Micah 6 · Passage · Justice
To Act Justly, to Love Mercy, and to Walk Humbly
In Micah 6 the LORD brings a case against His people, a worshipper asks what offering will please Him, and the prophet answers with three requirements.
Micah the Moreshite spoke the word of the LORD in the days of Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, concerning Samaria and Jerusalem.
He has shown you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you but to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?
- The passage
- Micah 6:8, Micah 6:1 to 16
- Book
- Micah
- Hold in memory
- Micah 6:8
Summary
The requirements of Micah 6:8 cover a person's dealings with other people and his bearing before God. Moses had asked Israel the same question long before, in Deuteronomy 10:12. Because the verse stands inside a covenant lawsuit, its requirements are the LORD's terms for a people He had already redeemed. Teachers of the church have disagreed over what the answer means for the offerings the worshipper proposed.
- In verses 1 to 5 the LORD calls the mountains to hear His case, and He rests it on His saving acts, from the Exodus to the crossing into the land.
- In verses 6 and 7 the worshipper offers burnt offerings, rams, oil and at last his own firstborn.
- Verse 8 joins three requirements: to act justly, which is mishpat in the Hebrew, to love mercy, which is chesed, and to walk humbly with God.
- Verses 9 to 16 pass sentence on a city of short measures, dishonest scales, violence and lies.
The LORD's Case Against His People
Micah 6 opens as a trial in which the LORD is the one who brings the charge and Israel is the accused.
Micah 6:8 sets justice first among the three things the LORD requires of a person, and so it stands at the centre of the value of justice. Readers who know the verse well often meet it without the chapter around it.
The question the chapter answers is what a worshipper who comes before God with gifts must bring. Its answer reaches from the court and the market to a person's walk with God, and teachers from Ambrose to Matthew Henry have read it in more than one way.
Chapter 6 opens with a summons to court.
Hear now what the LORD says: “Arise, plead your case before the mountains, and let the hills hear your voice. Hear, O mountains, the LORD’s indictment, you enduring foundations of the earth. For the LORD has a case against His people, and He will argue it against Israel:The summons sets the court, its witnesses and the accused, and every later verse of the chapter belongs to this case.
Yet He invites Israel to bring evidence against Him.
‘My people, what have I done to you? Testify against Me how I have wearied you! For I brought you up from the land of Egypt and redeemed you from the house of slavery. I sent Moses before you, as well as Aaron and Miriam. My people, remember what Balak king of Moab counseled and what Balaam son of Beor answered. Remember your journey from Shittim to Gilgal, so that you may acknowledge the righteousness of the LORD.’”The LORD answers His own question before Israel can, and every item He names is something He did.
The way from Shittim to Gilgal led Israel across the Jordan. Joshua 3:1 records that Joshua left Shittim with all the Israelites, and Joshua 4:19 that the people camped at Gilgal on the eastern border of Jericho.
The word Micah uses for the righteousness of the LORD in verse 5 is tsedaqah (H6666), the noun that stands beside mishpat in many verses. Here it names what the LORD did to save Israel.
Ambrose of Milan, in his Letter 41, saw a lesson in it: “You see the Lord is teaching you a lesson, challenging you to goodness by his own example, teaching you even when he reproves.”
The Five Parts of Micah 6
The chapter moves from a summons to the LORD's case, the worshipper's offers, the prophet's answer and the sentence on the city.
The LORD speaks in three of the five rungs, and the worshipper and the prophet each speak once.
A ladder of five rungs, one for each part of Micah 6, each with its verses, its speaker and its words in the Berean text.
The Worshipper's Offers and the Prophet's Answer
Verse 6 changes the speaker, and verse 8 gives the prophet's reply.
The LORD has finished His case, and one of the accused now speaks.
With what shall I come before the LORD when I bow before the God on high? Should I come to Him with burnt offerings, with year-old calves? Would the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousand rivers of oil? Shall I present my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?The worshipper's questions measure the LORD's favour in gifts, and verse 8 answers that measure.
The reply points back to what the LORD has already shown.
And now, O Israel, what does the LORD your God ask of you but to fear the LORD your God by walking in all His ways, to love Him, to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul,Moses' answer of fear, love and service is the older form of Micah's three requirements.
Verse 8 and the City of Dishonest Scales
Verses 9 to 16 name the short ephah, the false weights and the violence of the rich.
The voice of the LORD calls out to the city (and it is sound wisdom to fear Your name): “Heed the rod and the One who ordained it. Can I forget any longer, O house of the wicked, the treasures of wickedness and the short ephah, which is accursed? Can I excuse dishonest scales or bags of false weights? For the wealthy of the city are full of violence, and its residents speak lies; their tongues are deceitful in their mouths.These verses show the requirement to act justly broken in the market, the first place the chapter tests it.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible says of verse 11 that the dishonest “shall never be reckoned pure, whatever shows of devotion they may make.”
Therefore I am striking you severely, to ruin you because of your sins. You will eat but not be satisfied, and your hunger will remain with you. What you acquire, you will not preserve; and what you save, I will give to the sword. You will sow but not reap; you will press olives but not anoint yourselves with oil; you will tread grapes but not drink the wine. You have kept the statutes of Omri and all the practices of Ahab’s house; you have followed their counsel. Therefore I will make you a desolation, and your inhabitants an object of contempt; you will bear the scorn of the nations.”The sentence takes away the fruit of the city's labour and gives the reason, that it kept the statutes of Omri and the practices of Ahab's house.
Ahab's house was the house of the king who took Naboth's vineyard after Jezebel had Naboth stoned on the testimony of two scoundrels, as 1 Kings 21 tells it. The study of Naboth's Vineyard follows that chapter.
Amos had joined worship and justice in the same way. When the LORD refused Israel's feasts and offerings, He said, “But let justice roll on like a river, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream” (Amos 5:24).
The Three Requirements in the Hebrew of Verse 8
The Hebrew of verse 8 joins a verb of seeking to three pairs of words, one pair for each requirement.
The verb rendered require is doresh, from darash (H1875), and the tagged Hebrew text glosses it requiring. What the LORD seeks follows in three short phrases.
To act justly is asot mishpat, the verb asah (H6213) with the noun mishpat (H4941).
The study of Justice and Righteousness counts Micah 6:8 among its six texts and notes that here mishpat is paired with chesed.
To love mercy is ahavat chesed, the verb ahav (H157) with the noun chesed (H2617), which stands 247 times in 241 verses. The STEP Bible lexicon gives kindness as the first sense of chesed, and the tagged text of this verse glosses the phrase to love covenant loyalty.
Read with the first gloss, the clause asks for kindness shown to other people. Jerome's Commentary on Micah reads it the first way: we are to love mercy “and not be merciful as if compelled or by necessity”. Read with the second gloss, the clause asks for loyalty kept within the covenant.
Who is a God like You, who pardons iniquity and passes over the transgression of the remnant of His inheritance—who does not retain His anger forever, because He delights in loving devotion?The book's close uses chesed of the LORD Himself, which supports the covenant reading of the second gloss.
To walk humbly is hatsnea lekhet, the verb tsana (H6800) with halak (H1980), to walk. The tagged text glosses tsana to be modest, and the proverb that holds the verb sets it against pride.
When pride comes, disgrace follows, but with humility comes wisdom.The proverb sets humility beside wisdom and pride beside disgrace, which shows the modest bearing the verb names.
The Greek translation that Jerome quotes asks the worshipper “to be prepared to walk with your God”. Jerome read the third requirement by the example of Enoch: “We shall walk with the Lord our God, as Enoch walked with God.”
Enoch walked with God, and then he was no more, because God had taken him away.Genesis says twice in three verses that Enoch walked with God, so the walk is the sum of his record.
What Becomes of the Worshipper's Offerings
Verse 8 answers the offers of verses 6 and 7 with three requirements of conduct, and teachers of the church have read the offers in two ways.
Two other texts set offerings beside obedience and mercy.
But Samuel declared: “Does the LORD delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obedience to His voice? Behold, obedience is better than sacrifice, and attentiveness is better than the fat of rams.Samuel's word to King Saul makes the same weighing that Micah's answer makes.
For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.Hosea's prophecy carries the LORD's own word on the same choice.
The LORD asks for the worshipper himselfAugustine of Hippo; Ambrose of Milan
Augustine, in his Sermon 48, answers the worshipper's question in one line: “You ask what you should offer: offer yourself.” He gives the reason, that God “seeks yourself from yourself, because you have lost yourself.”
Ambrose, in Flight from the World, wrote that “the grace of the Lord is won with a good life.”
The objection: the worshipper's question concerns the sin of his soul, and verse 8 answers with conduct, leaving the removal of that sin to other texts.
Peace with God comes by the blood of ChristMatthew Henry
Matthew Henry, in his Commentary on the Whole Bible (1710), answered the worshipper's offer of oil: “One stream of the blood of Christ is worth ten thousand rivers of oil.”
The objection: Micah's answer names conduct and mentions no sacrifice to come, so this reading draws its answer from the New Testament more than from the verse.
Justice, Mercy and Faithfulness
Matthew 23:23 carries Micah's answer into the teaching of Jesus.
Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You pay tithes of mint, dill, and cumin. But you have disregarded the weightier matters of the law: justice, mercy, and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former.Jesus keeps Micah's first two requirements in Micah's order, and where Micah has walking humbly with God He sets faithfulness.
In the Greek of Matthew 23:23 the three words are krisis, eleos and pistis. The lexicon notes that krisis can carry the sense of mishpat, as it does in the Greek translation of the Old Testament.
Micah's answer and the rebuke of Jesus ask one thing of a worshipper. The one who comes before God with gifts is to deal justly with his neighbour, love mercy and walk with his God.
Sources
Scripture is the Berean Standard Bible.
- The tagged Hebrew and Greek text of the Bible, with Strong's numbers, morphology and glosses (STEP Bible, Tyndale House, Cambridge, CC BY 4.0)
- STEP Bible, Translators Brief lexicon of Extended Strongs for Hebrew and for Greek (Tyndale House, Cambridge), CC BY 4.0, with the Greek brief lexicon based on Abbott-Smith (1922), entries h4941, h2617, h6800, h1875 and g2920.
- Jerome, Commentary on Micah, on Micah 6:8.
- Ambrose of Milan, Letter 41, section 24, on Micah 6:3 to 5.
- Ambrose of Milan, Flight from the World, chapter 6, section 33, on Micah 6:6 to 7.
- Augustine of Hippo, Sermon 48, section 2, on Micah 6:6 to 8.
- Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible (1710), on Micah 6:7 and 6:11.
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