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also sapping the moral strength of the nation. Loyalty to the old Hebrew ideals which had obtained in dealings between man and man was crumbling rapidly away before the desire to ape the splendour of foreign courts and live the life of sensuous ease. At such a time there was dire need of the prophetic cry calling men back to God and duty.

84. THE MESSAGE OF MICAH.

The prophet Micah marks no great epoch in the history of prophecy. He is not the apostle of any new teaching; he does but reiterate the great truths proclaimed by his predecessors. But he is no mere imitator; he has forged his message in the passion of his own soul, and stamped upon it the impress of his own personality. Working amid conditions similar to those which confronted Amos, his message is necessarily also similar. But the preaching of Amos lacks the personal touch so distinctly felt in that of Micah, whose message quivers with feeling. Micah knows by experience whereof he speaks; he has been a victim of the circumstances against which he protests. Himself a peasant, he becomes the spokesman of peasants.

Micah's task was to open the eyes of the blind and to unstop the

ears of the deaf. But none are so blind as those that will not see. In spite of the preaching of Amos and Hosea, Israel persisted in cherishing an illusion. The key to the situation is furnished by Mi. 3". A wrong conception of God held sway over the minds of the people. "Yahweh is in the midst of us; therefore disaster cannot befall us." This was to look upon the relation of Yahweh to his people as necessary, and not voluntary on his part. It was to conceive of that relation, moreover, as unconditioned by any high demands. There was no essential difference between this conception of God and that common to the nations surrounding Israel. The language of 3" is, of course, not to be taken as literally exact. Israel had experienced too many chastisements at the hands of Yahweh to suppose that it possessed any guarantee against further afflictions. Yahweh might become angry at his land and vent his wrath upon his people for some real or fancied slight, even

as Chemosh executed his anger upon Moab (Mesha Inscription, 1. 5). But he would not definitely abandon his people to destruction; he could not remain obdurate and insensible to holocausts of oxen and rivers of oil. On his great day, the day of Yahweh, he would repent himself of his anger and manifest himself on behalf of his people in destructive might against their foes and his. Cf. Am. 518. For people so minded, sacrifice and offering were the substance of religion. Let the ritual be exact and gorgeous and the sacrificial gifts numerous and costly and Yahweh could desire little more. Cf. Is. 1.

Against this whole attitude toward God, the prophets of the eighth century set themselves resolutely. Micah joined with AmosHosea and Isaiah in an effort to purify religion by elevating the popular conception of God. This he does by emphasising the true nature of Yahweh's demands upon his people. He seeks justice and mercy, not oxen and sheep. He desires right character rather than right ritual. Herein lies Micah's whole interest; he plays the changes upon this single string. He does not suppose himself to be announcing anything new to the people, nor indeed was he so doing. Israel had long credited Yahweh with ethical interests. But they were given only secondary significance, whereas Micah would make them the supremely important element in the divine character in so far as it concerns men. Divine favour consequently at once ceases to be an affair of purchase at any price, and becomes a matter of striving after the attainment of divine ideals of righteousness and justice.

Micah's message naturally assumes the form of denunciation of sin and threatening of punishment. Yahweh being just and righteous requires the same qualities from his people. But they have not yielded them; hence punishment must be inflicted upon them. The sins are charged primarily against the ruling classes in Jerusalem. They have been guilty of injustice and cruelty toward the poor; they have bought and sold the rights of men; they have violated the moral law as laid down by Yahweh himself. Even the religious leaders have not escaped the general corruption. They have dared to prostitute their high calling for the sake of gain. They make a mockery of religion by allying themselves

with the rich and powerful in the oppression of the poor. They whose duty it is to expose sin cast over it the cloak of religion, and wax rich. This attitude on Micah's part toward the prophets of his day reveals the same cleavage in prophecy that had become evident in the days of his predecessor, Micaiah ben Imlah (1 K. 22), is alluded to by Amos (712-15), placed Jeremiah in peril of his life (2610 ff.) and continued to the last days of prophecy (Zc. 132-0). Micah, standing almost alone and in an unpopular cause, dared to denounce all the vested interests of his day.

Apparently, Micah entertained no hope of repentance on the part of those whom he upbraided. He sees nothing ahead of them but punishment. Samaria and Jerusalem alike are to be destroyed, and that utterly. The cities are the scene of destruction, being the home of the ruling classes. Micah is the first of the prophets to threaten Jerusalem with total destruction. A pronunciamento of this kind is indisputable evidence of the prophet's initiative and courage. That Yahweh's splendid temple, which had stood as the visible reminder of his presence since the days of Solomon, should pass into the hands of a pagan nation to be desecrated and destroyed was a statement altogether incredible to the citizens of Jerusalem, and one which only absolute and unswerving loyalty to Yahweh and his will could possibly have enabled Micah to make.

Not a word of Micah's is preserved for us concerning hopes for Israel's future. Yet that he should have had no such hopes is psychologically and religiously unintelligible. His conception of Yahweh, even though as Lord of heaven and earth and able to move the nations at his will (13. 4. 10-16), never for a moment included the possibility of Yahweh transferring his love to another nation. Were Israel as a whole to perish, Yahweh would be left without a representative among the nations of the earth. But while Micah saw the scourge of an invading army prostrate the countryside and destroy the capital, there is no evidence that he looked for the annihilation of the nation as such.* Living apart from the glamour and power of the capital, he did not identify the fate of the nation with that of Jerusalem. He may have given over

* Cf. Sm., Rel.2, 257 1.

the corrupt capital to destruction without a moment's hesitation as to Israel's future, believing it lay in the hands of the simple-minded country folk rather than with the degenerate leaders of church, state and society in Jerusalem. Furthermore, Yahweh was great enough to win glory for himself apart from the temple and the capital. He was not shut up to one way of manifesting himself among his people. He in whose presence the mountains quake and dissolve is surely able to vindicate himself in the sight of the world even though Jerusalem fall.

But

What the immediate effect of Micah's preaching was we have no means of knowing. True, Je. 2618. 19 preserves a tradition that Hezekiah's reformation was due to the influence of Micah. however true that may be, neither the record of Je. 2618. 19 nor the account of Hezekiah's reform accords closely with the contents of Micah's message as known to us. For Micah seems to have denounced the nobles and councillors of the king rather than the king himself as the face of the narrative in Jeremiah would imply; and his preaching was concerned primarily with social wrongs rather than with idolatry and cultus as in 2 K. 184.. In any case his words were cherished among the people of the land for whom he laboured and his example of sturdy independence and freedom of speech in the name of Yahweh established a precedent that was of good service to Jeremiah, the bearer of a similar message.

§ 5.

RECENT LITERATURE ON THE BOOK
OF MICAH.

For discussions of the poetical form of Micah, see § 1. Only the more important literature can be mentioned here.

I. On the Text.

K. Vollers, Das Dodeka propheton der Alexandriner, ZAW., IV (1884), 1-12. V. Ryssel, Die arabische Uebersetzung des Micha in der Pariser und Londoner Polyglotte, ZAW., V (1885), 102-38. Idem., Untersuchungen über die Textgestalt und die Echtheit des Buches Micha. Ein kritischer Kommentar zu Micha

(1887). M. Sebök, Die Syrische Uebersetzung der zwölf kleinen Propheten und ihr Verhältniss zu dem Massoretischen Text und zu den älteren Uebersetzungen namentlich den LXX und dem Targum (1887). Schuurmans Stekhoven, De Alex. Vertaling van het Dodeka propheton (1887). H. P. Smith, The Text of Micah, in Hebraica, IV (1888), 75-81. J. Taylor, The Massoretic Text and the Ancient Versions of the Book of Micah (1891). H. Graetz, Emendationes in plerosque Sacrae Scripturae Veteris Testamenti libros, etc. (1893). P. Ruben, Critical Remarks upon Some Passages of the Old Testament (1896). H. Oort, Textus Hebraici Emendationes quibus in Vetere Testamento Neerlandice usi sunt A. Kuenen, J. Hooykaas, W. H. Kosters, H. Oort; edidit H. Oort (1900). W. O. E. Oesterley, The Old Latin Texts of the Minor Prophets, in Journal of Theological Studies, V (1903), 247-53. Idem., Codex Taurinensis (1908). Agnes Smith Lewis, Codex Climaci Rescriptus (Horae Semiticae, No. VIII, 1909), pp. 2 and 22 (giving a Palestinian-Syriac Version of Mi. 41-5). B. Duhm, Anmerkungen zu den zwölf Propheten, in ZAW., XXXI (1911), 81-93.

2. On Introduction.

All the standard handbooks of Introduction to the Old Testament have sections on Micah. Special attention may be called to Driver (new ed., 1910), König (1893), Kuenen (2d ed., 1885 ƒ.), Wildeboer (3d ed., 1903), Cornill (6th ed., 1908; Engl. transl., 1907) and Budde, Geschichte der Althebräischen Litteratur (1906). Good summaries are furnished also by the encyclopedia articles, viz., those of Cheyne, in Encyclopædia Biblica; Nowack, in Hastings's Dictionary of the Bible; and Volck, in Protestantische Realencyklopädie (3d ed.). To these must be added, by the careful student, Caspari, Uber Micha den Morasthiten und seine prophetische Schrift (1852). Stade, Bemerkungen über das Buch Micha, ZAW., I (1881), 161-72. Idem., Weitere Bemerkungen zu Micha, IV-V, ibid., III (1883), 1-16. Nowack, Bemerkungen über das Buch Micha, ibid., IV (1884), 277-91. Stade, Bemerkungen, on Nowack's article, ibid., IV, 291-97.

Ryssel, op. cit.

(1887). Pont, Micha-Studiën, in Theologische Studiën, 1888, pp

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