Micah: An International Theological Commentary

Mark S. Gignilliat

• Publisher: T&T Clark
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780567688989
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

In this International Theological Commentary on the book of Micah, Mark S. Gignilliat begins by reflecting upon the nature of such commentary in relation to biblical interpretation, before situating Micah within current critical engagement with the book of the Twelve and focusing specifically on Micah's relation with Jonah and Nahum. The main body of the commentary is devoted to the interpretation and exegesis of Micah, engaging widely with theologians and biblical scholars. Gignilliat addresses literary issues involving the structure, grammar, and textual variants of given passages and - in keeping with the goals of the International Theological Commentary - provides analysis of Scripture's literal sense in relation to its theological subject matter. This volume offers scholars, clergy and lay readers alike a unique combination of critical exegesis and rigorous theological interpretation.

1

Micah 1:1—Prophetic Identities

The word of the LORD that came to Micah of Moresheth in the days of Kings Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah of Judah, which he saw concerning Samaria and Jerusalem.

On framing canonical expectations

Augustine’s encounter with Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, stands as an enduring testimony to the hermeneutical complexity one encounters when coming to terms with the prophetic literature. After Ambrose directed Augustine to read Isaiah in preparation for his baptism, he concedes, “But I did not understand the first passage of the book, and thought the whole would be equally obscure. So I put it on one side to be resumed when I had more practice in the Lord’s style of language.”¹

Augustine’s framing of the complex world of the prophetic literature rings true for most readers of the prophets. Reading and making sense of the prophets is no mean task, much less coming to terms with their peculiar mode of discourse, structure, and theological outlook. Our particular location on the far side of modernity’s critical inquiry into the biblical material only exacerbates the hermeneutical hurdles. Imagine if Augustine not only had to grapple with Isaiah but with a supposed First, Second, and Third Isaiah and the redactional layers embedded within these “discrete” literary units of the Isaianic corpus?

On the far side of modern criticism’s highlighting of the historical forces at work in Israel’s religious history that gave rise to the biblical traditions across the canon, locating texts within their proper interpretive milieu, whether historically or literarily, remains a challenge. The challenges are not equally insurmountable, thus the proverbial baby with the bathwater should not be thrown out. Nevertheless, a canonical sensitivity to these challenges takes the final form of the prophetic book as its privileged form, even where lower-critical judgments are requisite for identifying it. Thus, the superscription of Micah’s prophecy lays claim on the prophetic legacy of the eighth-century prophet as the material substance of the book to follow.

Micah’s title or superscription tells us something of his social location as a prophet, his Judahite provenance, and the preexilic setting of his vocational activities. As the past few centuries of critical scholarship have made us aware, univocal associations between prophetic titles and the book’s compositional history beg certain questions. Moreover, the application of post-Gutenberg notions of authorship onto the biblical material fails to take into account the priority of auctor (authority) accounts of authorship over against a facile linkage between prophetic titles and the sole authorship of the book by the prophet so named (a highlighting of prophetic personae). The prophetic word of the eighth-century prophet and the afterlife or Nachinterpretationen of those words in larger association with a growing corpus of prophetic literature need not be played over against each other in a providential account of canonization. The prophetic word is a “living organism” whose scope and reach remains under the oversight of the speaking God from whom the words originated. As observed in the introduction, good reasons exist for a certain amount of modesty when seeking to give a diachronic account of this textual history. Thus, overly rationalized accounts of inspiration where the details and mechanics of the compositional process are requisite need not be the cart pulling the horse. God’s prophetic word is God’s giving of his very self in acts of judging and redeeming communication. Whatever the details of the compositional process were, the claims of 2 Peter remain: “First of all, you must understand this, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation. Because no prophecy ever came by human will, but holy men and women moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God” (2 Pt. 1:20-21).

John Webster makes use of the theological concept of “sanctification” when giving attention to the creaturely character of Scripture.² Readers of Christian theology might not initially see this move as theologically fitting because sanctification resides in the dogmatic location of salvation and its effects. Webster’s theological move is a helpful one, however, in giving an ordered account of the human processes involved in the production and preservation of the Scriptural witness. God takes creaturely activities, activities taking place in the normal course of human affairs and actions, and sanctifies or sets them apart for his own unique, redemptive purposes. Far from shying away from the “creaturely” character of Scripture, Webster’s account provides a helpful means by which the creaturely character of Scripture is affirmed and embraced.

The word of Yhwh comes to Micah

The expression word of the Lord (

; dbr yhwh) signals the character of the text. Readers are put on alert as to the expectations they bring to their hearing/reading along with the proper posture for reception of the material. Micah as a prophetic book is dbr yhwh. Jeremias notes the singular dbr rather than plural dbrym indicates the unity of the prophetic message in the entirety of Micah’s corpus (Jeremias, 126). Micah’s raison d’etre as a literary entity is described by this two-word Hebrew construct, highlighted and set apart as it is by the Masoretic disjunctive accents. This collocation clarifies the nature of the forthcoming material and the kind of readership it anticipates.

Building on the assumption that prophetic superscriptions are the result of later editorial activity, many within the guild of Twelve scholarship have argued for a Book of the Four as the editorial building block of the Twelve’s diachronic history: Hosea, Amos, Micah, and Zephaniah. Jeremias identified the intertextual/redactional relationship between Hosea and Amos, suggesting these two initially formed a single compositional unit. He observes the cross-fertilization of ideas/language between these two books with Hosea’s intertextual presence at critical junctures of Amos. The latter observation led Jeremias to the conclusion of Hosea’s more formative influence on Amos and thus its signal position in the Twelve.³ Others have built on Jeremias’s work in support of the Book of the Four theory, though he is less convinced by it. Jeremias understands the Book of the Four as a possibility (möglicher) but does not believe the overlap in superscriptions is sufficient ground (zureichender Grund) for the theory.⁴

James Nogalski pioneered the notion of the Book of the Four. These four books are “Deuteronomistic” in theological flavor and share a common feature in their superscription, namely, they all begin with dbr yhwh. Nogalski also drew attention to the parallel relationship between two Northern prophets (Hosea and Amos) and two Southern prophets (Micah and Zephaniah), with Micah linking Northern and Southern outlooks in Mic 1:2-9.⁵

Various challenges to the particularities of Nogalski’s theory have arisen, though its basic contours are broadly received by scholars who see an intentional diachronic movement to a unified Book of the Twelve. Aaron Schart, in concert with Lohfink, believes the description of these exilic redactors as “deuteronomistic” is an inflated application of the term. Schart prefers to describe this corpus as a DK or D-Redaction which stands near deuteronomistic thought yet avoids a heavy hand in identifying the redactors as deuteronomistic. Schart is concerned to protect the specific language and thought of the Four.⁶ Rainer Albertz refines the redaction-critical tools brought to the Book of the Four, calling for methodological clarity and offering his own diachronic reconstruction. He too builds off the “starting point for the theory” as the shared superscription: dbr yhwh.⁷ Hosea, Micah, and Zephaniah all share the singular dbr, a “striking” phenomenon according to Albertz,⁸ while Amos begins with the plural dbrym because, on Albertz’s view, the book probably already had this superscription and the FPR (Four Prophets Redactor) could not alter it.⁹ FPR demonstrates familiarity with the Deuteronomistic History and JerD (the deuteronomistic redaction of Jeremiah) and was most likely drafted after 550.¹⁰ FPR also shows an internal knowledge of the four prophets and is influenced by the theology of Isaiah. Albertz’s diachronic reconstruction serves the purpose of identifying the religious historical instincts of the exilic editors responsible for this corpus: a focus on Judah/Jerusalem, the parallel relationship of prophetic word and Torah, and a hostility toward the monarchy and elite upper classes. In brief, FPR belongs “to a more radical group of theologians, in solidarity with the lower classes.”¹¹

As is to be expected, several scholars have serious misgivings about the supposed Book of the Four. Ehud Ben Zvi makes a case against the dominant trend of Twelve scholarship that identifies an intentional editorial history where these books are brought together as a unified corpus by means of various catchwords and editorial linkages.¹² Christoph Levin expresses his reservations regarding the legitimacy of a Book of the Four in an article subtitled “An Exegetical Obituary” (Nachruf).¹³ It is important to note that Levin does not deny the compositional growth of the Twelve as an editorial activity whereby an earlier corpus forms the basis for the growth and development of later books.¹⁴ He affirms the linkages betwee...