1 1:1 The word of the Lord that came to Micah of Moresheth in the days of Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, which he saw concerning Samaria and Jerusalem.

The Coming Destruction

²Hear, you peoples, all of you;[1] pay attention, O earth, and all that is in it, and let the Lord God be a witness against you, the Lord from his holy temple. 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.

⁸For this I will lament and wail; I will go stripped and naked; I will make lamentation like the jackals, and mourning like the ostriches. ⁹For her wound is incurable, and it has come to Judah; it has reached to the gate of my people, to Jerusalem.

¹⁰Tell it not in Gath; weep not at all; in Beth-le-aphrah roll yourselves in the dust. ¹¹Pass on your way, inhabitants of Shaphir, in nakedness and shame; the inhabitants of Zaanan do not come out; the lamentation of Beth-ezel shall take away from you its standing place. ¹²For the inhabitants of Maroth wait anxiously for good, because disaster has come down from the Lord to the gate of Jerusalem. ¹³Harness the steeds to the chariots, inhabitants of Lachish; it was the beginning of sin to the daughter of Zion, for in you were found the transgressions of Israel. ¹⁴Therefore you shall give parting gifts^[2]to Moresheth-gath; the houses of Achzib shall be a deceitful thing to the kings of Israel. ¹⁵I will again bring a conqueror to you, inhabitants of Mareshah; the glory of Israel shall come to Adullam. ¹⁶Make yourselves bald and cut off your hair, for the children of your delight; make yourselves as bald as the eagle, for they shall go from you into exile.

[1] Hebrew all of them [2] Or give dowry

2 Woe to the Oppressors

2:1 Woe to those who devise wickedness and work evil on their beds! When the morning dawns, they perform it, because it is in the power of their hand. ²They covet fields and seize them, and houses, and take them away; they oppress a man and his house, a man and his inheritance. ³Therefore thus says the Lord: behold, against this family I am devising disaster,[3] from which you cannot remove your necks, and you shall not walk haughtily, for it will be a time of disaster. ⁴In that day they shall take up a taunt song against you and moan bitterly, and say, “We are utterly ruined; he changes the portion of my people; how he removes it from me! To an apostate he allots our fields.” ⁵Therefore you will have none to cast the line by lot in the assembly of the Lord.

⁶“Do not preach”—thus they preach— “one should not preach of such things; disgrace will not overtake us.” ⁷Should this be said, O house of Jacob? Has the Lord grown impatient? 4] Are these his deeds? Do not my words do good to him who walks uprightly? ⁸But lately my people have risen up as an enemy; you strip the rich robe from those who pass by trustingly with no thought of war.^[5]⁹The women of my people you drive out from their delightful houses; from their young children you take away my splendor forever. ¹⁰Arise and go, for this is no place to rest, because of uncleanness that destroys with a grievous destruction. ¹¹If a man should go about and utter wind and lies, saying, “I will preach to you of wine and strong drink,” he would be the preacher for this people! ¹²I will surely assemble all of you, O Jacob; I will gather the remnant of Israel; I will set them together like sheep in a fold, like a flock in its pasture, a noisy multitude of men. ¹³He who opens the breach goes up before them; they break through and pass the gate, going out by it. Their king passes on before them, the Lord at their head.

[3] The same Hebrew word can mean evil or disaster, according to context [4] Hebrew Has the spirit of the Lord grown short? [5] Or returning from war

3 Rulers and Prophets Denounced

3:1 And I said: Hear, you heads of Jacob and rulers of the house of Israel! Is it not for you to know justice?— ² you who hate the good and love the evil, who tear the skin from off my people[6] and their flesh from off their bones, ³who eat the flesh of my people, and flay their skin from off them, and break their bones in pieces and chop them up like meat in a pot, like flesh in a cauldron.

⁴Then they will cry to the Lord, but he will not answer them; he will hide his face from them at that time, because they have made their deeds evil.

⁵Thus says the Lord concerning the prophets who lead my people astray, who cry “Peace” when they have something to eat, but declare war against him who puts nothing into their mouths. ⁶Therefore it shall be night to you, without vision, and darkness to you, without divination. The sun shall go down on the prophets, and the day shall be black over them; ⁷the seers shall be disgraced, and the diviners put to shame; they shall all cover their lips, for there is no answer from God. ⁸But as for me, I am filled with power, with the Spirit of the Lord, and with justice and might, to declare to Jacob his transgression and to Israel his sin.

⁹Hear this, you heads of the house of Jacob and rulers of the house of Israel, who detest justice and make crooked all that is straight, ¹⁰who build Zion with blood and Jerusalem with iniquity. ¹¹Its heads give judgment for a bribe; its priests teach for a price; its prophets practice divination for money; yet they lean on the Lord and say, “Is not the Lord in the midst of us? No disaster shall come upon us.” ¹²Therefore because of you Zion shall be plowed as a field; Jerusalem shall become a heap of ruins, and the mountain of the house a wooded height.

[6] Hebrew from off them

4 The Mountain of the Lord

4:1 It shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and it shall be lifted up above the hills; and peoples shall flow to it, ² and many nations shall come, and say: “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.” For out of Zion shall go forth the law,[7] and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. ³He shall judge between many peoples, and shall decide for strong nations afar off; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore; ⁴but they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree, and no one shall make them afraid, for the mouth of the Lord of hosts has spoken. ⁵For all the peoples walk each in the name of its god, but we will walk in the name of the Lord our God forever and ever.

The Lord Shall Rescue Zion

⁶In that day, declares the Lord, I will assemble the lame and gather those who have been driven away and those whom I have afflicted; ⁷and the lame I will make the remnant, and those who were cast off, a strong nation; and the Lord will reign over them in Mount Zion from this time forth and forevermore.

⁸And you, O tower of the flock, hill of the daughter of Zion, to you shall it come, the former dominion shall come, kingship for the daughter of Jerusalem.

⁹Now why do you cry aloud? Is there no king in you? Has your counselor perished, that pain seized you like a woman in labor? ¹⁰Writhe and groan,[8] O daughter of Zion, like a woman in labor, for now you shall go out from the city and dwell in the open country; you shall go to Babylon. There you shall be rescued; there the Lord will redeem you from the hand of your enemies.

¹¹Now many nations are assembled against you, saying, “Let her be defiled, and let our eyes gaze upon Zion.” ¹²But they do not know the thoughts of the Lord; they do not understand his plan, that he has gathered them as sheaves to the threshing floor. ¹³Arise and thresh, O daughter of Zion, for I will make your horn iron, and I will make your hoofs bronze; you shall beat in pieces many peoples; and shall devote[9] their gain to the Lord, their wealth to the Lord of the whole earth.

[7] Or teaching [8] Or push [9] Hebrew devote to destruction