Country boys often lose perspective in the big city. They gawk at the tall buildings, the fancy clothes, and the showy symbols of power. Micah was a country boy from Moresheth, a small village in the no-man's land southwest of Jerusalem. While his contemporary, Isaiah, moved in and out of the king's palace, Micah shows no sign of traveling in such circles.
Yet this country boy kept his sense of perspective. The blood and violence of his day did not overwhelm him, nor was he intimidated by powerful and wealthy people. He spoke like a person who had seen the world through God's eyes.
Micah lived in one of the darkest times in Israel's history, a time of brutal warfare. The country had long been split into North and South. Micah saw war break out between these sides, with 120,000 deaths on the Southern side alone (2 Chronicles 28:6). Then Assyria, the brutal chief power of the day, smashed the Northern Kingdom after a three-year siege of its capital, Samaria. Only a miracle kept those same Assyrian armies out of Jerusalem (2 Chronicles 32). But for how long would the South remain free?
The Sin of the South
Micah had no doubt how to interpret these chaotic events. God had punished the Northern nation of Israel for sins summarized in 2 Kings 17:16-17: idolatry, Baal worship, child sacrifice, magic and sorcery. Now these same activities were creeping south into Judah - so much so that Micah referred in disgust to Jerusalem as a "high place," |
