Commentary on the Prophecy of Micah - Audio and Written Bible Commentary


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While all of the podcasts and notes for our commentary on the Prophecy of Micah are freely available here on at the pages linked below, there is also a CD available for purchase which contains all of the podcasts and notes to these programs together with our commentaries on Obadiah, Nahum, and Habakkuk. See Christogenea.com for more information.

Micah, Part 1 - Christogenea Internet Radio 02-14-2014

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The Prophecy of Micah - Christogenea Internet Radio 02-12-2014

The prophecy of Micah parallels those of Isaiah, Hosea, and Amos, who were all prophets of the 8th century BC. The ministries of all four of these prophets were focused on forecasting God's impending judgment of the ancient northern Kingdom of Israel, although they all also prophesied of other things, such as the sin and impending judgment of Judah and Jerusalem, of Christ, and of Israel's eventual restoration. The prophet Jonah is earlier than any of these, but he was not concerned with the destruction of Israel. Rather, Jonah sought the preservation of Israel, imagining that Yahweh would destroy the encroaching Assyrians instead. It was demonstrated in our presentation of Amos that Assyria and Israel had been struggling back-and-forth for over a hundred years before the final destruction of Samaria. For instance, we had demonstrated from correlating the Bible with certain ancient Assyrian inscriptions that the restoration to Israel of Hamath, Damascus and the northern plain by Jeroboam II which is mentioned in 2 Kings chapter 14 was in response to earlier Assyrian subjugation of that area. Even earlier than that, we saw in Assyrian inscriptions that the Israelite king Ahab had sent a force of 10,000 foot-soldiers to join a mostly Syrian coalition army against Assyrian expansion into the Levant, something which is not mentioned in the Bible. Ahab was over a hundred years before Jotham, the king of Judah when Micah began his ministry. The lesson of the gourd in Jonah is that Yahweh was indeed going to use Assyria's expanding empire to preserve Israel by taking Israel into captivity. Jonah recorded the lesson of the gourd, but he evidently did not understand it.

The next prophet after Micah is Nahum, a prophet of the 7th century who was indeed focused on Yahweh's revenge against the Assyrians, something which Isaiah also prophesied about at length. The prophet Joel, usually and incorrectly dated to an earlier period, was also a prophet of the 7th century BC, as the third chapter of his book demonstrates. Obadiah is also usually dated to have been written at an early time, but his prophecy could not have been written until after the fall of Jerusalem (verses 10-14). Scholars who dispute the prophecies concerning Edom do not understand who Edom is in the world today, and therefore they cannot understand Obadiah. Aside from these and a few other less significant questions, the King James translators were fair in estimating the proper order of the minor prophets.

The prophecy of Micah has three basic messages: the sin, punishment, and restoration of Israel, which are repeated in different ways. An abuse of Micah feeds Judeo-Zionist interpretations concerning Palestine today, and they with their sick fantasies concerning the enemies of Christ actually deny Micah's true message. Micah's writing is most notable for it's Messianic prophecy found in chapter 5, and its prophecy of the gathering of Israel found in chapter 4.

Micah, Part 2 - Christogenea Internet Radio 02-21-2014

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Micah, Part 2 - Christogenea Internet Radio 02-21-2014

Micah 2:1 Woe to them that devise iniquity, and work evil upon their beds! when the morning is light, they practise it, because it is in the power of their hand.

The phrase “work evil upon their beds” is not a reference to the sexual fornication which had become commonplace, although it could certainly be inclusive of that. Rather, it is a reference to the proclivity of the people to dream up wicked schemes as they lie in bed at night, putting their ungodly desires to practice when they awake in the morning. The Septuagint reads: “They meditated troubles, and wrought wickedness on their beds, and they put it in execution with the daylight; for they have not lifted up their hands to God.” When the children of Israel turn to Yahweh their God, He makes a smooth path for them. As John the Baptist said of Christ, “the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways shall be made smooth” (Luke 3:5).

2 And they covet fields, and take them by violence; and houses, and take them away: so they oppress a man and his house, even a man and his heritage.

In a world without God, there is nothing left but materialism. In a people who have no hope in a transcendental existence, there is nothing left but carnal lust and the desire to enrich oneself, even at the expense of one's own kindred and tribe. The wealthy, and governments which whore themselves off to the wealthy under the guise of bureaucracy, oppress their own kindred by using legal and political mechanisms in order to deprive them of their property and hard-earned wages.

Israel, fallen into apostasy and the paganism which had been mandated by the State since the days of Jeroboam I (1 Kings 12:26-33), had fallen to the level of self-serving decadence which is found in what we now call materialism. That is the same state which most formerly Christian White nations find themselves in once again today. How do they not merit the impending judgment of Yahweh once again?

Micah, Part 3 - Christogenea Internet Radio 03-07-2014

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Micah, Part 3 - Christogenea Internet Radio 03-07-2014

In the first three chapters of Micah we saw pronouncements of judgment upon Israel and Judah, judgment which would carry all the way to the “gate of Jerusalem”. We discussed the fulfillment of those judgments in the Assyrian invasions which were not long after Micah had begun preaching. The kingdom of Israel would be lost, and the people of Israel had no recourse in the matter: they would lose all of their possessions and be carried off into captivity. Much of Judah was also decreed by Yahweh to suffer likewise, and they were also carried into captivity by the Assyrians. However in this fourth chapter of Micah the focus of the prophet changes, and his prophesies move from the imminent destruction of ancient Israel and Judah to a vision foretelling what it was that would befall them in their future.

Micah 4:1 But in the last days it shall come to pass, that the mountain of the house of the LORD shall be established in the top of the mountains, and it shall be exalted above the hills; and people shall flow unto it.

The phrase “the last days”, as it is often rendered in the King James Version, contains the Hebrew word achariyth, Strong's Hebrew Lexicon number 319, and it is defined by Strong to mean “the last or end, hence the future; also posterity”. For reason of its meaning it was translated in the King James Version in a wide variety of ways, but it does not only pertain to the very end of the age, which in the Christian worldview means the time imminent to the Second Advent, although achariyth is generally and wrongly interpreted in such a manner. In fact, the apostles called their very own time the “last days” (Acts 2:17, Hebrews 1:2, 1 John 2:18), while at the same time they also considered the “last days” to be far off in the future in relation to their own time (2 Timothy 3:1, James 5:3, 1 Peter 1:5, 2 Peter 3:3, Jude 18). Therefore the meaning of the phrase is relative to its context. This is also evident in Genesis chapter 49, where in Jacob's prophecy concerning his sons he says “Gather yourselves together, that I may tell you that which shall befall you in the last days.” If the things that befell Jacob's sons happened throughout all of the time immediately subsequent to Jacob and continued to happen well into the future, then the same thing is true here, and the references to “the last days” in Micah and in Isaiah, where we find a similar prophecy, began in the period of time following the judgment and deportations of ancient Israel.

Micah, Part 4 - Christogenea Internet Radio 03-14-2014

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Micah, Part 4 - Christogenea Internet Radio 03-14-2014

In Micah chapter 4 we see that Yahweh God in the time of His choosing ultimately prevails over all of His enemies, because even though His people Israel were going into captivity, they would indeed be established as a great nation which in the “last days” would be exalted above all other nations. However we also saw that first the children of Israel must go to Babylon, and there they must await their redemption, where suffering many things they were portrayed as a woman in travail. We discussed how Babylon in that vision is not a reference to the place itself, but rather it must be a reference to something which transcends geography. That woman, we pointed out while discussing Micah 4:10-11, is the same woman as the woman of the visions in Revelation chapters 12 and 17, where Israel the bride flees into the wilderness, for which we can also compare Micah 4:7, and later becomes the whore of Babylon. Yet Micah chapter 4 holds out a promise of hope for the children of God, that they shall one day indeed “arise and thresh”, to be the instruments by which Yahweh gathers His enemies as “sheaves to the floor”.

However here in Micah chapter 5 the focus of the prophecy seems to once again be on the more immediate trials which the children of Israel must face, where a siege is laid against them and where the “judge of Israel”, which must be a reference to God Himself, is smitten upon the cheek. Yet this would be an incomplete assessment. Rather, here in Micah chapter 5 apparently we see a prophecy of the more immediate results of those judgments which were pronounced upon Israel by the prophet in the first three chapters of his writing, however the elements of this chapter are also relevant to Micah chapter 4, and what we have here is a Hebrew parallelism. Parallelism is a common element of Biblical literature, whereby the same subject is described twice using somewhat different terms. A simple form of parallelism is found in Psalm 119:105: “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.” The phrases “lamp unto my feet” and “light unto my path” both essentially mean the same thing, and both describe “thy word”, but the parallelism is a poetic device used for emphasis, which can also make for beautiful poetry. The Bible, both New Testament and Old, is replete with such language. From Revelation 1:8: “I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.” Here we shall hopefully see that while much of Micah chapter 5 is pertinent to the time immediate to Micah and what was to befall Israel at the hand of the Assyrians, elements of it are also parallel to the prophecy of Micah chapter 4, the Assyrians being a type for the nations to be gathered against Israel in the “last days”. This is parallelism on a grander scale that the simple one-verse forms which we have just illustrated.

Micah 5:1 Now gather thyself in troops, O daughter of troops: he hath laid siege against us: they shall smite the judge of Israel with a rod upon the cheek.

Micah, Part 5 - Christogenea Internet Radio 03-21-2014

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Micah, Part 5 - Christogenea Internet Radio 03-21-2014

In the first three chapters of Micah, we saw the prophet pronounce the judgments of God upon Israel, and also upon Judah, for the many transgressions they committed against both Him and their kinsmen. For those transgressions they would lose all of which they had, because they dealt deceitfully with their God and their nation. From Micah 1:6 and 9: “6 Therefore I will make Samaria as an heap of the field, and as plantings of a vineyard: and I will pour down the stones thereof into the valley, and I will discover the foundations thereof. 9 For her wound is incurable; for it is come unto Judah; he is come unto the gate of my people, even to Jerusalem.” The Assyrians did take away all of Israel and all of the fenced cities and towns of Judah, but they were stopped at the gate of Jerusalem. While Micah also prophesied later, at the end of his third chapter, that “Jerusalem shall become heaps,” that judgment was reserved for execution until the time of the later Chaldaean invasion.

The names of the towns of Judah which Micah prophesied against also told a story in their meanings, from which we can gather deeper insight. For instance, the beginning of sin for Israel was their belief that they were invincible because their God was with them, an idea encapsulated in Micah's utterance concerning Lachish and which is also stated explicitly at Micah 3:11 where it says of the false prophets that “yet will they lean upon the LORD, and say, Is not the LORD among us? none evil can come upon us.”. The children of Israel cannot sin and feel that they can prevail simply because their God is with them, but this was the attitude which Micah ascribes to them. It must also be observed, that that those who understood and were sorrowful over Israel's sin had hoped for good, but Israel was only worthy of Yahweh's judgment, an idea which we see encapsulated in Micah's utterance concerning Maroth.

In the fourth and fifth chapters of Micah, we saw what would become of Israel “in the last days”, in those days which followed her impending captivity at the hand of the Assyrians. Micah chapter 4 expresses these things, and ends with the words “Arise and thresh, O daughter of Zion”. Then Micah chapter 5 expresses these same things in a different manner, and ends with the words “so will I destroy thy cities [meaning the cities of Israel]. And I will execute vengeance in anger and fury upon the heathen”. These prophecies have other prophetic parallels in Ezekiel, Isaiah, Obadiah and elsewhere, but especially in the Revelation.