even into eternity, people will discover new aspects of this man and his unique message, but as a person sharing his name and wanting to understand how Micah found his identity, the message I find in Micah is one of driving the corruption and fake religion out of your life and replacing it with the direct presence of God and his holiness in all of a person’s ways.
But don’t just take it from a guy just because his name is Micah. Check out the book and know for yourself the Spirit who wrote the book.
Check out my book Mere Devotion available here.
Many thanks to Andrew McMillan for his photograph:
Andrew Mcmillan / CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)
As well as this photo by Pixabay. And this photo by Rosemary Ketchum.
