This region and its significance in the training of our prophet are thus beautifully described by GASm.: "It is the opposite exposure from the wilderness of Tekoa, some seventeen miles away across the watershed. As the home of Amos is bare and desert, so the home of Micah is fair and fertile. The irregular chalk hills are separated by broad glens, in which the soil is alluvial and red, with room for cornfields on either side of the perennial or almost perennial streams. The olive groves on the braes are finer than either those of the plain below or of the Judean table-land above. There is herbage for cattle. Bees murmur everywhere, larks are singing, and although to-day you may wander in the maze of the hills for hours without meeting a man or seeing a house, you are never out of sight of the traces of ancient habitation, and seldom beyond sound of the human voice-shepherds and ploughmen calling to their flocks and to each other across the glens. There are none of the conditions or the occasions of a large town. But, like the south of England, the country is one of villages and homesteads breeding good yeomen-men satisfied and in love with their soil, yet borderers with a far outlook and a keen vigilance and sensibility. The Shephelah is sufficiently detached from the capital and body of the land to beget in her sons an independence of mind and feeling, but so much upon the edge of the open world as to endue them at the same time with that sense of the responsibilities of warfare, which the national statesmen, aloof and at ease in Zion, could not possibly have shared."

3. His Character.

A man of the countryside, like Amos, Micah was gifted with clearness of vision and time for thought. The simplicity and seclusion of his rustic life were conducive to "plain living and high thinking." He was not misled by false standards of value to place too high an estimate upon those things which perish with the using. He had Amos's passion for justice and Hosea's heart of love. Knowing his fellow-countrymen intimately, and sympathising profoundly with their sufferings and wrongs, his spirit burned with indignation as he beheld the injustice and tyranny of their rich oppressors. He was pre-eminently the prophet of the poor. He was absolutely fearless as their champion. He would denounce wickedness in high places even though it cost him his life. The fearlessness and force of his character and message deeply impressed his contemporaries, so that even a century later his example was cited as establishing a precedent for Jeremiah's freedom of speech

(Je. 2618). A man of this type must necessarily go his own way; he cannot slavishly follow where others lead. Breaking away from the prophets of the day who promise only blessings from Yahweh, he dares to "declare to Jacob his transgression and to Israel his sin," and to point out the inevitable connection between sin and punishment. To the citizens of Jerusalem, proud of their capital and blindly confident of Yahweh's protection, he unflinchingly announces the overthrow of their city. Completely dominated by a vivid consciousness of God and a fervid devotion to the highest interests of his country, he goes forth to his task unshrinking and invincible. To this man of keen perception and sensitive soul, the voice of duty was the voice of God. As with Amos and Hosea, neither angel nor vision was necessary to arouse in him the prophetic spirit; he found his divine call in the cry of human need.

83. THE TIMES OF MICAH.

I. The Date of His Prophecies.

The superscription of the book places Micah "in the days of Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah." This would make him a younger contemporary of both Hosea and Isaiah. But there is good reason to believe that the superscriptions of all three of these books, in their present form at least, are due to the hand of an editor. The superscription of Micah is supported in part by Je. 2618, which declares, "Micah the Morashtite was prophesying in the days of Hezekiah, king of Judah." This agrees admirably with the content of some of his utterances, e. g., 110-16 which seems to sketch the course of Sennacherib's army. But the question arises whether or not Micah prophesied in the reigns of Jotham and Ahaz. His total silence concerning the Syro-Ephraimitish war, the appeal of Ahaz to Assyria and the subsequent deportation of the inhabitants of "all the land of Naphtali" to Assyria (2 K. 1529), makes it improbable that he prophesied contemporaneously with these events of such momentous interest to both kingdoms. This confines his prophetic activity to the period following 734 B.C., i. e., the reigns of Ahaz

and Hezekiah. His first prophecy (129) concerns itself with the approaching destruction of Samaria, with which is coupled imminent danger to Jerusalem. There is no evidence in either Assyrian or biblical records that Jerusalem and Judah were jeopardised in 721 B.C., when Sargon overthrew Samaria. Nor does Isaiah seem to have anticipated any immediate danger to Judah in connection with that event. Indeed, Judah was at that time paying its regular tribute to Assyria and hence safe from harm. But the mention of Samaria as still standing and doomed to destruction does not confine us to the period prior to 721 for the date of this first prophecy. As a matter of fact the kind of destruction threatened by the prophet in 1o was not experienced in 721 by Samaria. Neither the biblical (2 K. 17°) nor the Assyrian records speak of any destruction of the city (Sargon's Annals, ll. 11 ff.). Indeed, the latter distinctly says, "the city I restored and more than before I caused it to be inhabited." But Sargon's kindness was but poorly repaid, for in 720 B.C. Samaria joined a coalition of Syrian states, viz., Hamath, Arpad, Simirra and Damascus in one more effort to shake off the yoke of Assyria.† In 715, Sargon settled Arabian tribes in Samaria; the process of repopulating and thereby thoroughly subduing Samaria was continued by Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal, according to Ezra 42. 9. 10. An Assyrian governor was resident in Samaria as late as 645 B.C.§ It is, therefore, probable that Micah's prophecy was spoken after 721 B.C. and in the light of the rebellious attitude of Samaria up to and after that date. The specific occasion of the discourse may have been the conspiracy that called Sargon to Ashdod in 713-711 B.C., or perhaps better, that which

*This is practically certain in view of the fact that Ahaz paid tribute in 734 B.C., while Sargon (Prism-Fragment, ll. 29 ff.) enumerates Judah with Philistia, Edom and Moab as peoples under obligation to pay tribute who united with Ashdod in revolt in 713. The reference in Sargon's Nimrud-Inscr., 1. 8, to his subjection of Ja-u-du is best explained of the northern Ja'udi, rather than of Judah, since the statement is made in immediate connection with an account of the overthrow of Hamath and other regions in northern Syria. Were the reference to Judah, it must have been in connection with the revolt of Hanno of Gaza in 720, for the Nimrud-Inscr. belongs to the year 717 B.C. and Sargon was engaged in other parts of his empire from 719-717. But it is difficult to see why Judah only should have been selected for mention, when Gaza was also involved in the revolt and evidently played a more prominent part. C. KAT.3, pp. 67 ¡.,

271.

† Sargon's Annals, l. 25, and K. 1349, ll. 17 ff.; see AOF., I, 403, and KAT.3, 66. Annals, ll. 95 ff.

C. H. W. Johns, Assyrian Deeds and Documents, II, 137; III, 108.

resulted in the campaign of Sennacherib, 704-701 B.C. It is more than probable, in view of the previous history of Samaria, that she was involved in both attempts to throw off the yoke of Assyria. In either case, the prophet is talking of a destruction of Samaria that is in the future, which he sees to be a prelude to the overthrow of Jerusalem. This is more in consonance with the language of 11¤. than the view that the prophet looks back upon the events of 721 B.C. and makes passing allusion to them in order to give weight to his denunciation of Jerusalem.* The whole of the genuine material in chs. 1-3 belongs to one period and that of short duration; it may have been the product of a few weeks or months at a time of great crisis, such as that of Sennacherib's invasion.

2. The Background of Chs. 1-3..

The situation in Judah in the period from 715 to 701 B.C. was one of absorbing interest. The air was full of plots and counterplots. Syria was the bone of contention between Assyria and Egypt, the rivals for world-dominion. Assyria was in possession; Syria was restless under her heavy yoke; Egypt was alert to foment dissatisfaction and aid in freeing Syria from her burden, hoping thereby to supplant Assyria. Jerusalem was naturally a hotbed of intrigue. Political feeling ran high. A pro-Assyrian and a proEgyptian party fought for pre-eminence in the councils of the weak king, Hezekiah. Success attended the adherents of Egypt, and revolt against Assyria was organised in 713 and again in 705 B.C. But the result on both occasions was but to weld the bonds of Assyria more tightly upon Judah. Isaiah, resident in Jerusalem and probably related to the leading families, was deeply concerned in all this political turmoil and an active participant in much that was going on at court. Cf. e. g., Is. 201 f. 181 ff. 301. 311. 105 .. Micah, however much he may have been stirred by these events, eschews politics in his public utterance, and confines himself to distinctively religious and ethical considerations.

Micah portrays a social and economic situation in Judah very similar to that of Samaria as described by Amos in the years im

So e. g., We., and Smend, Rel.2, 237 j.

mediately preceding the overthrow of the northern kingdom. Cf. Н.АН p. ciii.

There is the same luxury and indulgence engendered by the possession of great riches. The plunder carried away by Sennacherib after the siege of Jerusalem in 701 B.C. is tabulated by him as follows (TaylorCylinder, col. 3, ll. 34-40): “Thirty talents of gold, eight hundred talents of silver, precious stones, . . . large lapis lazuli, couches of ivory, thrones of elephant skin and ivory, ivory, ushu and urkarinu woods of every kind, and his daughters, his palace-women, male and female singers, to Nineveh, my royal city, I caused to be brought after me."

...

A degenerate aristocracy, mastered by greed and fattening upon tyranny, makes life unbearable for the tiller of the soil and the wage-earner. The possession of wealth is looked upon as the summum bonum; nothing may stand in the way of its attainment. The ordinary demands of justice and righteousness are trampled underfoot. The quality of mercy is swallowed up in avarice. The custodians and administrators of law abuse their powers. Justice is for sale to the highest bidder (3"). Under due process of law widows and orphans are expelled from their ancestral homes, that a few acres may be added to the estate of the neighbouring landlord (22. 9). In the lust for wealth, the substance and sustenance of the poor are devoured, so that they are reduced to the lowest depths of misery and degradation (31). Even the sacraments and consolations of religion are on the market; priests and prophets cater to the rich and browbeat the poor (35. 11). Similar conditions are exposed in contemporary utterances of Isaiah (e. g., 116 f. 287 f. 2920 f.).

Making all necessary allowances for the prophetic point of view, it still remains true that affairs in Judah were on the down grade. Intimate contact with Assyrian and Egyptian civilisations in commerce and politics had brought in new standards of living and changed ideals. Secularisation of life was making rapid progress. Commercial ideals were supplanting those of ethical and spiritual origin. Appearances were becoming more important than realities. Character was of less repute than power. The fatal vacillation which led Judah into a practical distrust of Yahweh and made her fate the shuttlecock of conflicting political parties was