Micah 5-7

Micah 5

¹Now you will give yourselves deep wounds for grief; they will put up a wall round us: they will give the judge of Israel a blow on the face with a rod.

²And you, Beth-lehem Ephrathah, the least among the families of Judah, out of you one will come to me who is to be ruler in Israel; whose going out has been purposed from time past, from the eternal days.

³For this cause he will give them up till the time when she who is with child has given birth: then the rest of his brothers will come back to the children of Israel.

⁴And he will take his place and give food to his flock in the strength of the Lord, in the glory of the name of the Lord his God; and their resting-place will be safe: for now he will be great to the ends of the earth.

⁵And this will be our peace: when the Assyrian comes into our country and his feet are in our land, then we will put up against him seven keepers of the flocks and eight chiefs among men.

⁶And they will make waste the land of Assyria with the sword, and the land of Nimrod with the edge of the sword: he will give us salvation from the Assyrian when he comes into our country, when his feet come inside the limit of our land.

⁷And the rest of Jacob will be among the mass of peoples like dew from the Lord, like showers on the grass, which may not be kept back by man, or be waiting for the sons of men.

⁸And the rest of Jacob will be among the nations, in the middle of the mass of peoples, like a lion among the beasts of the woods, like a young lion among the flocks of sheep: if he goes through, they will be crushed under foot and pulled to bits, and there will be no saviour.

⁹Your hand is lifted up against those who are against you, and all your haters will be cut off.

¹⁰And it will come about in that day, says the Lord, that I will take away your horses from you, and will give your war-carriages to destruction:

¹¹I will have the towns of your land cut off and all your strong places pulled down:

¹²I will put an end to your use of secret arts, and you will have no more readers of signs:

¹³And I will have your images and your pillars cut off from you; and you will no longer give worship to the work of your hands.

¹⁴I will have your Asherahs pulled up from among you: and I will send destruction on your images.

¹⁵And my punishment will be effected on the nations with such burning wrath as they have not had word of.

Micah 6

¹Give ear now to the words of the Lord: Up! put forward your cause before the mountains, let your voice be sounding among the hills.

²Give ear, O you mountains, to the Lord's cause, and take note, you bases of the earth: for the Lord has a cause against his people, and he will take it up with Israel.

³O my people, what have I done to you? how have I been a weariness to you? give answer against me.

⁴For I took you up out of the land of Egypt and made you free from the prison-house; I sent before you Moses, Aaron, and Miriam.

⁵O my people, keep in mind now what was designed by Balak, king of Moab, and the answer which Balaam, son of Beor, gave him; the events, from Shittim to Gilgal, so that you may be certain of the upright acts of the Lord.

⁶With what am I to come before the Lord and go with bent head before the high God? am I to come before him with burned offerings, with young oxen a year old?

⁷Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of sheep or with ten thousand rivers of oil? am I to give my first child for my wrongdoing, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?

⁸He has made clear to you, O man, what is good; and what is desired from you by the Lord; only doing what is right, and loving mercy, and walking without pride before your God.

⁹The voice of the Lord is crying out to the town: Give ear, you tribes and the meeting of the town.

¹⁰Am I to let the stores of the evil-doer go out of my memory, and the short measure, which is cursed?

¹¹Is it possible for me to let wrong scales and the bag of false weights go without punishment?

¹²For its men of wealth are cruel, and its people have said what is not true, and their tongue is false in their mouth.

¹³So I have made a start with your punishment; I have made you waste because of your sins.

¹⁴You will have food, but not enough; your shame will be ever with you: you will get your goods moved, but you will not take them away safely; and what you do take away I will give to the sword.

¹⁵You will put in seed, but you will not get in the grain; you will be crushing olives, but your bodies will not be rubbed with the oil; and you will get in the grapes, but you will have no wine.

¹⁶For you have kept the laws of Omri and all the works of the family of Ahab, and you have been guided by their designs: so that I might make you a cause of wonder and your people a cause of hisses; and the shame of my people will be on you.

Micah 7

¹Sorrow is mine! for I am as when they have got in the summer fruits, like the last of the grapes: there is nothing for food, not even an early fig for my desire.

²The good man is gone from the earth, there is no one upright among men: they are all waiting secretly for blood, every man is going after his brother with a net.

³Their hands are made ready to do evil; the ruler makes requests for money, and the judge is looking for a reward; and the great man gives decisions at his pleasure, and the right is twisted.

⁴The best of them is like a waste plant, and their upright ones are like a wall of thorns. Sorrow! the day of their fate has come; now will trouble come on them.

⁵Put no faith in a friend, do not let your hope be placed in a relation: keep watch on the doors of your mouth against her who is resting on your breast.

⁶For the son puts shame on his father, the daughter goes against her mother and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man's haters are those of his family.

⁷But as for me, I am looking to the Lord; I am waiting for the God of my salvation: the ears of my God will be open to me.

⁸Do not be glad because of my sorrow, O my hater: after my fall I will be lifted up; when I am seated in the dark, the Lord will be a light to me.

⁹I will undergo the wrath of the Lord, because of my sin against him; till he takes up my cause and does what is right for me: when he makes me come out into the light, I will see his righteousness;

¹⁰And my hater will see it and be covered with shame; she who said to me, Where is the Lord your God? my eyes will see their desire effected on her, now she will be crushed under foot like the dust of the streets.

¹¹A day for building your walls! in that day will your limits be stretched far and wide.

¹²In that day they will come to you from Assyria and the towns of Egypt, and from Egypt even to the River, and from sea to sea and from mountain to mountain.

¹³But the land will become a waste because of its people, as the fruit of their works.

¹⁴Keep your people safe with your rod, the flock of your heritage, living by themselves in the woods in the middle of Carmel: let them get their food in Bashan and Gilead as in the past.

¹⁵As in the days when you came out from the land of Egypt, let us see things of wonder.

¹⁶The nations will see and be shamed because of all their strength; they will put their hands on their mouths, their ears will be stopped.

¹⁷They will take dust as their food like a snake, like the things which go flat on the earth; they will come shaking with fear out of their secret places: they will come with fear to the Lord our God, full of fear because of you.

¹⁸Who is a God like you, offering forgiveness for evil-doing and overlooking the sins of the rest of his heritage? he does not keep his wrath for ever, because his delight is in mercy.

¹⁹He will again have pity on us; he will put our sins under his feet: and you will send all our sins down into the heart of the sea.

²⁰You will make clear your good faith to Jacob and your mercy to Abraham, as you gave your oath to our fathers from times long past.