The Message of Joel, Micah and Habakkuk

David Prior

• Publisher: IVP Academic
• Year: 1999
• ISBN:
  9780830884988
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Commentary

Where is God in times of disaster? How can God allow suffering? What are God's people to do about moral decay in society? While people throughout the ages have long pondered these questions, three of the minor prophets--Joel, Micah and Habakkuk--provide insights to these perennial problems.The people of Joel's day were devastated by a locust plague, which Joel said warned of the coming Day of the Lord. Micah rebuked a culture of corruption and moral evil. Habakkuk cried out to the Lord on account of a society bent on violence. All three point to a transcendent God who gives hope in times of uncertainty.David Prior's passage-by-passage exposition of these three books provides careful study and measured insight and application for today's church.

Introduction to Micah

Unlike the prophecy of Joel, for which we can establish no firm date or specific historical situation, the book of Micah describes a definite, if prolonged, context in the latter part of the eighth century BC. The opening lines of the book locate Micah’s ministry in the days of Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, that is, between 742 and 686. These are the first and last dates possible, and Micah probably operated for a rather shorter period within this span of fifty-six years.

Micah himself would have grown and matured in his prophetic calling and as a person during these years. The circumstances around him were constantly changing in fairly dramatic ways, as we shall see; and the impact of his faith was inevitably altering him personally. In this sense, it is a distillation of what must have been a costly, demanding and (at least in certain circles of power in the land) extremely unpopular ministry.

Like most of the prophets, Micah seems to have exercised his ministry mainly by preaching (‘Hear’ . . . ‘Hear this’ . . .).1 But the sections we have in the book, which are too succinct to have been his full text for preaching, are perhaps his ‘sermon notes’, the result either of preparation for preaching or of careful compilation afterwards to be preserved for later generations.

The text itself is full of contrasts in both content and feel. Messages of divergent significance stand side by side in the book. This is readily understandable when we consider that the upheaval, in both national and international events during this period of forty or fifty years, would have elicited far from a monochrome or static response from a person so demonstrably passionate for his God and his country.

Let us take a closer look at the situation, the prophet and the book itself.

1. The situation

The second half of the eighth century witnessed the most affluent period in the kingdoms of Israel and Judah since the break-up of the single nation after the death of Solomon in approximately 922 BC – a split summarized by the Chronicler in these words: ‘So Israel has been in rebellion against the house of David to this day’ (2 Ch. 10:19). Both capitals – Samaria in the north, Jerusalem in the south – had begun to enjoy immense material prosperity. In the face of this wealth and the godlessness which walked with it, prophets of boldness and incisiveness spoke ‘the word of the LORD’ to both parts of the divided nation: Amos and Hosea in the north, Isaiah and Micah in the south. These four men represent the essence of Hebrew prophecy.

‘Micah deals with the Judaean version of the development of a commercial and “secular” culture.’2 We have seen the emergence of such a phenomenon in the countries of Western Europe and other westernized countries at the end of the twentieth century. There is a similar, though distinctive, story in the USA. In Micah’s time, as in our own, this development led (seemingly inexorably) to a few rich people getting richer, not simply at the same time as the poor becoming poorer, but at the expense of the poor. It has been, and will continue to be, a major political and economic debate whether increasing affluence necessarily produces these disparities. For Micah there was no debate, only denunciation. His book, in common with most Old Testament prophets, makes it plain that in both Judah and Israel the fabric and foundation of national life were being systematically threatened.

The divided kingdoms were, of course, inheritors of an unique pattern of socio-economic life. Essential toit was a promised land, designated for them by God3 and allotted to the twelve tribes in a careful and specific manner.4 Not the least of God’s commands for the land, which belonged to him and was entrusted to the people only in stewardship,5 was a set of instructions concerning the ‘jubilee’6 and clear provisions for the helpless – the poor, the widow, the orphan and the sojourner (or resident alien).7 By these provisions, all land returned to its original owner every fiftieth year, and those who owned land were mandated to take special care of the less fortunate.8

In Micah’s day, increasing affluence led to increasing callousness (2:1–2) and eventually (inevitably?) to blatant disregard of these foundational laws from God (6:10–12). Those responsible for administering justice in accordance with these laws became involved in conspiracy, bribery and other forms of corruption (3:1–3, 9–11; 7:3). This venality became endemic, even in a purported theocracy, when both priest and prophet bought into the same network of injustice (3:11). Few things are more calculated to arouse the ire of true patriots like Micah.

All this took place under the veneer of continuing religious performances (3:11), to which the wealthy minority regularly subscribed and which they would have indignantly denied to be in any sense a veneer. They had managed to perfect the perennial heresy of compartmentalizing their religious beliefs and practices from their daily occupations and business.

The pernicious impact of the ‘enemy within’ the nation was accentuated by the huge upheavals happening all around them in the Middle East. The second part of the eighth century saw the emergence and domination of the Assyrians, one of the most bloodthirsty, manipulative and arrogant of history’s evil empires. Micah’s ministry spans the reign of four Assyrian kings, each of whom made devastating inroads into the Holy Land.

Tiglath-Pileser III (744–727) launched Assyria on its ambitious policy of imperial expansion. Philistia, Damascus, Galilee and Trans-jordan all succumbed to his armies. His successor, Shalmaneser V (726–722), attacked Samaria, the northern capital of Israel, although the city fell only to Sargon II (722–705). ‘The once-proud kingdom of the north now became an Assyrian province called Samaria.’9

The shockwaves of Samaria’s demise, as one would expect, reached Judah and Jerusalem, but met with a mixture of fear and complacency. Hezekiah, when he came to the throne in Jerusalem in 715, set about reforming the apostasy and idolatry of his predecessors.10 Under Sargon II the Assyrians frequently infiltrated the land without actually taking it. When Sargon II died, Hezekiah thought it politically and strategically appropriate to ally himself with a coalition of other states, including Egypt and Babylon, to take a stand against Assyrian imperialism.11 He reckoned without the prophets Micah and Isaiah and without the emergence of the most vicious Assyrian king of them all, Sennacherib (704–681). Sennacherib waited for about three years and then in 701 moved in great strength to attack the cities of the coastal plain and of the Shephelah. He captured forty-six towns and cities, including the nine mentioned in Micah 1:10–15, and sent his representative, the Rabshakeh, to convince king Hezekiah of the wisdom of surrender.12

Micah and Isaiah both urged Hezekiah to repent of his alliances with Egypt, Babylon and the rest, in order to avert the same fate as had befallen Samaria and the northern kingdom. The biblical record indicates that God intervened dramatically to send Sennacherib’s army in disarray from Jerusalem; Isaiah, together with the writers of 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles, attributes the death of nearly 200,000 Assyrian soldiers to the ‘angel of the LORD’.13 The Greek historian Herodotus implies that the cause was a bubonic plague carried by rats.14 However God chose to act, Jerusalem was spared and the country did not fall totally into the hands of the Assyrians.

This dramatic turn of events, and its resulting spell of relief for Jerusalem and Judah, did not succeed, however, in turning the nation’s leadership back to God. ‘The city only staggered from crisis to crisis for one more century’,15 when the Babylonian supplanters of Assyria completely destroyed Jerusalem under Nebuchadnezzar’s armies, and removed virtually the whole population into exile in Babylon.

We can only guess at the scale of politicking in Jerusalem’s corridors of power while all this international mayhem was happening around them – within their borders as well as in neighbouring territories, even up to the city gates. Of one thing we can be sure: Micah’s voice was heard loud and clear in the royal palace and among the king’s advisers, judges and religious leaders.

2. The prophet

He is known as ‘Micah of Moresheth’ (1:1). Moresheth-gath (to give it its full name, as in 1:14) was one of the thriving country towns of the Shephelah, ‘an undulating coastal plain . . . dotted with fortified cities, located about twenty-one miles southwest of Jerusalem’.16 Because Micah was known by this description, it is likely that he grew up in an agricultural community, but went at the calling of God to the capital to declare the word of God to the city.

Adam Smith has a somewhat idealized description of the region around Moresheth-gath:

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 Judaean tableland above. There is herbage for cattle. Bees murmur everywhere, larks are singing, and although today you may wander in the maze of hills for hours ...