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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadGreater Men and Women of the Bible by James Hastings: 458. Micah
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Literature
Batten, L. W., The Hebrew Prophet (1905), 210.
Bowne, B. P., The Essence of Religion (1911), 73.
Douglas, G. C. M., The Six Intermediate Minor Prophets, 44.
Driver, S. R., Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament (1913), 325.
Duhm, B., The Twelve Prophets (1912), 33, 117.
Elmslie, W. G., in Book by Book (1892), 291.
Farrar, F. W., The Minor Prophets (Men of the Bible), 124.
Findlay, G. G., The Books of the Prophets, i. (1900) 245.
Gregg, J., Sermons Preached in Trinity Church, Dublin, ii. (1885) 196.
Horton, R. F., The Hidden God (1905), 213.
Jordan, W. G., Prophetic Ideas and Ideals (1902), 43.
Jordan, W. G., The Song and the Soil (1912), 18.
Kirkpatrick, A. F., The Doctrine of the Prophets (1892), 201.
Maclaren, A., Expositions: Ezekiel to Malachi (1908), 197.
Maclean, J. K., Dr. Pierson and his Message, 123.
McWilliam, T., Speakers for God (1902), 49.
Margolis, M. L., Micah (1908).
Neale, J. M., Sermons on Passages from the Prophets, ii. 98.
Orelli, C. von, The Twelve Minor Prophets (1893), 185.
Sanders, F. K., and Kent, C. F., The Messages of the Earlier Prophets (1899), 111.
Smith, G. A., The Book of the Twelve Prophets (Expositor's Bible), i. (1896) 355.
Smith, J. M. P., Micah (International Critical Commentary) (1912), 5.
Smith, W. R., The Prophets of Israel (1882), 279.
Todd, J. C., Politics and Religion in Ancient Israel (1904), 157.
Wiles, J. P., Half-Hours with the Minor Prophets (1908), 80.
Woods, F. H., and Powell, F. E., The Hebrew Prophets, i. (1909) 165.
Christian World Pulpit, lxiv. (1903) 385 (J. H. Jowett); lxxxi. (1912) 346 (H. Bickley); lxxxii. (1912) 344 (J. G. Simpson); lxxxiv. (1913) 129 (H. H. Henson).
Homiletic Review, xlviii. (1904) 309 (J. H. Jowett).
1. The Book of Micah lies sixth of the Twelve Prophets in the Hebrew Canon, but in the order of the Septuagint third, following Amos and Hosea. The latter arrangement was doubtless directed by the size of the respective books; in the case of Micah it has coincided with the prophet's proper chronological position. Though his exact date is not certain, he seems to have been the youngest of a remarkable group of four, Amos and Hosea being his two immediate predecessors in the Northern Kingdom, and Isaiah his great contemporary in Judah.
While Isaiah's home was the capital, Micah was a native of a small town in the maritime plain, Moresheth, a dependency of Gath. The difference of position and surroundings is marked in the writings of the two prophets. Isaiah writes as one acquainted with the society and manners of the capital; Micah speaks as a “man of the people,” who sympathized with the peasantry in their sufferings; and he attacks, not indeed with greater boldness than Isaiah, but with greater directness and in more scathing terms, the wrongs to which they were exposed at the hands of the nobles and rich proprietors of Judah. Further, while Isaiah evinces a keen interest in the political movements of the time, Micah appears almost exclusively as an ethical and religious teacher; he mentions, indeed, the Assyrians, but as a mere foe, not as a power which might tempt his countrymen to embark upon a perilous political enterprise, and he raises no warning voice against the danger to Judah of Egyptian influence.
In Micah, therefore, we get a picture of the period supplementing that given by Isaiah, viewed from the standpoint not so much of the statesman in the capital as of the peasant in the village. Unlike Isaiah, too, who promised inviolable security to Zion, he foretold the destruction of Jerusalem, and so anticipated Jeremiah by a century. It is probable that the religious reformation in Hezekiah's reign was largely due to the preaching of that mighty prophet who wrought a repentance greater than his great contemporary Isaiah.
2. The Book of Micah presents serious critical difficulties to the student. The matter is not helped by the great divergence of opinion of the best scholars. In the absence of definite data it is impossible to reach a conclusion that would gain general acceptance, but we may here make a few broad statements.
All critics are practically agreed as to the presence of interpolations in the text, as well as to the occurrence of certain verses of the prophet out of their proper order. This indeed must be obvious to every careful reader as he notes the somewhat frequent break in the logical sequence, especially of Mic_4:1-13 and Mic_5:1-15. All critics, too, admit the authenticity of chaps. 1-3, with the possible exception of Mic_2:12-13; while a majority hold that Mic_6:1-16 and Mic_7:1-20, whether by Micah or not, must be assigned to the reign of Manasseh. On the authenticity of Mic_4:1-13 and Mic_5:1-15 -minus interpolations-and of Mic_6:1-16 and Mic_7:1-20 opinion is divided, but we ought not to overlook the remarkable fact that those who have recently written the fullest monographs on Micah incline to believe in the genuineness of the book as a whole. While it is not likely that such different messages as those of chaps. 1-3 and chaps. 4-5 would be uttered in direct succession, it is wholly probable that they would spring from the varied prospect of two distinct periods of the prophet's life. When the student calls to mind the long period of years during which we know that Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Micah were active, and notes the compact report of the prophetic addresses of all those years, he is forced to conclude that the writings to which we have access are but a representative digest of the actual utterances. The words were probably not taken down on the spot as spoken, but reproduced from memory either by the prophet himself or by a faithful disciple. The writing is an accurate reproduction of the force and tenor of the original saying, but not necessarily a word-for-word repetition of it. What Jeremiah did, as related in the thirty-sixth chapter of the Book of Jeremiah, throws much light upon this question. He was told to write down upon a roll “all the words that I have spoken unto thee against Israel, and against Judah, and against all the nations, from the day I spake unto thee, from the days of Josiah, even unto this day”; that is, for twenty-three years. In the present Book of Jeremiah that roll would be represented by about a dozen chapters, which in turn record the sermons of twice as many years. Manifestly, one discourse will often sum up the distinctive ideas of a whole season of active preaching.
3. The Book of Micah has been described as uniting the pessimism of Amos with the Messianic optimism of the second Zechariah. Certainly no prophet proclaimed the Messianic hope more distinctly or in more glowing language. It is not very easy to do justice to his literary qualities. We miss perhaps the majestic dignity of Isaiah, the dramatic power of the great prophet of the Exile, the sympathetic wailing of Jeremiah, the stern passion of Amos, and the tenderness of Hosea; and yet, supposing the book is, on the whole, the work of one prophet, he has something of all these. The most striking traits, perhaps, are moral earnestness and a patriotic interest in his people. His ideas, bold and lofty, are coloured like those of Amos with rich imagery drawn from rural life. In the solemn colloquy of Mic_6:1-8 we have one of the most beautiful and tender passages in the whole of Old Testament literature.
The book falls naturally into three parts, the existence of which has long been recognized. They are differentiated from each other by their contents, tone, and point of view, and to some extent by their poetic form. Chaps. 1-3 contain almost exclusively denunciations of sin and proclamations of approaching punishment; chaps. 4 and 5 are devoted almost as exclusively to words of hope and cheer; while chaps. 6 and 7 combine these two elements.