Book of Micah

For other uses of this term, see Micah.

The book of Micah belongs to the prophetic books of the Old Testament (the Bible). It was written at the end of century VIII a. C. by the prophet who bears his name. This book contains 7 chapters.

Micah lived a cruel time of war. There was a war between the Northern Kingdom and the Southern Kingdom, with 120,000 deaths in the Southern Kingdom (2 Chronicles 28: 6), not to mention the victims of the Northern Kingdom. After Assyria, a great military power of its time crushes the Northern Kingdom, only a miracle could prevent these same armies from entering Jerusalem (2 Chronicles 32).

Micah interpreted these events as God's punishment of the Northern Kingdom for sins such as: idolatry, worship of Baal, ritual sacrifices of children, magic and enchantments (2 Kings 17: 16-17). These activities were now infiltrating southward toward Judah. In such a way that Micah referred to Jerusalem as "high place," a common name given to the place of worship to pagan gods (Micah 1: 5), thus preaching that the Judgment that fell upon the Northern Kingdom would now fall upon Judah because of their disobedience to God.

However, not everything in the book of Micah is judgment and punishment. Micah sees a light in the darkness, he perceived a majestic God who rules over every event, who punished his people only to purify and restore it. He also formulated some of the most frank predictions of destruction in the Bible, and made some of the clearest predictions about Jesus, the Messiah, the Deliverer who would come to save Israel.

"Thou, my enemy, rejoice not in me: for though I fall, I will arise: though I dwell in darkness, Yahweh shall be my light." Micah 7: 8 Synopsis

Micah is above all a prophet of judgment. God appears as the universal judge. One of the greatest spiritual legacies of this work lies in his teaching on how to accept and cope with divine wrath. The wrath of God passes away, but His mercy is eternal. Even in his anger there is compassion. Moreover, only those divine attributes that constitute the foundation of his prophetic preaching are emphasized: the greatness of God, his holiness, his wrath and his great mercy. Micah, like the other prophets, abound in great moral teachings. For him, the greatest sin is moral corruption. It only attaches value to religion in so far as it is capable of producing justice in the individual and in society. In 6: 8 he sums up all the preaching content of his predecessors or contemporaries:

Above all, the book has aroused special interest in its prophecy about the origin of the Messiah, one of the most concrete in the Old Testament, and with which the book culminates its eschatological ideas: , but he who is least among the families of Judah, out of you shall come forth who shall rule in Israel. " (5: 1-5). In the New Testament the evangelists recognize in Bethlehem Ephrata the dignity of the birthplace of the Messiah. The prophecy is fulfilled in Jesus, born in Bethlehem of Judea in the time of King Herod (Mt 2: 1-6; Jn 7:42). The God of judgment is also the God of forgiveness.

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