Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Micah 1:10-16

One starting at verse 10. Hopefully by now you’re getting used to where that is in the list of the minor prophets. Remember Jonah is the book that speaks to Nineveh’s need to repent. Micah speaks of Assyria and Nineveh’s judgment upon God’s people. And then the book that follows Micah, Nahum, speaks of God’s judgment upon Nineveh.

Micah, the first chapter, verses 10-16. Micah 1:10-16: “Declare ye not at Gath, weeping not at all in the house of Afra, thyself in the dust. Pass ye away, thou inhabitant of Saphir, having thy shame naked. Inhabitant of Zaanan came not, came not forth in the morning of Bethazil. He shall receive of you his standing. For the inhabitant of Maroth waited carefully for good, but evil came down from the Lord unto the gate of Jerusalem.

“O thou inhabitant of Lachish, bind the chariot to the swift beast. She is the beginning of the sin to the daughter of Zion, for the transgressions of Israel were found in thee. Therefore shalt thou give presence to Moresheth Gath. The houses of Achzib shall be a lie to the kings of Israel. Yet will I bring an heir unto thee, O inhabitant of Mareshah.

“He shall come unto Adullam the glory of Israel. Make thee bald and pull thee for thy delicate children. Enlarge thy baldness as the eagle, for they are gone into captivity from thee.”

The younger children may be dismissed now to go down to their Sabbath schools.

We continue this morning, going through our series through the book of Micah. You know, when I first started studying this a couple months ago, I read a quote by Martin Luther. I don’t remember how it goes exactly, but he said about the minor prophets something about how the prophets spoke in queer, weird ways that one couldn’t hardly tell what they were talking about from their manner of speech. And sometimes that’s the way we approach some of the prophets, particularly some of the minor prophets.

But I think as we go through this book of Micah slowly, we’ll see that there is continuity, there’s a development of a theme here, and all these things work right together. That’s particularly true this morning, very obviously. Remember we began several weeks ago by talking about the introduction to the book of Micah, saying it’s a covenant word, a sure word from God, a pure word that we’re to attend to and to hear. And the very prophecy itself begins in verse two with *shama*—here, pay attention, this is important stuff. We talked in those first few verses about covenantal judgment, about how judgment was going to come upon the whole world.

But the judgment would begin with the house of God. It would begin with the northern kingdom and then the southern kingdom. And they, that is, because they are the covenantal head of the nations, as it were. They’re to send out rivers of life. When they send out rivers of pollution, they’re judged by God with ungodly nations. Then the ungodly nations themselves, more polluted than they would have been otherwise, are then judged by God as well.

And so, as I said, Micah is followed by Nahum. And the judgment that comes upon the northern and southern kingdoms as a result of this prophecy and other prophecies—these are obedient accordance to these prophecies. That is, then God then turns his full wrath upon the Assyrians themselves and upon Nineveh in judgment. So Micah is a book about worldwide judgment, beginning with the house of God and beginning with the capital cities as well.

The capital cities are the descriptions of the covenantal heads of the two nations because there’s sin found in the capital cities. So the covenantal nations are judged by God.

And last week we talked about the verses that talked about Samaria’s judgment. Specifically, God then says there’s judgment coming into the world. The judgment coming to the northern and the southern kingdom, the basis of Samaria and Jerusalem sin, and then he goes on then to get more specific in terms of the court sentence that he has declared and its breadth and bringing it to be. Then he goes into the next few verses of the middle of first chapter of Micah when he talks about the judgment that comes upon Samaria, how Samaria has an incurable wound. And so God declares through Micah that city will fall—and fall it did, in 721 BC, conquered by the Assyrians. And we said that Samaria’s judgment, Samaria’s fall, was a warning to the southern tribes, a warning to Jerusalem, and it’s a warning to our country as well.

And then God now moves in the verses we’ll look at this morning—he moves to the judgment that comes upon the southern kingdom then, and the judgment that comes down from God upon unto the very gate of Jerusalem itself. And so that’s the context of what we’re talking about this morning.

It’s important to remember that a constant theme throughout the book of Micah is idolatrous worship being the basis for God’s judgment. We’ll see next week how that idolatrous worship then turns into violations of the second tablet as well. But remember, the judgment begins because of false worship, syncretism in terms of worship.

And we talked last week about the verse from Jeremiah that says you’re not to boast in your riches, your strength, your wisdom. If you’re going to boast, boast that you know God, that you understand and know him, because he is the one who gives us all these things to use for his purposes.

The northern kingdom and the southern kingdom were idolatrous. They trust in their material possessions. They trusted in their national defense capabilities. They trusted in their own wisdom. And so we live in the context of an idolatrous nation today that trusts in material success, that trusts in its economy. And some people think the economy is more important than national defense. And other people say national defense is more important than the economy.

Both these things have become idols to the vast majority of our country. And then there’s a third idol of wisdom. Of course, education being the tool that will save us apart from Jesus Christ. And so that’s another idolatry in our country.

It’s good, not improper, that we see these things in the nation about us. But it’s important that we see these things in our own lives—that we don’t trust our arm of strength, our wisdom, our ability to educate our children. If we see those things as somehow removed from God and his providence, it’s so easy to fall into a position of natural privilege based upon our baptisms, the way that the Israelites fell into natural privileged types of thinking based upon their circumcision. “God won’t judge us, will he?” We saw that quoted in the book of Micah. We’ll see it later as well.

It’s important to realize that we are who we are today as a result of God’s grace and mercy. Unconditional election is taught clearly in the scriptures. He elects us not on the basis of who we are or what talents we bring to him, but on the basis of his sovereign call. When we slip away from thinking of those things in those terms, we fall into idolatry.

One of the commentators dealing with the section of scripture we’re talking about this morning, John Marsh, had his section of commentary on this with the term “cry havoc.” And that’s a good designation for what will be described in the verses that we read this morning as we go through them a little slower. Cry havoc. There’s judgment coming to the very gate of Israel—very gate of Jerusalem, rather—and it will prove disastrous. And there is a cry of havoc throughout the land.

The passage of scripture is marked by a series of puns and word plays in the Hebrew that we cannot, probably certainly, fully understand or appreciate apart from a knowledge of the Hebrew. And we’ll try to point out some of these things in brief form.

But I guess you realize that in the writing of this prophecy there are different types of word plays. Sometimes the city has a name that means something specifically, and the word play will be based upon the meaning of that town name. Sometimes the name will sound like another word that indicates the judgment to come upon it.

And so it’ll be that way. There’s several different literary devices that Micah uses in these particular verses 10-16—the prophecies of the judgment to come to the southern kingdom.

I guess one person said that, for instance, an example of some of the puns being used would be that they pressed on at Preston. If you had a city named Preston in your region, “they pressed on at Preston.” In other words, it doesn’t have to be based on the name of the city itself, but it can sound like that name, the judgment itself. And so the enemy would press on at Preston. Or, I suppose, maybe if Ashland in southern Oregon—we could say that Ashland will become an ashland; they’ll roll themselves in ashes, that sort of thing.

So that’s what we’re going to be talking about primarily this morning. But first, it starts not with a play on words. The first that he declared—verse 10 begins with “Declare ye not at Gath, weeping not at all.”

Okay. And this is the first point of your outlines that I hope that you have before us. The point is: the death of the nation is lamented here. This verse, “Declare ye not at Gath, weeping not at all,” is a quotation from 2 Samuel 1:20. 2 Samuel 1:20 is David’s song of lament—a chant. Actually, the scriptures say he chanted this lamentation over the death of Jonathan and of Saul.

And so Micah begins this prophecy relating to the southern kingdom with chanting the same, or saying the same thing, that David said upon the death of Saul and Jonathan.

Now, it’s important to remember, of course, that this was a great calamity that David was bewailing and bemoaning for the nation. The king, in a very real sense, is the covenantal head of the nation. When the king falls, it’s a picture of the death of the entire nation.

Remember when we looked several weeks ago—or several months ago now—about the light that’s said to be a blessing from God when we have oil in our lamps, and the scriptures say that David was the light of the nation. The men wouldn’t let him go out to war after a while when he got older because they didn’t want the light of Israel to go out. He represented the entire nation.

And so Saul, even though he had become a wicked king—he had turned into a Philistine, in effect, and into a servant of Satan instead of a servant of God—shortly before his death, of course, consulting an actual witch, bringing up the prophet from the dead, Samuel, and everything, he had really turned to worshiping Satan. And yet still he was the king of the nation, that he represented the nation.

And so David lamented the death of the nation, in effect. And so when Micah begins his prophecy to the southern tribes now with this quotation, he immediately informs them that this is a tremendous calamity coming. We’re talking about the death of a nation here. And that’s just what he then will describe. It’s even a worse calamity than what David had bemoaned. However, because you know in David’s time there was another king himself—been anointed by God—and there would be a resurrection almost immediately, as it were, in the term of, in the speaking in terms of David’s becoming the new king.

But in the southern kingdom there was no such resurrection prophesied by Micah, at least not at this point. There will be eventually in this prophecy. So it’s a great calamity that he tells them. Additionally, there may be some indication here from the term Gath of what’s to come. There’s some dispute among scholars as to what Gath actually meant. The word itself, well, but some believe it meant wine press.

And so we know that would be a good picture of God’s wrath to come upon the nation—that it’s a wine press, crushing, as it were, the grapes and separating out the good and the bad.

Gath was, of course, one of the five principal Philistine cities and was formerly wholly of the Anakim and of Goliath of giants. And so Gath plays an important part of the history of Israel as well. The ark of the covenant, after it was taken over by the Philistines, was first put in God, and they had problems there in terms of it beating up on their idols. Then they put the ark of the covenant in Gath, and that was when God brought plague upon the people. And so they had to then move it on to Ekron. The Philistines did.

Now it’s kind of interesting here, by the way, in terms of remembering what we’re going to be talking about here. We’re going to be talking about the invasion of an opposing force—new Philistines, as it were—the Assyrians and their destruction of the people of God and their rolling over and conquering all these people. Right in the very first part here, it reminds them of Gath where God needed no help from soldiers to defend himself against the Philistines.

The ark of the covenant of God’s special presence was enough in itself, of course, to wreak havoc upon the Philistines and to accomplish deliverance, as it were, for the ark itself and for God’s manifestation on the earth. And so right away there’s a call to rely not in our own strength—the strength of man—but rely upon God’s presence with the people and his blessing.

Now, one other, several other reasons. So one reason—well, let’s see—there are several reasons also why people would say that the weeping is not to be declared at Gath. In David’s original lament, David said don’t weep at all. Don’t declare it in Gath, the Philistine city, because our enemies then will be encouraged in terms of their mocking God and taunting him and in terms of them bringing more destruction upon us. So the idea was: when you have a national disaster, don’t go broadcasting it.

And that may be what’s intended here. But I think maybe some other commentators are probably more correct to the point when they say that really isn’t at play here because the Assyrians are coming in. They’re going to take over the whole nation. There’s not much more that could be done to them. And but what probably is implied here instead is that while mourning and lamentation is appropriate—we’ll get to that toward the end of the section (we talked about it last week)—yet the devastation would be so large upon the nation here, the southern kingdom, that is, the devastation would be so large that the normal things such as mourning and lamenting would be done away with in terms of shock.

The shock of the people would cause them to even forget, or not to mourn itself. And we know that in war-ravaged countries, that’s actually the case. People have no idea what’s happened to them at a certain point in time. And so there’s a tremendous declaration here that there’s going to be ravaging and destruction brought about upon the people in terms of judgment from God.

Okay, that’s the first section. The next section describes a series of 10 cities in which these cities’ names are used as declarations of God’s judgment upon the southern kingdom.

And I’ve titled this section, “Something Wicked This Way Cometh.” Because what Micah is setting up in the minds of the people of Jerusalem that he’s prophesying to is—he’s setting up this picture of this invading army getting closer and closer and moving, as it were, around the nation, cleaning up all the other fortified cities and the cities of defense and whatnot. And that then are going to camp right at the door of Jerusalem.

And so the opposing force, ruthless, ravaging savages as it were—the Syrians, the Ninevites—are going to come and going to wreak havoc in the land. And that’s what he’s telling the southern kingdom.

The fact that we have 10 cities here may indicate a fullness of judgment. Ten being a number of fullness and completion. There’s a completion, a fullness of judgment is to come upon the nation. Overall, this talk, I’ve entitled it “March to Jerusalem.”

Sennacherib was the head of the Assyrians at the time. I believe that this thing is prophesying about, which was in 701 BC. Remember, in 721, Samaria fell, and in 701 BC, Sennacherib invades the southern kingdom and then begins to go through there and conquer various cities, going right to the doorstep of Jerusalem itself.

And by the way, these cities all lie to the west and not to the north of Jerusalem. And it is a historical fact that when Sennacherib did indeed invade, he did not come from the north. He came back through. He conquered some other people down toward the south and the west and then he brought his armies back through. And so these cities, while not necessarily laid out intentionally in the order of his march, do indicate the general direction from which he indeed came.

So this isn’t just symbols here we’re talking about. Okay, these are actual towns that suffered actual destruction at the hands of Sennacherib.

And the first town that’s mentioned is dust town. And I’ve given all these names in your outline. It’ll be a little easier to pronounce than the names we’re confronted with. And it will help you to understand too how this word play is occurring. In the house of Afra, “hold thyself in the dust.” And Afra means dust. And so the actual terminology here is Beth Afra. Remember, Bethlehem is “house of bread.” Beth Afra is “house of dust.”

And so this one city was actually named “house of dust.” And he says in dust town, then, in the house of dust, the city of dust, “roll thyself in the dust.”

Now, to roll oneself in the dust, as most of you probably are cognizant of, it’s a sign of great mourning and lamentation. It’s a sign that there has been a judgment by God upon that people—they come to repentance and they roll in the dust in their mourning and lamentations. And beyond that, of course, the sign is that man is, of course, mortal—from ashes to ashes, from dust to dust.

And so when a man would get down in the dust or throw dust on his head in terms of repenting and lamenting before God, it’s a sign that death had come upon him, upon his head. And here it’s not just a standing up and throwing dust on yourself. It’s getting down in the dust and rolling around in it.

And so there’s a death to death, dust to dust motif being played out here. And so he’s saying that in this first city, in dust town, people will be rolling in dust. Death comes to the covenant nation. And as a result of death, great mourning is one of the signs of the advancing troops of Sennacherib.

Secondly, he says that “pass ye away, thou inhabitants of Saphir, having thy shame naked.” Now, the word Saphir, or Saphir here, means pleasantness or beauty. And so I’ve called this fair town. Fair town goes away naked and ashamed. The town that was beautiful—some in some aspect that we may not be aware of, perhaps either in the inhabitants, the way it was built, or whatever—fair, the town of pleasantness and beauty is stripped and sent away naked and shamed.

Now that’s a picture. As we talked last week, about going into captivity and throughout the scriptures you’ll see that, for instance, Job is one place where the captives are stripped naked, except for a loin cloth perhaps, and led away in chains. And so this fair town, as it were, the inhabitants of fair town encounter shame and nakedness before the invading troops.

Third, the third city is Zaanan. We read: “the inhabitants of Zaanan came not forth.” Now, Zaanan apparently means, or implies, going out. And this is a city known for the fact that it was a going-out city. It would, in times of national defense if required, go out and meet the enemy. It would go out in terms of defense—okay—and to go forward, marching, as it were.

So we call this march town. The town was known for its marching out and going into battle. But here, there is such fear and terror that strikes upon the land that the inhabitants of Zaanan came not forth. They stayed holed up, as it were, in march town, not marching out. Okay?

And so there is such fear and terror, as it were, that strikes their heart. They remain indoors. And we know, again, from historical accounts of warfare that often happens. It doesn’t do the people any good, necessarily, to stay indoors like that, to stay all locked up, instead of going out. The best defense is a good offense, of course, but still these people are flouted to such fear and trembling by the judgment that comes from the Assyrian army headed by Sennacherib that they come not out in the day of battle.

They are fearful and stay locked up within their own doors. They don’t go out to help. Additionally, of course, they don’t go out in terms of escape either. So march town becomes a place of great fear and terror.

Neighbor town is a bad neighbor. “In the morning of Bethazil, he shall receive of you his standing.” Okay, Beth Ezel apparently replies “house of nearness, near house” or “near place.” And the idea is that if somebody’s near to you, then they’re supposed to be a good neighbor. And, again, in times of trouble, they would be able to be a good neighbor and assist you in whatever way you needed assistance.

And as a result, they’d provide foundations for the nation to have good neighbors, to have people join together in national defense. And here at Bethazil, “the morning of Bethazil, he shall receive of you his standing.” And so the idea is that the invading troops, Sennacherib and the Assyrians, will receive their permanence from near town. The towns that Bethazil are near will not be helped by them, but instead the enemy will be helped by them because they will conquer them.

And so we have then in near town a bad neighbor. Occupation by the foreign troops is indicated here. The foundation of near town becomes taken over by the Assyrians.

Fifth, bitter town reaps bitterness. “For the inhabitant of Maroth waited carefully for good, but evil came down from the Lord under the gate of Jerusalem.”

Maroth here means bitterness. And so this town is named bitterness. And as a result, Micah gives us a picture of their ultimate bitterness, as it were, in that they wait for good. They wait patiently and carefully for good to come to them. And yet they only receive, for all their waiting and for all their careful consideration of good and careful wanting of it, they only receive evil.

And so they are—they have become even further embittered in their bitter town. Bitter town reaps bitterness. Disappointment, grief, and bitterness comes to them. And that comes to them from God himself. Because the scriptures go on to say that the evil that came down was from the Lord under the gate of Jerusalem. And that links us back, by the way, to the pictures we saw first in terms of national judgment and then last week in terms of judgment upon Samaria.

Remember, the national judgment says that God comes down upon the mountain—mountains tread the mountains. They run, as it were, with rivers of blood. We talked about the scriptures that show that being talked about in the first few verses. The valleys are clefted, as it were. There’s this downward motion of God’s judgment and bringing the exalted things, the exalted nations, and those that would make themselves proud, against [them]—down, abasing them and bringing them low.

And then in terms of Samaria, that actually happens. Of course, the picture used to describe Samaria’s fall is that its stones are torn down. Remember, we talked about Jerusalem, the temple of Jerusalem, “not one stone is left upon another.” There’s this downward movement. It’s a picture of God’s judgment both coming down from heaven upon the people. And it’s also a picture, of course, of their being laid low by God.

And so it’s important to recognize we have affirmation of that here as well. There’s a reminder in the midst of these 10 cities, at the end of the fifth city, that this evil that’s being described—and so far we’ve talked about great mourning, we’ve talked about the violation of fair town and how they go away naked and shameful, we’ve talked about how there’s terror in the town that was brave when normally march out, we’ve talked about how there’s occupation in the town that normally would assist its neighbors, and we’ve talked about there’s great bitterness in a town that waited for good.

And all of this picture so far that we have of these first five cities of God’s judgment upon the people and of his great wrath upon the nation is said to be coming forth from God’s hand in this same downward fashion. The evil came down from the Lord unto the very gate of Jerusalem.

The sixth town I’ve titled strong town or rebel town. Verse 13 reads: “Oh thou inhabitants of Lachish, bind thy chariot to the swift beast. She is the beginning of sin to the daughter of Zion, for the transgressions of Israel were found in thee.”

Now, Lachish was another large city. Many of these cities we’ve talked about were basically unknown in terms of historic archaeology or in terms of the scripture. Some of them are mentioned in other portions of scripture; many of them are not. But Lachish is—it’s a fairly substantial, and it has a history in terms of the history of Israel and of the people of God.

Specifically important for the context that we’ll be talking about, Rehoboam rebuilt Lachish into one of his 15 defense centers, and Lachish then became one of the fortified cities that was important for the defense of the entire southern kingdom. It may have been the first then of the what’s become known as the chariot brigade. Chariots and horses were stored in these 15 fortified cities. They were double-walled cities for national defense. And these chariots, then, these chariot brigades, would come out of these cities in time of defense, or also to wage offensive warfare.

Now, remember that horses were not to be multiplied by the rulers. And yet Rehoboam did continue to multiply horses and weapons of warfare. Now, the reason why horses were not to be multiplied is that, well, among other things, they may indicate offensive warfare instead of defensive warfare, which was specifically prohibited by God once they had been brought into the nation. Additionally, horses could replace God as the source of a nation’s reliance upon for safety.

And here at Lachish, I think that’s certainly one of the things that’s being talked about. Lachish was a sign of the nation’s national defense. It was strong town in that it had all these great chariots and the chariot brigade and the double-walled city from which God’s people would send forth armies. But there was an indication here that they began to rely upon the strength of those chariots and upon God who would help them and be their national defense.

Additionally, horses were normally obtained from foreign nations and quite often from the nation of Egypt. And so there were foreign entanglements here. There was syncretism in terms of the alliances that would be built between Israel and between Egypt. And indeed, in the judges we’re talking about in this period of time, on several different occasions, Egypt was always there to try to entice either the northern kingdom or the southern kingdom to rely upon it and its strength and not upon Jehovah, God, for help against an invading army.

Hezekiah himself was lured into this on two separate occasions. And Isaiah—remember, we talked last week about Isaiah—went around stripped and naked for 3 years as a sign to the people that captivity was coming for the Egyptians. The point of that was because Hezekiah was being tempted to form an alliance with Egypt.

And so these horse, chariot brigades that are found in Lachish are a symbol of all these things, and they should bring all these things to our mind. And I’m sure they brought them to the mind of the nation of the city at Jerusalem in terms of why God’s judgment would come upon Lachish.

Additionally, why Lachish was the beginning of sin to the daughter of Zion—”for the transgressions of Israel were found in thee.” And some people think one of the transgressions that may have been talked about here was this reliance upon their own might for national defense, and also reliance upon foreign, pagan nations such as Egypt for help to thwart the enemies that would come upon the nation, instead of relying upon God, like Isaiah continued to try to counsel the people to do.

Now, this city, when it fell, was apparently a very important victory for the Assyrians. Sennacherib used scenes depicting the conquest of Lachish and the removal of its citizens to decorate his great palace at Nineveh. We know that because these very reliefs that Sennacherib had made—relief pictures of this captivity of Lachish and the leading away of their population as captives—and those signs of his victory. These reliefs are still on display at the British Museum.

So we actually have historical records from this period of time that depicts the destruction of Lachish and how important that was for the Assyrians and for Sennacherib.

One other interesting fact of archaeology: the ruins of a temple were found in Lachish in 1968. And so, while certainly the reliance upon national defense and Egypt were part of the sins of Lachish, additionally there’s now some evidence to indicate that idolatry also began to take root in terms of idolatrous worship with a false temple built in Lachish.

And so again, we talked last week about how the northern kingdom’s basic sin and its founding was this development of a separate worship system with the two golden calves apart from the true worship of God that took place in Jerusalem. At that point of time, by the way, the southern kingdom then, and all the Levites, moved out of the northern kingdom. They came back to the southern kingdom where they could worship God correctly.

And so it’s indication that Lachish also might have been the beginning of sin—the transgressions of Israel that were found in her—may well have been this syncretism in terms of worship and this false temple that they built as well.

But in any event, Lachish was strong town and it was rebel town. The word for transgressions of Israel—we said a couple weeks ago that word is specifically has connotations of revolt and rebellion against God. So in Lachish we have revolt and rebellion against God. We have a false reliance upon their own national defense and upon foreign alliances as well. And so judgment comes to them.

The word Lachish means “to the steeds.” And that probably is why the construction here that Micah uses is “to bind the chariot to the swift beast.” You normally think of binding the swift beast to the chariot. But to complete the word play, he says “bind the chariot to the swift beast”—bind the chariot, Lachish, in a sense, there.

And so the point is here that they’re to bind the chariots to the swift beasts so that they can escape, but they don’t escape. And we know that historically, as I said, Sennacherib led away thousands of people from Lachish—both young and old, both men and women. Okay? So strong town gets routed, rebel town is fallen.

Seventhly, in verse 14: “Therefore shalt thou give presence to Moresheth Gath.”

Now, remember, Moresheth Gath was the hometown of Micah himself, so he was certainly familiar with these towns of which he spoke in this particular region to the west of Jerusalem in the plain known as the Shephelah. He was familiar with this area. And here he talks about his own hometown.

“Therefore shalt thou give presence to Moresheth Gath.” And I’ve named Moresheth Gath wife town. *Morash* sounds like the Hebrew word for betrothal, indicating a betrothal gift—a gift that a father would give his daughter when she got married. And so in a sense the name then has connotations of betrothal, marriage, and then the present that would accompany the marriage as well.

And what Micah is saying here is that there shall, “therefore shalt thou give presence to Moresheth Gath.” The point is that Moresheth Gath is now going to be married to a new husband, as it were. [It] was supposed to be married to Jehovah God, but it fell away from Jehovah God, and as a result it now became married, as it were, to Assyria. So Sennacherib would be the new husband, and so there would be an exchange of wedding presents, as it were, because she would be given to a new husband. And this husband is not a good husband. This husband is a violator husband, a pagan husband. And so the Assyrians would create violations in the town known as wife town or betrothal town.

Eight: “The houses of Achzib shall be a lie to the kings of Israel.”

Achzib sounds like the word for falsehood. In Jeremiah 15:18, we read this word where it’s used to depict a wadi—a flood stream that would flood with water on occasion, and particularly in the winter when there were lots of rains. But then, when it was most needed for water for the person who was parched, when he came to this part of the land, it would be dry in the summertime. And so it was a false stream, as it were.

And Achzib is named after that sort of place—after one of these wadis that would be a disappointment to people who came to it looking for relief. And so Achzib, then, who is basically a lying town, is another way to put that, then, or deceit town.

[It] then lies, it says, and we don’t know what this means exactly. “The houses of Achzib shall be a lie to the kings of Israel.” We don’t know the historical way that worked itself out, but again it’s an indication that there is deceit in the nation, in the cities of the nation, and in the nation itself. Again, judgment from God is being evidenced here.

9:1-15: “Yet will I bring an heir unto thee, O inhabitants of Mareshah.”

Mareshah is related to the name, related rather to the word that indicates heir or possessor. And so here we have heir town, as it were, possessor, as it were. And the possessor, the town that’s supposed to indicate that it has the inheritance, it has the heir, as it were, will instead be possessed by another. “I will bring an heir unto thee”—Assyria. Of course, the marauding, pagan troops of Assyria and Nineveh come to Mareshah. It becomes their possession there. So heir town becomes another possession. We have material ruin being talked about here in terms of there becoming now the inheritance of an ungodly nation.

And finally, the 10th city mentioned is Adullam. “He shall come unto Adullam, the glory of Israel.”

Now, this list of cities began with a reference to Gath and a quotation from David, and it ends now with Adullam, which is a reference that should remind us of 1 Samuel 22:1. Let’s just turn to that real quickly.

1 Samuel 22:1: “David therefore departed thence and escaped to the cave of Adullam. And when his brethren and all his father’s house heard it, they went down thither to him. And everyone that was in distress and everyone that was in debt and everyone that was discontented gathered themselves unto him, and he became a captain over them, and there were with him about 400 men.”

Adullam was the cave that David escaped to, running for his life from Saul. And so he was, as it were, the glory of Israel at that point in time. He was anointed. And so the 10th city reference here, Adullam, in verse 15, indicates that the glory of Israel—and most people take that to mean the kings of Israel, the rulers in Israel, the rich men, perhaps, of the priests—that these men would have to then go to the caves of Adullam again, where there were massive caves, by the way, and lots of hiding places. They would go to the caves of Adullam the way David had, seeking escape from the judgment of God through the Assyrians.

So refuge town offers refuge, and the kings and the wealthy hide themselves in holes in the ground—again, a sign, as it were, of death from God.

So we have in these cities tremendous devastation, tremendous judgment from God. The section begins and ends with a reference to David. David’s city, Jerusalem, is to be surrounded by the enemy. The nation is to die, in effect. Great times of trouble were being indicated by the prophet Micah, leading to a new and greater David, of course—Jesus Christ—to come in the future.

Remember, we said that part of this whole pattern of the history of redemption, as we see it sketched out in the Old Testament and in the historical records, is that these nations were brought to destruction by God, taken into captivity, preparing then eventually for the coming of Jesus Christ according to the prophecy of Daniel—70 times 7 years later, 490 years later—when Jesus would come and would establish the true temple and the true nation, which would be the church.

And so this is part of that whole process. David was a picture of that. And so we have this judgment upon apostate southern kingdom with bookends, as it were, references to David to remind the people that even in the midst of all this, God’s will is at work. There’s a cleansing and a purifying that’s going to happen here. There’s a judgment upon an apostate nation that eventually Messiah might come, the greater David.

The passage then ends with verse 16: “Make thee bald and pull thee for thy delicate children. Enlarge thy baldness as the eagle, for they are gone into captivity from thee.”

The summation of the passage is captivity, exile, the unthinkable horror of not being just killed in battle, but instead being an exile or a captive to a ruthless, pagan governor. These are two couplets. It says, “Make thee bald and pull thee for thy delicate children. Enlarge thy baldness as the eagle, for they are gone into captivity from thee.”

So the delicate children are these cities and the inhabitants of these cities round about Jerusalem. Jerusalem is seen as the mother then of the southern kingdom. And all these children, the delicate children—this pampered children is one way that can be read—are taken into captivity. And as a result of that, the mother is to weep for her children. Jerusalem is to weep for her children and show signs of mourning.

So Sennacherib said specifically, he said, “I made to come out 200,150 people—young and old, male and female—and counted them as the spoils of war.” So we know that captivity and exile did indeed occur. According to Sennacherib’s count, 200,000 of the covenant people went into exile and captivity. The worst kind of judgment from God. You can picture in your mind being booted off the land, and not just being booted off the land, being taken into exile.

Some of them going to Nineveh itself, a place of great torture and of great butchery and savagery. So this is not a pretty picture. This is a picture of advancing judgment from God. And as a result of that, the people are called upon to lament, to shave their heads in as signs of mourning, to make themselves bald, to cut themselves, cut their hair off, to pull, the means to shave one’s self’s head and one’s beard off, for the delicate children, to go into massive mourning and lamentation because of the great judgments from God that had come upon the nation for their sin.

Now, the picture here reminds them, of course, of the signs of mourning that were normally these were very common of this being made bald and shaving and this sort of thing. By the way, the term there, “enlarge thy baldness as the eagle”—the word there for eagle is the same word used for either eagle or vulture, and probably refers to a vulture, because they didn’t have bald-headed eagles in that part of the world, but they did have vultures, and the same word is used for them.

So a better translation would be vulture. And of course the vulture is bald on top.

Now, it’s interesting that God’s law tells us specifically in Leviticus 21:5 and Deuteronomy 14:1, there’s specific prohibitions against mourning excessively. By way of side comment, Leviticus 19:27 that refers to the rounding of the corners of one’s beard—how that’s against God’s law. If you look at those three verses in conjunction—Leviticus 19:27 and 28, Leviticus 21:5, and Deuteronomy 14:1—it becomes apparent that these were all signs of excessive mourning that were prohibited to the covenant people because they were people of life.

And so when they’re told now to actually cut all their hair off and to shave their beards off and whatnot, it’s a sign of tremendous judgment from God. Tremendous judgment and cursing from him. And it may indeed be a sign here that these people become no longer covenant people. They no longer are bound by these laws of no excessive mourning. They haven’t become a people—they’re no longer a people of life. They become a nation of death and destruction. And they’re called to recognize that fact by going into mourning.

Micah himself, of course, had mourned in much the same fashion as we read about last week. And it’s important to remember that when judgment comes upon a nation, still there’s an aspect of mourning that we all should engage ourselves in—this country as well.

Isaiah 20:6. Let’s read that. Isaiah 20:6: “And the inhabitant of this isle shall say in that day, Behold, such is our expectation, whether we flee for help to be delivered from the king of Assyria. And how shall we escape?”

You see, the covenant people, when they’re brought to a full realization of the curses of God upon them through the march of Sennacherib to Jerusalem, through the destruction, through the captivity—the entire southern kingdom that’s being prophesied here by Micah, and which will occur in 701 BC—their only response can be, “How shall we escape?”

And while they’re in Jerusalem, now we know that in spite of the advancing Assyrian army that finally repentance did come to Jerusalem. Remember, we talked about this before: that Hezekiah was told to rely upon God himself by Isaiah. Hezekiah heard that advice. He repented before God with Assyria at his very doorstep, with men yelling out terms of their captivity to Assyria. Yet Hezekiah prayed to God, and God came forth in miraculous fashion and delivered Jerusalem in 701 when the rest of this destruction took place.

Now, we know that 130 years later they would go into captivity to Babylon. The point is that they did hear these things and they recognized. Hezekiah recognized, in the part of the nation, that the only way of escaping this sort of judgment is repentance before God and to rely upon him for his defense. And God then routed the Assyrians without using any soldiers at all of Hezekiah’s troops.

Okay. So that’s the picture that Micah 1, verses 10-16, paints. It follows the worldwide judgment that we’ve talked about. Gets more specific in the middle portions of Micah 1, verses 6-9, that we looked at last week in terms of Samaria’s judgment. And now he gets very specific in terms of judgment on the southern kingdom in verses 10-16.

That specificity of judgment is seen in terms of a recognition that they’re going to have great times of weeping as David had to weep. It will be seen in the fact that these 10 cities would be taken, made captive, as it were, and would—through the names of the 10 cities themselves—indicate the great judgment would come upon the covenant people. [It’s] indicated that there would be captivity in the covenant land.

There would be great mourning in the land in the southern tribes. There would be occupation by the foreign troops. There would be grief, no escape from the horrors to come. They would have the horror of a violator husband—talked about through Moresheth Gath—and it was supposed to be wife town and gets a violator for a husband instead. Material ruin is pictured in the fall of Mareshah. Kings and wealthy hide in holes—described through the use of the term Adullam.

And then there’s great weeping, tremendous lamentation called for—such as would be normally outlawed by the law of God because of the tremendous death and destruction that would come from God’s hand upon the nation.

That’s the picture of Micah 1:10-16. What does all this mean to us? What are some of the lessons we can glean from this passage of Micah and understand that God is telling us through these verses?

Well, first of all, I think we have to say that these verses affirm causality. They affirm the progression of judgment. They affirm that men and nations, individually and also the nations themselves, are not neutral. They move through a series of slow steps either further away from God or further toward God. And in the case of the southern kingdom, they had moved away from God. And God now brings progression of judgment before them.

Little by little, step by step, Assyria comes closer. Sennacherib marches closer and closer to the door of Jerusalem, overthrowing, causing great havoc, destruction, and judgment upon the people as he comes. And so God affirms that there is cause and effect. What people do will have an effect in history. And this cause and effect is worked out in slow, gradual terms. The way that this judgment comes slowly but surely, ever closer and closer to Jerusalem until Jerusalem finally comes to repentance.

Now that’s true in our own lives as well. We read that in Lachish was “the beginning of sin found” because “the transgression of Israel was found in her.” It’s important to recognize that individually and as a nation as well, and in terms of this church, we must root out the very beginnings, the first appearances of evil as we read about in the New Testament. We’re to shun those things. And when we see evil creeping into our lives in little stages like Lachish did, if we’re not quick to root it out, we’ll suffer the judgment of Lachish as well.

Individually, corporately, or nationally, there is progression and causality in the world that we live in.

These verses affirm God’s judgment against apostasy. And it affirms that judgment does indeed begin with the house of God, with the people who have been given great gifts and talents from God. The various material prosperity and national defense the people had were gifts from God. And when used properly under him, our wisdom is a gift and a blessing from God. Yet when used as sources of idolatry to us, it brings God’s judgment upon us.

Third, we must say that this portion of scripture affirms the providential view of history. Many nations do not move, but in God’s universe, the names of the cities that we read through here in very brief fashion, these 10 cities—didn’t just happen to be those called those names. They were those names because of God’s decree and his providence in terms of working that decree out.

Micah came along and did not use common ground in terms of neutral ground. He used the names that God and his providence and decree had given to those cities for that particular purpose—to demonstrate his judgment, his control, his sovereignty in terms of history.