Micah the Morasthite prophesied in the days of Hezekiah king of Judah, and spoke to all the people of Judah, saying, Thus saith Jehovah of hosts Zion shall be ploughed [as] a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high places of a forest.
To defend Jeremiah, the elders quoted a prophet from a hundred years earlier, whose words people still knew. Their case raises a question worth asking today: what should a nation do when God announces its ruin?
Jeremiah stood on trial for announcing that the temple and the city would fall. The elders picked an example that was hard to answer, and one writer explains why.
This example from Hezekiah's reign was even more striking and forceful. Micah had predicted the destruction of Jerusalem and of the temple in the days of a good king. So his prophecy was more surprising than Jeremiah's prediction of the same thing in the days of a bad king. The defence of the prophet was complete.
This sentence was not random. In Micah's book it comes right after a charge against the leaders. They used their place before God as cover for corruption.
Micah does this by again condemning the leaders among the people, who judged for a bribe, and the prophets, who told fortunes for money. All the while they claimed the privilege of Jehovah's presence, a privilege given to this people alone. Nothing offends Jehovah more than this. People who bear the name of His people wrap themselves in the privilege of His presence. They use that claim to honour themselves and to excuse evil, or to hold on to a claim on God despite it. So Zion was to be plowed as a field, and the mountains, now decorated with palaces, were to be made like the heights of a forest.
The picture holds a bitter reversal. The leaders built Zion with bloodshed, so God would turn their city back into plowed farmland. Even the temple hill — "the mountain of the house" — would stand as wooded ground.
They build up Zion with bloodshed, and Jerusalem with wrongdoing. Therefore, because of you, Zion will be plowed as a field.
The elders' point was not just that Micah survived. A king took the threat seriously, and the judgment was put off.
Some elders of the land recall Micah's prophecy in the time of Hezekiah. The king listened to him, and as a result the judgment was held back.
Jeremiah made the same offer to his own generation. He called them to repent, and warned them what killing him would not change.
The prophet points to his commission from Jehovah. He repeats the sum of His words without softening them. He calls on them to repent of their sins, so that the Lord might turn back from His judgments. Then he leaves himself in their hands, with a solemn warning to beware of shedding innocent blood. Killing him would not disprove his commission from the Lord. Nor would it turn God's vengeance away from themselves or from Jerusalem.
The elders quoted Micah word for word, a hundred years after he spoke. That says something about how Judah held his writing.
About 100 years later, Jeremiah announced that Judah would be carried off to Babylon. The oldest people there could still remember the prophecy given in king Hezekiah's time, in Micah 3:12. This proves that God's people recognized and respected the inspired writings of the Old Testament at once.
Jeremiah's own book keeps the quotation and names Micah as its source. One writer draws a lesson from that.
Jeremiah was not afraid that naming Micah would damage his standing as a prophet. Daniel did the same later with Jeremiah, and Amos with Joel. There are few truly original people in the world. We above all others should beware of the spirit of independence. God has set us in "one body" and made us members of one another, so that we depend on each other. So let us not hesitate to admit openly what we owe each other.
God spared Hezekiah's generation, but He did not cancel the words. One writer traces how the prophecy came true, down to a Roman act after Jerusalem's fall.
Zion was to be "plowed as a field," and Samaria made "as a heap of the field." Turnus Rufus fulfilled the first prediction. Under orders from the emperor, he drove the Roman plow over Zion after the city was destroyed in A.D. 70. The second prediction came true as well: people saw the stones of Samaria gathered in heaps.
- Remembered. A hundred years later, ordinary elders could still quote Micah from memory. Judah had guarded his words as God's own.
- Deserved. Zion faced the plow because its leaders judged for money and hid self-interest behind God's name.
- Reprieved. Hezekiah heard the same threat and turned to God. The judgment was put off, and that was the elders' whole argument for sparing Jeremiah.
- Repeated. Jeremiah offered his own generation the same way out. Killing the messenger would not disprove his commission or turn the judgment aside.
- Fulfilled. A delay is not a cancellation. The word stood until the Roman plow went over Zion.
Did Hezekiah king of Judah and all Judah put him at all to death? Did he not fear Jehovah, and supplicate Jehovah, and Jehovah repented him of the evil that he had pronounced against them? And we should be doing a great evil against our souls.
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.