Micah

Micah (Hebrew Mikah, a shortened form of Micaiah, "Who is like Yah?") is a name borne by several Old Testament figures. By far the most important is Micah of Moresheth, the sixth of the Minor Prophets, a man of the Judean lowlands (Moresheth-gath) who prophesied under Kings Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, roughly 750–700 BC (Micah 1:1). A contemporary of Isaiah in Jerusalem and of Amos and Hosea in the north, he spoke God's word against both capitals — Samaria and Jerusalem — as judgment loomed from Assyria. His message and book are treated more fully under Micah, Book of.

Micah was a prophet of the common people, denouncing the powerful who "covet fields and seize them," the rulers who "hate the good and love the evil," the priests who teach for hire, and the prophets who cry "Peace" while taking bribes (Micah 2:1–2; Micah 3:9–12). So bold was his warning that Zion would be "plowed as a field" and the temple mount become a wooded height that, a century later, the elders cited his words to defend Jeremiah from a death sentence — proof that Hezekiah had heeded the prophet and the LORD relented (Jeremiah 26:18–19). Yet alongside judgment Micah held out radiant hope: the vision, shared with Isaiah, of the nations streaming to the LORD's mountain and beating swords into plowshares (Micah 4:1–3); the great promise that from little Bethlehem Ephrathah would come forth the everlasting ruler of Israel (Micah 5:2); and the famous distillation of true religion, "to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God" (Micah 6:8). His book closes by turning his own name into worship: "Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity... you will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea" (Micah 7:18–19).

A quite different Micah of Ephraim appears in the era of the judges (Judges 17:1). This man of the hill country took silver from his mother, who had dedicated it to the LORD, and made of it household idols, setting up a private shrine and ordaining first his own son and then a wandering Levite as priest. When the migrating tribe of Dan passed through, they carried off both the idols and the Levite to found their own illicit sanctuary at Dan (Judges 18:30–31). The whole sorry episode illustrates the religious anarchy of the age, when "everyone did what was right in his own eyes" (Judges 17:6).

Other minor figures bear the name, including a descendant of King Saul through Jonathan and Mephibosheth (1 Chronicles 8:34–35). The name's irony is sharpest in the prophet: the man whose name asks "Who is like God?" devoted his ministry to proclaiming the incomparable God who judges injustice, raises up a shepherd-king from Bethlehem, and delights to pardon — pointing forward, in the ruler he foretold, to Jesus Christ.