 Micah in his days Will General Assembly Bible study be politics as usual? By John H. Adams News Analysis The Layman Volume 41, Number 3 Posted May 2008 As is its custom, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) has lifted a verse from the Bible to be its theme. That verse and its application will be part of a week-long Bible study for the commissioners.
Imagine how it might be used at committee meetings and General Assembly business sessions when it comes to such thorny issues as ordaining men and women who claim a right to be sexually active outside of marriage, the compatibility of Christianity and Islam and peace and justice in Palestine. Twisting Scripture is a frequent ploy of General Assembly planners as they hunker down on their current course toward extinction. In 2001, for example, the teacher of the official Bible study on Mark 1:40-45 changed the Reformed understanding of human salvation from election by a loving God to the amount of effort individuals expend in loving others. The 2003 Bible study was based on Isaiah 56, with “A House of Prayer for All People” being the theme. The teacher’s exposition strained credibility by suggesting the passage challenged God’s law, allowed illegal immigrants and supported the ordination of homosexuals. Expect similar misapplications from Micah 6:8. But the Prophet Micah is not so easily dismissed as progressive and fashionable. Above all, Micah is a painful, broken-hearted revelation of God’s wrath because His chosen people had violated His covenant of grace. Because they’ve broken God’s covenant, they no longer act justly (according to the Lord’s justice requirements and not their own sentiments), loved mercy (as beneficiaries themselves of His mercy) and walked humbly (in obedience to the Word of God and not in disputing His truth). Micah was a southern Jew, from a rural area of Judah. As the late Dr. Bernard Boyd, a Presbyterian minister and a Bible scholar who taught at Davidson College and the University of North Carolina, declared, Micah was a country boy from Rt. 5, Moresheth. Micah’s preaching overlapped three kings of Judah – Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah. As a rural prophet, Micah was a contrast to his contemporary, Isaiah, a prophet who had the ear of kings and leaders. Compare Micah 4:1-5 and Isaiah 2:1- 4 and you notice an almost verbatim similarity between the patrician and the country boy. Some scholars say that one of the two or an editor plagiarized the other. In his lectures on Micah, John Calvin has a better explanation. He marvels – as should we – that Yahweh gives contemporary prophets an equal share of the great message of hope for the day when, “They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.” But Micah doesn’t begin with hope. He begins with judgment and introduces us to a theology that is oft-repressed today – God’s wrath. For Micah, Yahweh is mountain-melting, valley-splitting, idol-busting, temple-cleansing angry because the church, as Calvin called Israel, had become secularized, paganized and profiteering. The sins of the people were especially prevalent in the centers of their religious life – in Samaria, the capital of the 10 northern tribes, known as Israel or Jacob; and in Jerusalem, the capital of Judah’s southern tribes. Samaria’s wound is “incurable” – thus, the fortressed city on a 300-foot hill would be ground to rubble. Exactly as prophesied, the Assyrians, under Tiglath Pilesar, destroyed Samaria in 721. The wound is also contagious – spreading throughout Judah and infecting Jerusalem, where the Temple stood and its rituals were intended to remind the church of God’s deliverance and redemption. With greater detail, Micah speaks of Jerusalem’s evil. A number of issues are raised in Yahweh’s controversy with Judah: Coveting: “Woe to those who plan iniquity, to those who plot evil on their beds! At morning’s light they carry it out because it is in their power to do it. They covet fields and seize them, and houses, and take them. They defraud a man of his home, a fellowman of his inheritance.’ Therefore, the Lord says: ‘I am planning disaster against this people, from which you cannot save yourselves. You will no longer walk proudly, for it will be a time of calamity. In that day men will ridicule you; they will taunt you with this mournful song: ‘We are utterly ruined; my people’s possession is divided up. He takes it from me! He assigns our fields to traitors.’” Micah 2:1-4. Rejecting the Word of God: “Do not prophesy,” their prophets say. “Do not prophesy about these things; disgrace will not overtake us.” Micah 2:6. “If a liar and deceiver comes and says, ‘I will prophesy for you plenty of wine and beer,’ he would be just the prophet for this people!” Micah 2:11 Sins of the leaders: “Her leaders judge for a bribe, her priests teach for a price, and her prophets tell fortunes for money. Yet they lean upon the Lord and say, Is not the Lord among us?” Micah 3:11 Witchcraft, idolatry and the occult: “I will destroy your witchcraft and you will no longer cast spells. I will destroy your carved images and your sacred stones from among you; you will no longer bow down to the work of your hands. I will uproot from among you your Asherah poles and demolish your cities.” Micah 5:12-14. Families in crisis: “For a son dishonors his father, a daughter rises up against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law – a man’s enemies are the members of his own household.” Micah 7:6. Religious pluralism: “You have observed the statutes of Omri and all the practices of Ahab’s house, and you have followed their traditions. Therefore I will give you over to ruin and your people to derision; you will bear the scorn of the nations.” Micah 7:6. [Omri and Ahab were two of the worst kings in Israel’s history. They instituted and invested in “high places” where pagan cults were exalted.] Micah’s prophecies were aimed at the leaders of the two nations, but he made it clear that few were without blame. While Israel’s lot would be the destruction of Samaria and the assimilation of the Israelites with the Assyrians, Judah’s penalty would be the destruction of the Temple and the exile to Babylon. Until the Holocaust, these were the darkest times in Jewish history. But Micah is not a prophet without hope. God even grants him a glimpse of the new covenant in Jesus Christ: “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times.’” (Micah 5:2) For Micah, hope would be born in Bethlehem. For Isaiah, hope would born of a virgin, Immanuel [God with us], a wonderful counselor, Mighty God … yet wounded for our transgressions. (Isaiah 7:14, 53:5) John H. Adams retired in 2006 as the editor of The Layman. |
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