Micah 1

¹⁸“Micah the Moreshite prophesied in the days of Hezekiah king of Judah and told all the people of Judah that this is what the Lord of Hosts says: ‘Zion will be plowed like a field, Jerusalem will become a heap of rubble, and the temple mount a wooded ridge.’

¹This is the vision concerning Judah and Jerusalem that Isaiah son of Amoz saw during the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah.

¹This is the word of the Lord that came to Hosea son of Beeri in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and of Jeroboam son of Jehoash, king of Israel.

¹These are the words of Amos, who was among the sheepherders of Tekoa—what he saw concerning Israel two years before the earthquake, in the days when Uzziah was king of Judah and Jeroboam son of Jehoash was king of Israel.

¹Jotham was twenty-five years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem sixteen years. His mother’s name was Jerushah daughter of Zadok.

²And he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, just as his father Uzziah had done. In addition, he did not enter the temple of the Lord. But the people still behaved corruptly.

¹⁰In the house of Israel I have seen a horrible thing: Ephraim practices prostitution there, and Israel is defiled.

¹¹Also for you, O Judah, a harvest is appointed, when I restore My people from captivity.

⁴The Lord is in His holy temple; the Lord is on His heavenly throne. His eyes are watching closely; they examine the sons of men.

²Listen, O heavens, and give ear, O earth, for the Lord has spoken: “I have raised children and brought them up, but they have rebelled against Me.

¹For the choirmaster. A Psalm of the sons of Korah. Hear this, all you peoples; listen, all inhabitants of the world,

²both low and high, rich and poor alike.

⁵“Then I will draw near to you for judgment. And I will be a swift witness against sorcerers and adulterers and perjurers, against oppressors of the widowed and fatherless, and against those who defraud laborers of their wages and deny justice to the foreigner but do not fear Me,” says the Lord of Hosts.

²²He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”

⁷As my life was fading away, I remembered the Lord. My prayer went up to You, to Your holy temple.

¹³For behold, He who forms the mountains, who creates the wind and reveals His thoughts to man, who turns the dawn to darkness and strides on the heights of the earth—the Lord, the God of Hosts, is His name.”

²¹For behold, the Lord is coming out of His dwelling to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity. The earth will reveal her bloodshed and will no longer conceal her slain.

¹³He made him ride on the heights of the land and fed him the produce of the field. He nourished him with honey from the rock and oil from the flinty crag,

³Our God is in heaven; He does as He pleases.

¹⁹God the Lord is my strength; He makes my feet like those of a deer; He makes me walk upon the heights! For the choirmaster. With stringed instruments.

²⁹Blessed are you, O Israel! Who is like you, a people saved by the Lord? He is the shield that protects you, the sword in which you boast. Your enemies will cower before you, and you shall trample their high places.”

⁵The mountains quake before Him, and the hills melt away; the earth trembles at His presence—the world and all its dwellers.

⁵The mountains melt like wax at the presence of the Lord, before the Lord of all the earth.

⁶He stood and measured the earth; He looked and startled the nations; the ancient mountains crumbled; the perpetual hills collapsed. His ways are everlasting.

⁴O Lord, when You went out from Seir, when You marched from the land of Edom, the earth trembled, the heavens poured out rain, and the clouds poured down water.

¹⁰The mountains saw You and quaked; torrents of water swept by. The deep roared with its voice and lifted its hands on high.

⁵The Lord God of Hosts, He who touches the earth and it melts, and all its dwellers mourn—all the land rises like the Nile, then sinks like the river of Egypt—

¹⁴Those who swear by the guilt of Samaria and say, ‘As surely as your god lives, O Dan,’ or, ‘As surely as the way of Beersheba lives’—they will fall, never to rise again.”

¹⁹Your own evil will discipline you; your own apostasies will reprimand you. Consider and realize how evil and bitter it is for you to forsake the Lord your God and to have no fear of Me,” declares the Lord God of Hosts.

¹⁵who killed both the Lord Jesus and their own prophets and drove us out as well. They are displeasing to God and hostile to all men,

¹⁶hindering us from telling the Gentiles how they may be saved. As a result, they continue to heap up their sins to full capacity; the utmost wrath has come upon them.

¹⁹Hear, O earth! I am bringing disaster on this people, the fruit of their own schemes, because they have paid no attention to My word and have rejected My instruction.

¹⁶The crown has fallen from our head. Woe to us, for we have sinned!

¹⁷Have you not brought this on yourself by forsaking the Lord your God when He led you in the way?

¹⁴I will tear down the wall you whitewashed and level it to the ground, so that its foundation is exposed. The city will fall, and you will be destroyed within it. Then you will know that I am the Lord.

¹²Therefore, because of you, Zion will be plowed like a field, Jerusalem will become a heap of rubble, and the temple mount a wooded ridge.

²⁵Have you not heard? Long ago I ordained it; in days of old I planned it. Now I have brought it to pass, that you should crush fortified cities into piles of rubble.

¹How the gold has become tarnished, the pure gold has become dull! The gems of the temple lie scattered on every street corner.

¹²The high-walled fortress will be brought down, cast to the ground, into the dust.

²⁵“Behold, I am against you, O destroying mountain, you who devastate the whole earth, declares the Lord. I will stretch out My hand against you; I will roll you over the cliffs and turn you into a charred mountain.

¹⁸You must not bring the wages of a prostitute, whether female or male, into the house of the Lord your God to fulfill any vow, because both are detestable to the Lord your God.

¹²I will destroy her vines and fig trees, which she thinks are the wages paid by her lovers. So I will make them into a thicket, and the beasts of the field will devour them.

⁶For this thing is from Israel—a craftsman made it, and it is not God. It will be broken to pieces, that calf of Samaria.

⁵The people of Samaria will fear for the calf of Beth-aven. Indeed, its people will mourn over it with its idolatrous priests—those who rejoiced in its glory—for it has been taken from them into exile.

⁶Yes, it will be carried to Assyria as tribute to the great king. Ephraim will be seized with shame; Israel will be ashamed of its wooden idols.

³All the nations have drunk the wine of the passion of her immorality. The kings of the earth were immoral with her, and the merchants of the earth have grown wealthy from the extravagance of her luxury.”

³⁰I will destroy your high places, cut down your incense altars, and heap your lifeless bodies on the lifeless remains of your idols; and My soul will despise you.

²the Lord had already spoken through Isaiah son of Amoz, saying, “Go, remove the sackcloth from your waist and the sandals from your feet.” And Isaiah did so, walking around naked and barefoot.

³Then the Lord said, “Just as My servant Isaiah has gone naked and barefoot for three years as a sign and omen against Egypt and Cush,

⁴Therefore I said, “Turn away from me, let me weep bitterly! Do not try to console me over the destruction of the daughter of my people.”

³Therefore my body is filled with anguish. Pain grips me, like the pains of a woman in labor. I am bewildered to hear, I am dismayed to see.

¹⁰I will take up a weeping and wailing for the mountains, a dirge over the wilderness pasture, for they have been scorched so no one passes through, and the lowing of cattle is not heard. Both the birds of the air and the beasts have fled; they have gone away.

¹Oh, that my head were a spring of water, and my eyes a fountain of tears! I would weep day and night over the slain daughter of my people.

¹⁹For the sound of wailing is heard from Zion: ‘How devastated we are! How great is our shame! For we have abandoned the land because our dwellings have been torn down.’”

¹¹For I am with you to save you, declares the Lord. Though I will completely destroy all the nations to which I have scattered you, I will not completely destroy you. Yet I will discipline you justly, and will by no means leave you unpunished.”

¹²For this is what the Lord says: “Your injury is incurable; your wound is grievous.

⁷the Lord will surely bring against them the mighty floodwaters of the Euphrates—the king of Assyria and all his pomp. It will overflow its channels and overrun its banks.

⁸It will pour into Judah, swirling and sweeping over it, reaching up to the neck; its spreading streams will cover your entire land, O Immanuel!

¹²For the dwellers of Maroth pined for good, but calamity came down from the Lord, even to the gate of Jerusalem.

¹After all these acts of faithfulness, Sennacherib king of Assyria came and invaded Judah. He laid siege to the fortified cities, intending to conquer them for himself.

²When Hezekiah saw that Sennacherib had come to make war against Jerusalem,

¹⁸Why is my pain unending, and my wound incurable, refusing to be healed? You have indeed become like a mirage to me—water that is not there.

⁹In the fourth year of Hezekiah’s reign, which was the seventh year of the reign of Hoshea son of Elah over Israel, Shalmaneser king of Assyria marched against Samaria and besieged it.

¹⁰And at the end of three years, the Assyrians captured it. So Samaria was captured in the sixth year of Hezekiah, which was the ninth year of Hoshea king of Israel.

²⁰Tell it not in Gath; proclaim it not in the streets of Ashkelon, lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice, and the daughters of the uncircumcised exult.

²⁶O daughter of my people, dress yourselves in sackcloth and roll in ashes. Mourn with bitter wailing, as you would for an only son, for suddenly the destroyer will come upon us.

¹⁰And when the relative who is to burn the bodies picks them up to remove them from the house, he will call to one inside, “Is anyone else with you?” “None,” that person will answer. “Silence,” the relative will retort, “for the name of the Lord must not be invoked.”

¹³Therefore, the prudent keep silent in such times, for the days are evil.

⁸And Job took a piece of broken pottery to scrape himself as he sat among the ashes.

²⁹Let him bury his face in the dust—perhaps there is still hope.

⁴so the king of Assyria will lead away the captives of Egypt and the exiles of Cush, young and old alike, naked and barefoot, with bared buttocks—to Egypt’s shame.

²²And if you ask yourself, “Why has this happened to me?” It is because of the magnitude of your iniquity that your skirts have been stripped off and your body has been exposed.

⁵“Behold, I am against you,” declares the Lord of Hosts. “I will lift your skirts over your face. I will show your nakedness to the nations and your shame to the kingdoms.

⁶‘Flee! Run for your lives! Become like a juniper in the desert.’

⁸Because of this I will lament and wail; I will walk barefoot and naked. I will howl like a jackal and mourn like an ostrich.

²Take millstones and grind flour; remove your veil; strip off your skirt, bare your thigh, and wade through the streams.

³Your nakedness will be uncovered and your shame will be exposed. I will take vengeance; I will spare no one.”

¹⁹Have You rejected Judah completely? Do You despise Zion? Why have You stricken us so that we are beyond healing? We hoped for peace, but no good has come, and for the time of healing, but there was only terror.

⁹For her wound is incurable; it has reached even Judah; it has approached the gate of my people, as far as Jerusalem itself.

⁶If a ram’s horn sounds in a city, do the people not tremble? If calamity comes to a city, has not the Lord caused it?

²⁶But when I hoped for good, evil came; when I looked for light, darkness fell.

⁷I form the light and create the darkness; I bring prosperity and create calamity. I, the Lord, do all these things.

⁹Therefore justice is far from us, and righteousness does not reach us. We hope for light, but there is darkness; for brightness, but we walk in gloom.

¹⁰Like the blind, we feel our way along the wall, groping like those without eyes. We stumble at midday as in the twilight; among the vigorous we are like the dead.

¹⁷Nevertheless, the king of Assyria sent the Tartan, the Rabsaris, and the Rabshakeh, along with a great army, from Lachish to King Hezekiah at Jerusalem. They advanced up to Jerusalem and stationed themselves by the aqueduct of the upper pool, on the road to the Launderer’s Field.

³Therefore Adoni-zedek king of Jerusalem sent word to Hoham king of Hebron, Piram king of Jarmuth, Japhia king of Lachish, and Debir king of Eglon, saying,

⁹Later, as Sennacherib king of Assyria and all his forces besieged Lachish, he sent his servants to Jerusalem with a message for King Hezekiah of Judah and all the people of Judah who were in Jerusalem:

¹⁸And Jehoram walked in the ways of the kings of Israel, just as the house of Ahab had done. For he married a daughter of Ahab and did evil in the sight of the Lord.

³³Even after these events, Jeroboam did not repent of his evil ways, but again he appointed priests for the high places from every class of people. He ordained anyone who desired to be a priest of the high places.

³⁴And this was the sin of the house of Jeroboam that led to its extermination and destruction from the face of the earth.

³Instead, he walked in the ways of the kings of Israel and even sacrificed his son in the fire, according to the abominations of the nations that the Lord had driven out before the Israelites.

⁴And he sacrificed and burned incense on the high places, on the hills, and under every green tree.

⁴⁴Keilah, Achzib, and Mareshah—nine cities, along with their villages.

⁸Ahaz also took the silver and gold found in the house of the Lord and in the treasuries of the king’s palace, and he sent it as a gift to the king of Assyria.

⁸It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in man.

⁹It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in princes.

¹In the thirty-sixth year of Asa’s reign, Baasha king of Israel went up against Judah and fortified Ramah to prevent anyone from leaving or entering the territory of Asa king of Judah.

²So Asa withdrew the silver and gold from the treasuries of the house of the Lord and the royal palace, and he sent it with this message to Ben-hadad king of Aram, who was ruling in Damascus:

³Put not your trust in princes, in mortal man, who cannot save.

⁴When his spirit departs, he returns to the ground; on that very day his plans perish.

²David also defeated the Moabites, made them lie down on the ground, and measured them off with a cord. He measured off with two lengths those to be put to death, and with one length those to be spared. So the Moabites became subject to David and brought him tribute.

⁴⁴Keilah, Achzib, and Mareshah—nine cities, along with their villages.

¹So David left Gath and took refuge in the cave of Adullam. When his brothers and the rest of his father’s household heard about it, they went down to him there.

³⁵Jarmuth, Adullam, Socoh, Azekah,

¹⁵the king of Libnah, one; the king of Adullam, one;

¹⁷The Lord will bring on you and on your people and on the house of your father a time unlike any since the day Ephraim separated from Judah—He will bring the king of Assyria.”

¹⁸On that day the Lord will whistle to the flies at the farthest streams of the Nile and to the bees in the land of Assyria.

¹Concerning the Ammonites, this is what the Lord says: “Has Israel no sons? Is he without heir? Why then has Milcom taken possession of Gad? Why have his people settled in their cities?

¹²On that day the Lord God of Hosts called for weeping and wailing, for shaven heads and the wearing of sackcloth.

²⁰Then Job stood up, tore his robe, and shaved his head. He fell to the ground and worshiped,

²⁹Cut off your hair and throw it away. Raise up a lamentation on the barren heights, for the Lord has rejected and forsaken the generation of His wrath.’

¹⁰I will turn your feasts into mourning and all your songs into lamentation. I will cause everyone to wear sackcloth and every head to be shaved. I will make it like a time of mourning for an only son, and its outcome like a bitter day.

⁶“Both great and small will die in this land. They will not be buried or mourned, nor will anyone cut himself or shave his head for them.

⁵⁶The most gentle and refined woman among you, so gentle and refined she would not venture to set the sole of her foot on the ground, will begrudge the husband she embraces and her son and daughter

⁵⁷the afterbirth that comes from between her legs and the children she bears, because she will secretly eat them for lack of anything else in the siege and distress that your enemy will inflict on you within your gates.