Micahchapter 6
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Speaks with:Hosea 4×2Hosea 12×2Isaiah 1×2Jeremiah 2×2Psalms 51×2Jeremiah 22×1
Micah Exhorts the Israelites to Repent — Gustave Doré, Doré's English Bible (1866), public domain
Summary
Chapter summary
God takes his people to court before the mountains: 'O my people, what have I done unto thee? and wherein have I wearied thee? testify against me.' The evidence is all rescue: Egypt, Moses and Aaron and Miriam, Balak and Balaam, Shittim to Gilgal. The worshiper answers by bidding upward: burnt-offerings? thousands of rams? ten thousands of rivers of oil? my first-born for my transgression? And the reply is a summit of the Old Testament: 'what doth Jehovah require of thee, but to do justly, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with thy God?' (6:8). Then back to the shop floor: wicked balances, a bag of deceitful weights, the statutes of Omri kept instead.
Context
Prophecy · Micah — Micah overview
- A. 1–5 Plead before the mountains: what have I done to you?
- B. 6–8 What the LORD requires: do justly, love mercy, walk humbly
- C. 9–16 Wicked balances and the statutes of Omri
The outline
A.Plead before the mountains: what have I done to you?vv. 1 to 5
Read vv. 1 to 5 →B.What the LORD requires: do justly, love mercy, walk humblyvv. 6 to 8
Read vv. 6 to 8 →C.Wicked balances and the statutes of Omrivv. 9 to 16
Read vv. 9 to 16 →
The world behind this chapter
Micah 6The history
The mountains and the foundations of the earth are called as jury because they were there for the whole history under review. This is a formal covenant lawsuit, a form Israel's prophets used repeatedly, and it opens the way a legal complaint opens: God asks what he has done to weary his people.
The evidence he cites is a walking tour. Egypt, Moses and Aaron and Miriam, Balak of Moab hiring Balaam to curse Israel and failing, and then the stretch from Shittim, the last camp east of the Jordan, to Gilgal, the first camp inside the land. It is the crossing itself — the moment the promise became ground under their feet.
The escalating offers in the middle are a bidding war: burnt offerings, calves a year old, thousands of rams, ten thousand rivers of oil, and finally the firstborn son. Child sacrifice was not a hypothetical horror in that region; it was practised by Israel's neighbours and, in Judah's worst periods, by Judeans in the valley outside Jerusalem. The bidder is offering the most extreme thing the surrounding cultures had on the price list.
The chapter then drops to a merchant's bag. Wicked scales and a bag of deceitful weights are the same fraud Amos named — one set of stones for buying and a lighter set for selling. The statutes of Omri and the works of Ahab are named as the pattern being followed, which was a deep insult in Judah, since those were northern kings.
What it meant to them
The answer to the bidding war is the most quoted sentence in the book: he has shown you, O man, what is good — to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God. None of the three can be bought, and all three cost more than ten thousand rivers of oil.
The curses that follow are the covenant curses in domestic form: you will eat and not be satisfied, sow and not reap, tread olives but not anoint yourself with oil, tread grapes but not drink the wine. Hearers who lived by those exact processes knew precisely what a life that shape would feel like.
Sources cited
- Roland de Vaux, Ancient Israel: Its Life and Institutions
- John H. Walton, Victor H. Matthews, Mark W. Chavalas, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament
The text of this chapter
This page carries no textual note on Micah 6. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →
This page draws on Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Calvin, Commentaries; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.