When you see a mountain range from a distance, it's very difficult to tell which peak is highest. Often a smaller mountain looms largest simply because it is much closer to you than another, higher peak.
Micah, and many of the other Old Testament prophets, saw the future like that. They made little distinction between events coming next week and events that would come a thousand years later. They seemed to see the future with limited "depth perception."
In the space of one verse, for instance, Micah shifts from a prediction (3:12) that Jerusalem will become a mound of rubble - a prophecy fulfilled about 100 years later - to a prophecy (4:1) that the same mountain will be lifted up "chief among the mountains" - something that has yet to be fulfilled today. In 5:2 comes a prediction that Matthew 2:6 records as fulfilled by Jesus' birth in Bethlehem 700 years later.
In Micah, the thousands of years between these fulfillments are unclear. They all seem to be about the same distance into the future. Almost certainly, Micah himself saw them unclearly. First Peter 1:10-11 comments that "the prophets . . . searched intently and with the greatest care, trying to find out the time and circumstances to which the Spirit of Christ in them was pointing when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow. It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves but you . . . . " |