Inciting God’s Wrath

Micah 1:3-7

³For behold, the Lord is coming out of his place, and will come down and tread upon the high places of the earth.

⁴And the mountains will melt under him, and the valleys will split open, like wax before the fire, like waters poured down a steep place.

⁵All this is for the transgression of Jacob and for the sins of the house of Israel. What is the transgression of Jacob? Is it not Samaria? And what is the high place of Judah? Is it not Jerusalem?

⁶Therefore I will make Samaria a heap in the open country, a place for planting vineyards, and I will pour down her stones into the valley and uncover her foundations.

⁷All her carved images shall be beaten to pieces, all her wages shall be burned with fire, and all her idols I will lay waste, for from the fee of a prostitute she gathered them, and to the fee of a prostitute they shall return.

The house where I grew up was a small ranch with a basement. There were only two bedrooms upstairs so my dad built a room for me in the basement. It was a walkout basement, which meant I had big window, my own bathroom, and lots of privacy. There was also what we called a “rec-room” down there where my brother and I spent most of our time. It you’ve ever had a sibling, you know that life is not always peaceful. On occasion, we would get into it and some type of squabble would ensue. At which point, my dad would stomp on the floor above us and that meant, “don’t make me come down there.” Those stomps generally ended whatever fight we were having pretty effectively. We weren’t afraid of my father, but we did respect him. (I also got the stomp if I played by music too loud.) The first words of this passage have that same feeling to them. “For behold, the Lord is coming out of His place . . .” Sounds like a stomp on the ceiling to me!

Micah’s picture of the Lord implies that He is neither distant nor particularly safe. When He “domes down” it will be cataclysmic. All of the things we think are so permanent (mountains and valleys) will melt away like wax in the fire before the awesome power of the Lord who created them. Micah’s language in these verses, and many more like them in this short book, serve to inspire in us a proper fear of the Lord. We are forced to stand back in awe of our all-powerful God who can easily crush mountains or fill in valleys. The Lord will deal with all of the false idols that have been erected as well. “Beaten to pieces” is a graphic description of someone who is so angry they take the time to physically deal with something that could easily be crushed under foot. And finally, Micah pulls up the image of prostitution. The pagan’s around God’s people practiced temple prostitution so the people were used to this idea. God applies the concept of prostitution to His relationship with His people who daily prostitute themselves with idols. (Thus, the Book of Hosea, one of Micah’s contemporaries.)

I think that it's easy to read these words and think, “that was the Children of Israel, but that doesn’t apply to us.” That is where we would be wrong. These words to apply to us and it doesn’t take much meditation on current events and our own lives to see that we are exactly the same as those who heard these words live, from the mouth of Micah himself. The only difference is that we stand on this side of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We know the full story of God’s redeeming work and that is pure grace.