Translation & Sermon by Nate Wilson for Christ The Redeemer Church of Manhattan, KS, 10 November 2024
Removing greyed-out text should bring presentation time down to about 45 minutes
Read
my translation starting with v. 9:
It is the voice of Yahweh
that calls out to the city, so, it is the one who is prudent who
will respect Your reputation. Y’all give heed to the rod; indeed,
who will partner with her? Is there still a house of a wicked man,
treasuries of wickedness, or an upsettingly-short-changed bushel?
Would I come off clean using wicked balance-scales or using a bag of
deceptive weights? Because her rich men have been full of violence
and her residents have spoken falsehood (indeed their tongue is
unreliable in their mouth), so also I Myself will begin to cause
strikes against you – to cause desolation because of your sins.
Verse 9 is very rich, and at the same time it has some ambiguities, so I plan to camp on it a bit. It contains four statements about our relationship with God, all of which revolve around our response to His initiatives to reconcile us to Himself when we have sinned.1
The beginning of verse 9 echoes the beginning of chapter 6, reminding us that this message comes from none other than Yahweh, the one true God. (The “voice of the LORD” is in the emphatic position in the Hebrew grammar of this verse.) And since He is where the message comes from, we had better be paying attention!
The “city” to which he cries out is ostensibly Jerusalem, but by extension it is the church, so we New Testament believers need to pay attention too.
The LORD’s posture, in calling out, welcomes our response. Through the Prophet Micah, He is “calling out” to the community of His people. Micah uses a Hebrew verb here that denotes a greeting. God’s “call” invites a response of a welcoming reply from the people who love God, and that response should be “respectful,” “considering” “who” it is that is “calling!”2
There is a long history that goes back to the translations used by the early church behind the KJV translation “see Him” instead of “fear Him” in the second clause in v.9.
I actually like what the American Jewish Version3 did here; they came up with an English word can mean both “see” and “fear;” they rendered it: “it is wisdom to have regard for Thy name.”
“Seeing,” as in, paying respectful attention, as well as “listening/giving heed,” as well as the emotional response of a healthy “fear” that comes from the realization that we are accountable to God’s authority, these are all the right responses to His initiative to “call” us.
“[A]s soon as we hearken to God, his majesty… must so penetrate all our thoughts as to humble us before him and to constrain us to do him homage.” ~J. Calvin, 1559 AD
The “name” of the LORD, is metonymy for all that He is – His person and reputation. I think what Micah is saying here is that if you have been endowed with “wisdom,” you will recognize the “name/character” of the one true God in this message: His goodness, His purposefulness, His justice, His lovingkindness, and His humble patience – yeah, that’s my God; that’s what He’s like, and that’s why I love Him! That should be how you respond to God’s word when you hear it.
There are two traditions of translating the next phrase: One renders it, “Heed the rod,” and the other renders it, “Listen, O tribe.”
“Tribe” is a figurative meaning of the Hebrew word for “rod,” but in Greek and Latin, there are are two different words for “rod” and for “tribe” and the ancient Greek and Latin versions translated with the word “tribe,” so that’s what the NASB reads too.
The KJV, NIV, and ESV, however, interpreted this Hebrew word (mataeh) according to its more literal meaning of “rod.” An argument in favor of translating it “rod” is that nowhere else does Micah (or any of the other prophets) ever use the word “tribe” to refer to the people of Judah or Israel.
But this is not a textual difference; it is merely a matter of choosing which dictionary definition to use in a translation.
There is a textual difference, however, in this phrase.
In the Hebrew manuscripts available to us, the command to “Listen/give heed” is plural, requiring a plural subject to do the listening, so if the Hebrew manuscripts have been copied accurately, the singular “rod/tribe” can’t be the subject; it has to be to object that the plural subject is listening to.
However, because of the differences between the ways the Jews and the Gentiles have historically handled old Bible manuscripts, the oldest copies of Micah’s book available to us are not in Hebrew, but rather are translations of Micah into Latin, Greek, and Aramaic, and all those ancient translations render the command to “Listen/give heed” in the singular, in which case, the “rod/tribe” could be the subject who is commanded to listen.
The translation, “Listen, O tribe,” is certainly in keeping with Micah’s repeated calls to his people to give heed to God’s word.
But what about the way the Hebrew text and most English Bibles read: “Heed the Rod” – is that consistent with the rest of Scripture? I believe it is.4
First of all, v.13: “Therefore I myself will begin to strike you, to ravage because of your sins.” That is clearly a disciplinary context in which a “rod” would fit naturally.
And the disciplinary “rod” also fits well with what other prophets around Micah’s time wrote, for instance, Isaiah 10:1ff “Woe unto them that decree unrighteous decrees, and to the writers that write perverseness; to turn aside the needy from justice, and to rob the poor of my people of judgment, that widows may be their spoil, and prey upon the fatherless! And what will you all do in the day of visitation, and in the desolation which shall come from far? ... In all this His anger is not turned away, but His hand is stretched out still. Ah, Assyria, the rod of my anger; the staff in their hands is my fury! Against a godless nation [that ‘godless nation’ is, Israel, which has forsaken her God] I send him, and against the people of my wrath I command him, to take spoil and seize plunder, and to tread them down like the mire of the streets…. 24 Therefore thus says the Lord Yahweh Commander of armies: ‘O my people, who dwell in Zion, be not afraid of the Assyrians when they strike with the rod and lift up their staff against you as the Egyptians did. For in a very little while my fury will come to an end, and my anger will be directed to their destruction.’” (NAW)
And indeed, Assyria did send its armies to ravage Micah’s homeland of Judea. Micah is exhorting God’s people to see this attack from the Assyrians in terms of discipline.
And indeed, the Bible frequently depicts God disciplining His people like a father using a spanking rod5. It makes the most sense to me to interpret this phrase as “Give heed to the rod,” in terms of what a child should do when he sees his father coming with the spanking stick: It’s time to stop the rebellion, confess your sin, take your spanking, and find peace with Father again. That’s “heeding the rod.”6
In a national sense, it means realizing that God’s discipline is coming in the form of foreign oppression, so “heeding the rod” means responding to a national emergency by getting right with God rather than continuing to blunder forward in the idolatry which brought on the need for discipline and reconciliation in the first place.
“Hear the rod when it has come, and is actually upon you, and you are sensible of the smart of it; hear what it says to you, what convictions, what counsels, what cautions, it speaks to you.” ~Matthew Henry, 1714 AD
Will you respond with urgency to confess your sin and ask for mercy from Jesus when you realize that God is bringing discipline into your life?
Then you can say with
Biblical characters like David and Job:
“It is good for me
that I have been afflicted, That I may learn Your statutes.”
(Psalm 119:71,
NKJV)
"Behold, happy is the man whom God corrects;
Therefore do not despise the chastening of the Almighty.” (Job
5:17, NKJV)
The final phrase in v.9 is a question: “Who has appointed it/met her?”
The Hebrew verb at the end of Micah 6:9 denotes “meeting.”
In the book of Jeremiah, this Hebrew verb describes a meeting in court,
and in Ezekiel it describes a meeting on the battlefield,
but everywhere else in the Bible, it denotes meeting to form a union – such as a marriage (Ex. 21:8-9) or a military alliance (1 Ki. 8:5, Ps. 48:4).
Its most common use is to denote a “meeting” with God: Exodus 25:22 “And there I will meet with you, and I will speak with you from above the mercy seat, from between the two cherubim which are on the ark of the Testimony, about everything which I will give you in commandment to the children of Israel… 29:42-43 ...at the door of the tabernacle of meeting7 before the LORD, where I will meet you to speak with you. And there I will meet with the children of Israel, and the tabernacle shall be sanctified by My glory… 30:6 ...the ark of the Testimony, before the mercy seat that is over the Testimony, where I will meet with you… 30:36 before the Testimony in the tabernacle of meeting where I will meet with you. ” (NKJV)
However, most English versions of Micah 6:9 translate this word as “appoint,” as in, “to set an appointment,” but I fear this could be misleading, because, in English, it comes off as issuing a command to put something somewhere, which misses the idea of the Hebrew word of “meeting to form a partnership.”
The answer to: “Who makes the appointment to meet?” is God. “Who meets her?” God “meets” with His people to make His covenant with us, attaching us to Him in relationship.
In Hebrew, there is a singular feminine pronoun at the end of verse 9, describing who God is making the appointment with, to form this liaison.
The NASB editors made up a feminine singular word and stuck it in there – the word “time,” but that is not necessary.
Most English versions translate this pronoun with the word “it,” but once again, I fear that this could be misleading because it suggests in English that God has issued a command that an inanimate object be put in a certain place8, which is not what the Hebrew means.
This Hebrew feminine singular pronoun at the end of v.9 matches the feminine singular word for “city” at the beginning of the verse – as well as the feminine singular word for “the one who is wise” in the middle of the verse. This lines up three of the objects with three of the verbs in this verse as being the same party – the people of God represented in Micah’s time as the “daughter of Jerusalem.”
They are the “city” to which the LORD issued the “call;”
they are the “wise daughter” who responds with “regard” for His name and “giving heed” to His “rod” (or, alternately, they are the “tribe” that “listens to” the LORD’s message),
and they are the party with whom God “makes appointments and meets” in order to engage in relationship with them, for they are the ones who will “walk humbly” with Him!
Micah may well be springboarding off his predecessor’s prophecy from Amos 3:3 “Can two walk together, unless they are agreed/have made an appointment/have met and are in league with each other?” (NKJV)
If you want to be in a right relationship with God, you will welcome the Lord who comes to “call” on you, you will show “respect” to Him, you will “listen” to what He has to say (even if it involves a temporary time of unpleasant discipline), and you will long to “meet” with Him and enjoy “walking” with Him.
But if we don’t respond when He comes to call in mercy to reconcile us, He will then come in judgment to reconcile us with justice, and that is what the next verses describe.
Verses 10-12 list seven things that the Jews of Micah’s day were doing that offended God.
Three of the first four are described with the same Hebrew word rasha’, which has to do with being “bad/evil/wicked,” and, while most English versions render those three instances of that adjective with the same word “wicked,” if you happen to be looking at an English version which uses the words “sinful/dishonest/rigged/ill-gotten,” don’t get bogged down in detailed distinctions between the meanings of those different words, because they are all the same word in the original Hebrew, pointing to a common thread of ethical rebellion against God in this list of seven offenses.
The first thing9 in v.10 is an “evil house” or a “house of a wicked man.”
It’s not so much about what is “in” the house as the wickedness of the house itself. (The preposition “in” isn’t there in the original Hebrew.)
Of course, a house is a figure of speech for a family, a community of people. The mere existence of an evil house among God’s people is not O.K. with God.
Psalm 5:4 “Because You are not a god [who] inclines toward wickedness, Evil will not be [Your] guest.” (NAW)
Proverbs 3:33 “The curse of the LORD is on the house of the wicked, But He blesses the home of the just... 14:11 The house of the wicked will be overthrown, But the tent of the upright will flourish… 21:12 The righteous God wisely considers the house of the wicked, Overthrowing the wicked for their wickedness.” (NKJV)
Is anything “evil” tolerated in your home? Anything that God would find offensive which you are allowing to exist unchallenged in your life? Repent of your moral rebellion against God and enter by faith into the righteousness of Jesus Christ, or you will be held accountable for your wickedness when He comes to judge the earth!
The second offense in v.10 is “ill-gotten treasures of wickedness.”
As we saw in chapters 1 and 2 of Micah, Judean landowners and political leaders were taking advantage of people under them, increasing wealth in unjust and exploitative ways at the expense of the poor.
Before Micah, God complained of this in Amos 3:10 “‘For they do not know to do right,’ Says the LORD, ‘Who store up violence and robbery in their palaces.’” (NKJV)
And after Micah, God brought it up again in Jeremiah 5:27 “...their houses are full of deceit. Therefore they have become great and grown rich." (NKJV)
Is there anything in your house which was stolen or taken unjustly from someone else?
That applies, not only to shoplifting and economic oppression, but also to things like time and mileage and expense logs – are you rounding up on your reports (or wasting time) to get paid for more than you have actually contributed to your employer?
God is a God of justice, and He may, in His patience, take a long time before He brings every act to judgment10, but when He does, He will not leave any fraud unchallenged.
The third thing God brings up is particularly “abominable/upsetting/deserving of a curse” and that is a “scant/short-changed bushel-measure” (The Hebrew word for a dry-measure “bushel” is an ephah.)
In the Law (Leviticus 19:35-36) God commanded: “Y'all may not do what is unfair in justice with the measurement of size, with the measurement of weight, or with the measurement of volume. Scales that are right, weights that are right, bushel-baskets that are right, and a gallon-jug that is right are what y'all should own. I am Yahweh your God....” (NAW)
Ezekiel 45:9-10 "...Remove violence and plundering, execute justice and righteousness, and stop dispossessing My people,’ says the Lord GOD. ‘You shall have honest scales, an honest ephah, and an honest bath.’” (NKJV) (The bath was for liquid measure.)
The Prophet Amos also mentioned this problem in Micah’s day: Amos 8:4-8 “Hear this, you who swallow up the needy, And make the poor of the land fail... Making the ephah small [קטנ] and the shekel large, Falsifying the scales by deceit, That we may buy the poor for silver, And the needy for a pair of sandals—Even sell the bad wheat?’ The LORD has sworn by the pride of Jacob: ‘Surely I will never forget any of their works. Shall the land not tremble for this, And everyone mourn who dwells in it?’” (NKJV)
Are there any ways that you cheat customers by providing less and taking more than is fair – demanding more and delivering less than was promised? Follow Zaccheus’ example, who said, “...if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I restore it fourfold.” (Luke 19:8, ESV) (I wish the corrupt government officials who created money out of thin air for their pet projects and diminished the value of my dollars would do something like Zaccheus did!) Salvation came to Zaccheus’ house; and it can come to ours as well!
The fourth thing in verse 11 is: “Shall I justify/acquit [a man] with wicked balance-scales?/ Shall I count them pure?/Would I come off clean?”
Proverbs 11:1 declared “Dishonest scales are an abomination11 to the LORD, But a just weight is His delight.” And Proverbs 20:23 Diverse weights are an abomination to the LORD, And dishonest scales are not good.” (NKJV)
The balance-beam scale has been a popular way to measure weight throughout human history. Put a known weight on one side, and then put what you are trying to weigh on the other side, and when the beam sits level, you know that you have exactly the same amount of product as that weight on the other side.
But this can be manipulated by shifting the balance point. If one side of the beam is longer, then whatever is on that side of the balance will appear to weigh more, and a fraudulent scale like that can be used to cheat customers!
Hosea 12:7 mentions that this was happening in Micah’s day: “...Deceitful scales are in his hand; He loves to oppress.” (NKJV)
This principle goes beyond weights and measures to any system of measurement. Corrupt managers, corrupt politicians, and corrupt doctors and scientists can manipulate systems of evaluation or accountability to appear more successful or accurate than they really are.
For instance, I was just reading something by a Ph.D. in Marine Biology concerning how many scientists in his field have reported wildly-exaggerated ages of coral fossils while conveniently overlooking known inaccuracies in their methods of radiocarbon dating.12
God hates it when people hide behind false metrics in order to deceive and defraud others; integrity and truthfulness is what He loves because He has perfect integrity, and He is the source of truth.
The fifth thing which God brings up in the list of things that are offending Him is closely-related, and that is “using a bag of deceptive/false weights”
The Law declares in Deuteronomy 25:13 "You shall not have in your bag differing weights, a heavy and a light13." (NKJV)
Here the fraud lies - not in the scales/method of measurement but - in the standard by which comparison is made – the weights put into the balance.
A crooked salesman might tell his customer that he is selling one pound of cinnamon, and he may have a properly-calibrated scale to weigh it on, but if he tells them that he is putting a 1-pound weight on one side of the balance scale to make sure it is exactly one pound of cinnamon, but what he actually puts on the balance is a rock weighing only 7/8 of a pound, and he charges the price of a whole pound of cinnamon, he is cheating his customer out of an eighth of a pound of cinnamon.
Now, we might not use balance-scales these days, but we still make judgments by comparison, and we can be awfully adept at manipulating the standards of comparison in order to make ourselves look better than we really are.
Say a police officer pulls you over for going 10 miles over the speed limit, and you’re late getting home. What do you tell your family when you get home? “Everybody else was going 15 miles over the speed limit; why was I the one that got pulled over?” Well, why are you making the practices of worse violators your standard instead of making the numbers on the speed limit sign your standard?
God is a god of absolutes, and His people must reflect that by using the absolute standards He has given us to compare things by, so that corruption is shown for what it is when it occurs. Where we have given-in to an erosion of standards, we need to confess it, make it right, ask Jesus to forgive us, and forsake it.
Verse 12 moves into the 6th offense, and that is “her rich men have been full of violence”
Some notes on translations:
The NIV omitted the Hebrew verb “have been full,”
the NASB added the word “cities,”
and the ESV changed the Hebrew word “her” to the English word “you.”
In Hebrew, there is a feminine singular pronoun “her” after the word “rich,” referring to God’s people in Jerusalem, like it did in v.9.
Now, don’t get this wrong. Being “rich” is not what God is condemning. Although there are many cautions about temptations that can come along with wealth, being rich is not condemned anywhere in the Bible; it’s all about your relationship with God and how you use your wealth.
Micah has already written about the wickedness of violence and oppression among the wealthy classes of his country in chapter two: “Woe to those who plan iniquity and who work out evil while upon their beds. At the light of morning they act it out, because their hand is against God. For instance, they covet fields, so they steal them – houses too, and they take them away. Thus they extort a man and his house – both a man and his inheritance.” (Micah 2:1-2, NAW)
A generation earlier, Hosea brought up some of the same problems: Hosea 4:1-2 “Hear the word of the LORD, You children of Israel, For the LORD brings a charge against the inhabitants of the land: ‘There is no truth or mercy Or knowledge of God in the land. By swearing and lying, Killing and stealing and committing adultery, They break all restraint, With bloodshed upon bloodshed.’” (NKJV)
But God will bring this “violence” to justice: Psalm 11:5 “It is Yahweh who will test a righteous man, but as for a wicked man and one who loves violence, His soul has hated.” (NAW, cf. Prov. 10:6)
Isaiah described some of this “violence” perpetrated by the wealthy14, mentioned here in Micah: Isaiah 59:2-7 “...your iniquities have become causes for separation between yourselves and your God, and your sins have caused [His] face to hide from you – away from hearing you. For your hands are defiled with blood and your fingers with iniquity. Your lips have spoken falsehood; your tongue mutters wrong. No one calls in righteousness; no one is judged in truth: trusting in emptiness and to speak worthlessness... Their doings are doings of iniquity, and deeds of violence are in their hands. Their feet run to evil, and they hasten to shed innocent blood. Their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity; demolition and brokenness are in their highways. The way of peace they have not known, and there is no justice in their ruts.” (NAW)
This is what God is prosecuting His people for here in Micah 6.
In the New Testament, we read in 1 Timothy 6:17-19 “Command those who are rich in this present age not to be haughty, nor to trust in uncertain riches but in the living God, who gives us richly all things to enjoy. Let them do good, that they be rich in good works, ready to give, willing to share, storing up for themselves a good foundation for the time to come, that they may lay hold on eternal life.” (NKJV)
The seventh offense against God is stated in two parallel phrases at the end of v.12: “her residents have spoken falsehood, indeed their tongue is deceitful in their mouth”
God hates lies because He loves truth. That’s what the 9th Commandment is about (Ex. 20:16).
But in a culture which is unfaithful to God, lies proliferate.
The other prophets around Micah’s time also mention problems with falsehood:
Hosea 7:13 "Woe to them, for they have fled from Me! Destruction to them, Because they have transgressed against Me! Though I redeemed them, Yet they have spoken lies15 against Me." (NKJV)
Amos 2:4 “For three transgressions of Judah, and for four, I will not turn away its punishment, Because they have despised the law of the LORD, And have not kept His commandments. Their lies lead them astray16, Lies which their fathers followed.’” (NKJV)
Later on, Jeremiah wrote in Jer. 9:3 "...they have bent their tongues for lies. They are not valiant for the truth on the earth. For they proceed from evil to evil, And they do not know Me," says the LORD…. 8 “Their tongue is an arrow shot out; It speaks deceit17; One speaks peaceably to his neighbor with his mouth, But in his heart he lies in wait.” (NKJV)
And God’s determination to punish people for lying hasn’t changed. He declared in Revelation 21:8 “But the cowardly, unbelieving, abominable, murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.” (NKJV)
If you don’t repent of lying, your deceitful tongue will take you to hell.
Our only hope is to confess to God that we are a people of “unclean lips” (Isa. 6:5) and ask Jesus to cover our sin with His blood and make us new creations.
In Isaiah 50:4 he testifies: “The Lord Yahweh gave to me the tongue of the wise to know a word to sustain the weary…” (NAW, cf. “tongue of the wise” in Prov. 12:18 & 15:2) God did it for Isaiah, and He can do it for you!
But in the absence of repentance for these sins, God will move the court proceedings from prosecution into sentencing18. (Psalm 7:11 “God is one who judges righteously...” ~NAW)
So what should we do when we have offended God?
Respond when He calls out to you,
Show respect and regard for His character,
Give heed and learn from His discipline,
and renew your covenant relationship with Him.
Joel 2:12-13 “‘...even now,’ declares the LORD, ‘return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; and rend your hearts and not your garments.’ Return to the LORD your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love; and he relents over disaster.” (ESV)
DouayB (Vulgate) |
LXXC |
BrentonD (Vaticanus) |
KJVE |
NAW |
Masoretic HebrewF |
9
The voice of the Lord crieth to the city, and salvation
[shall be to
them that]
fear thy name: hear |
9
Φωνὴ κυρίου τ |
9
The Lord's voice shall |
9
The LORD'S voice crieth unto the city, and |
9 It is the voice of Yahweh that calls out to the city, so, it is the one who is prudent who will have regard to Your reputation. Y’all give heed to the rod; indeed, who will partner with her? |
(ט) קוֹלH יְהוָה לָעִיר יִקְרָא וְתוּשִׁיָּהI יִרְאֶהJ שְׁמֶךָ שִׁמְעוּ מַטֶּהK וּמִי יְעָדָהּL. |
10 As yet there is a fire [in] the house of the wicked, the treasures of iniquity, and a scant measure full of wrath. |
10
|
10
Is there
|
10 Are there yet the treasures of wickedness [in] the house of the wicked, and the scant measure that is abominable? |
10 Is there still a house of a wicked man, treasuries of wickedness, or an upsettingly-short-changed bushel? |
(י) עוֹד הַאִשׁM בֵּית רָשָׁע אֹצְרוֹתN רֶשַׁע וְאֵיפַת רָזוֹן זְעוּמָהO. |
11
Shall I justifyP
X
wicked balances, and X
|
11
εἰ δικαιω |
11
Shall the wickedQ
|
11
Shall I count
them
pure
with
|
11 Would I come off clean using wicked balance-scales or using a bag of deceptive weights? |
(יא) הַאֶזְכֶּהR בְּמֹאזְנֵי רֶשַׁע וּבְכִיס אַבְנֵי מִרְמָה. |
12 By which her rich men were filled with iniquity, and the inhabitants thereof have spoken lie[s], and their tongue was deceitful in their mouth. |
12
ἐξ ὧν τὸν
πλοῦτον αὐτ |
12
whereby
they have accumulated |
12 For the rich men thereof are full of violence, and the inhabitants thereof have spoken lie[s], and their tongue is deceitful in their mouth. |
12 Because her rich men have been full of violence and her residents have spoken falsehood (indeed their tongue is unreliable in their mouth), |
(יב) אֲשֶׁרT עֲשִׁירֶיהָU מָלְאוּ חָמָס וְיֹשְׁבֶיהָ דִּבְּרוּ שָׁקֶרV וּלְשׁוֹנָם רְמִיָּה בְּפִיהֶם. |
13 And I therefore began to strike thee [with] desolation for thy sins. |
13 καὶ ἐγὼ ἄρξομαιW τοῦ πατάξαι σε, ἀφανιῶ [σε] ἐπὶ Xταῖς ἁμαρτίαις σου. |
13
Therefore
will I X begin
to smite thee; I will destroy
[thee]
|
13 Therefore also will I X make thee sick in smiting thee, in making thee desolate because of thy sins. |
13 so also I Myself will begin to cause strikes against you – to cause desolation because of your sins. |
(יג) וְגַם אֲנִי הֶחֱלֵיתִיY הַכּוֹתֶךָ הַשְׁמֵםZ עַל חַטֹּאתֶךָ. |
1“Implicitly, the judgment oracle calls for the wicked rulers and its citizens to repent of the unjust commercial practices catalogued in the indictment (vv 10–12) and escape the sentence of doom (vv 13–15).” ~B. Waltke, 2007 AD
2And as he sayth by hys Apostle Paule: Al the daye long haue I stretched foorthe my handes vnto an vnbeleuing people, and a people that striueth against me. Rom. x. And by hys owne son he sayth: Ierusalem Ierusalem, how oft wold I haue gathered the together, as the hen gathereth her chyckens vnder her wynges, & thou wouldest not. Math. xxiii. Whych doothe vtter the fatherlye care of oure God, alway callyng and crying vpō vs.” ~Anthony Gilby, 1551 AD
3And A. R. Fausset and B. Waltke
4Among the commentators I consulted, A. Gilby, J. Calvin, M. Henry, J. Owen, A. R. Fausset, and C. F. Keil agreed. The latter wrote, “Hear ye, i.e., observe, the rod, viz., the judgment threatened by the Lord, and appointed for His rebellious nation. The reference is to the imperial power of Assyria...”
52 Sam. 7:14 “As for me, I will belong to him [Solomon] as a father, and, as for him, he will belong to me as a son, who, when he does wrong, I will then bring justice to bear on him using the rod of men and using blows from the sons of mankind.” (NAW), Job 21:9 “Their houses are safe from fear, Neither is the rod of God upon them.” Psalm 89:32 “Then I will punish their transgression with the rod, And their iniquity with stripes.” Lam. 3:1 “I am the man who has seen affliction by the rod of His wrath.” (NKJV) cf. Heb. 12:5-9 “...My son, don't keep belittling the Lord's training, and don't keep coming undone when you are being reproved by Him, for it is the one whom the Lord loves that He trains, and He whips every son whom He accepts… we have indeed had the fathers of our flesh [as] trainers, and we were chastened. Will we not much more submit ourselves to the Father of our spirits and live?” (NAW)
6Alternately, the rod could represent the “scepter” of Messiah, which would still fit with the responsive attitude of His people to want to walk with Him, the “rod out of Zion” in Psalm 110, to whom His people “volunteer,” but the context of this passage in Micah is God prosecuting His own people, which seems to require a disciplinary interpretation.
7This wordמועד is based on the same root as the word יעד, which occurs in Micah and also later in this verse in Exodus.
8Matthew Henry, Owen of Thrussington, and C. F. Keil thought it referred to the “rod,” but in Hebrew it is the wrong gender for “rod.”
9Some of Bibles say “forget,” or “say,” or “overlook,” or “man,” or even “fire.” The beginning of this verse is hotly debated among Bible translators (and if you want my opinion, you can look at the endnotes), but these introductory words are not so important as the list of things God is bringing charges on, so we needn’t obsess over the preliminaries.
10Eccl. 12:14 “...God will bring every act to judgment, everything which is hidden, whether it is good or evil.” (NASB)
11תועבת – a synonym to Micah’s word זעם
12In https://creation.com/carbon-dating-fooling-whom, Dr. Carter wrote, “The[y] sound like they have everything tied together in a neat little bundle, with multiple independent correlating measurements. But, how much of this is due to them rejecting any method that did not already give them what they want? And how much of this is due to one or more of the primary methods being based on wrong assumptions and so the following methods only appear to correlate?” His co-author noted, “Willard Libby, the Nobel Prize winner who invented the 14C method, assumed an equilibrium condition between the production of 14C and its disintegration. It was a critical assumption. Subsequently, scientists have found that the system (Earth and atmosphere) has not yet reached a steady state, which means the Earth cannot be more than a few thousand years old, because it only takes about 30,000 years to reach equilibrium based on the half-life of 14C.”
13קטנה – a synonym for Micah’s word רצון
14Calvin observed: “not that the rest [the poor] were without fault or guilt, but because iniquity was more conspicuous in the rich, and that, because their wealth… gave them more power.”
15כזב – a synonym for Micah’s word שקר
16ויתעום כזביהם – synonyms for Micah’s words שׁקר and רמיה
17מרמה – a synonym for Micah’s word שקר
18“Whereas the accusation was delivered impersonally in third person… the Judge hands down his sentence in second person singular, addressed presumably to each person in the city.” ~B. Waltke, 2007 AD
AMy
original chart includes the following copyrighted English versions:
NASB, NIV, ESV, Bauscher’s version of the Peshitta, and Cathcart’s
version of the Targums, but I remove these columns from my public,
non-copyrighted edition of this chart so as not to infringe on their
copyrights. NAW is my translation. When a translation adds words not
in the Hebrew text, but does not indicate it has done so by the use
of italics or greyed-out text, I put the added words in [square
brackets]. When one version chooses a wording which is different
from all the other translations, I underline it. When a
version chooses a translation which, in my opinion, either departs
too far from the root meaning of the Hebrew word or departs too far
from the grammar form of the original text, I use strikeout.
And when a version omits a word which is in the original text, I
insert an X. I also place an X at the end of a word if the original
word is plural but the English translation is singular. I
occasionally use colors to help the reader see correlations between
the various editions and versions when there are more than two
different translations of a given word. The only known Dead Sea
Scroll containing Micah 6 is the Wadi Muraba’at Scroll, containing
parts verses 1-7 & 11-16 and dated around 135 AD. Where the DSS
is legible and in agreement with the MT, the MT is colored purple.
Where the DSS supports the LXX/Vulgate/Peshitta with omissions or
text not in the MT, I have highlighted
with yellow the LXX
and its translation into English, and where I have accepted that
into my NAW translation, I have marked it with {pointed brackets}.
BDouay Old Testament first published by the English College at Douay, A.D. 1609, Revised and Diligently Compared with the Latin Vulgate by Bishop Richard Challoner, Published in 1582, 1609, 1752. As published on E-Sword.
C“Septuagint” Greek Old Testament, edited by Alfred Rahlfs. Published in 1935. As published on E-Sword.
DEnglish translation of the Septuagint by Sir Lancelot Charles Lee Brenton, 1851, “based upon the text of the Vaticanus” but not identical to the Vaticanus. As published electronically by E-Sword.
E1769 King James Version of the Holy Bible; public domain. As published electronically by E-Sword.
FFrom
the Wiki Hebrew Bible
https://he.wikisource.org/wiki/%D7%9E%D7%99%D7%9B%D7%94_%D7%91/%D7%A9%D7%95%D7%A8%D7%95%D7%AA
.
DSS text comes from https://downloads.thewaytoyahuweh.com
GΑq. corrects to καλεσα (“called”). The root common to the LXX and Aquilla is a better translation of the Hebrew than the English word “proclaimed” (which would be rendered with a different Greek root such as αγγελω). The Hebrew word Micah used implies greeting, meeting, and initiating conversation rather than unilaterally making an announcement.
HWaltke, following Jouön, believed that this is an exclamation, not the subject of “calls,” but he admitted that Wolff disagreed with this. All of the standard English versions interpret it as a plain subject, in which case it is emphatic.
IRelatively-rare wisdom-literature word found only here and Job 5:12; 6:13; 11:6; 12:16; 26:3; and Prov. 2:7; 3:21; 8:14; 18:1 (where English versions translate it: success, enterprise, deliverance, judgment, plans, what is, common sense, sound wisdom, advice, knowledge, prudence, insight, counsel, etc.); and Isa. 28:29 “… Yahweh Commander of armies: He makes counsel wonderful; He increases sound wisdom.” (NAW) It is feminine (agreeing with the feminine “city”), so the KJV “man of wisdom” (following Ibn Ezra, Kimchi, and Calvin) is not technically accurate. Vulgate and LXX erroneously related it to the root ישע (“save” - the LXX erroneously making it a verb), while the Aramaic versions translated it more in terms of “teaching/doctrine.” According to Cohen, Malbim defined it as “deeds performed according to the rules of wisdom.” Keil plausibly suggested it be the object rather than the subject: “Thy name sees wisdom.” Waltke essentially agreed, translating it, “he who fears I AM is sound judgment.”
JWestminster Morphology, Davison’s Critical Lexicon, Owens’ Analytical Key, Beall/Banks/Smith Parsing Guide, Geneva Bible, KJV, NKJV, ASV, AJV, Calvin, Keil, and Waltke all considered the root of this word to be ראה (“see”), whereas the OSHB Parsing, Vulgate, LXX, Peshitta, Targums, NASB, NIV, ESV, NLT, NET, and Newcome, Deissler, and Wolff considered the root to be ירא (“fear, respect”). It is easy to see that the former considered the last three letters of Micah’s word to be the root, making the initial yod an imperfect verb prefix, while the latter considered the first three letters of Micah’s word to be the root, making the final he a feminine ending. Either can be supported in the unpointed text, but the weight of history as well as the grammar is in favor of “fear” because “wisdom” is feminine and must be the subject of the verb, but if the verb were interpreted as from the root “see” it would require a masculine subject.
KAll the ancient versions (followed by Wellhausen, NRSV, NASB, and Waltke) interpreted this as “tribe” (with the exception of the Targums “king”). “Tribe” is a figurative extension of the literal meaning of this Hebrew word, “rod,” the latter of which is what the KJV, NIV, and ESV went for. Additionally, the Latin, Greek, and Aramaic texts read singular (although the Vulgate and one of the Targums read plural “tribes”). LXX and Peshitta (followed by NASB) changed the plural imperative (“y’all hear”) into a singular (which would require removing the last consonant from the Hebrew text) in order to make the “tribe” the vocative of the command (“Hear, O tribe”), but in Hebrew (and the majority of the English traditions), the plural form requires that the “tribe/rod” be the object (“Heed the rod”). As for the interpretation of this rod and how it should be “heeded,” consider v.13, 2 Sam. 7:14, Isa. 10:5-6, 24, Job 21:9, Psalm 89:32, Lam. 3:1. Owen of Thrussington commented in Calvin’s commentary, “מטה is evidently the rod of correction… the chastening rod.”
LThe
feminine singular ending on this verb (dropped out of the Peshitta
and dropped by Waltke – who also dropped out the interrogative)
rules out the masculine “rod/tribe” or the plural “you” as
the antecedent. The feminine singular “city” and “wise one”
must therefore link up with this and be the party which is “met
with” when it “regards” the “call” of God. LXX made this
explicit by repeating the word “city” (and perhaps the Targums
as well, which inserted the word “people” but butchered the
Hebrew). NASB, on the other hand, inserted the feminine singular
word “time,” upon the supposition of textual criticism that
Micah originally delivered his prophecy with the word for “time”
as well as the word for “witness” here, but since those two
words are spelled the same in Hebrew, a careless scribe skipped over
the word “time,” thinking he had already copied it. (If it
happened, it would have to have happened in the first 500 years
after Micah, because no manuscript in existence shows any evidence
of there having been an extra word that was skipped, and the
manuscripts we have are based on manuscripts from the first
centuries BC.) The NASB should have adopted the alternative critical
theory that the harder reading is more likely the
original.
Concerning the switch from “you” to “her,”
Waltke explained, “The chiasm from third person to second person
and then from second person to third person unifies the indictment.”
M“Fire” is the traditional reading which the church used for its first 1500 years, and “the fire” is a legitimate possible reading of the unpointed Hebrew text. Modern translators, however, see this as a compound of the interrogative he with an affirmative particle, thus the KJV, NASB, and Targum “is/are there?” (cf. Calvin, Keil, Waltke). NASB (following some Hebrew manuscripts as well as Junius and Tremelius) reads as though the word is “man,” which would require adding an extra letter yod to this Hebrew word, but nowhere else in the Hebrew O.T. is the word “man” spelled like this with the yod dropped out, so that is too much of a stretch. The NIV and ESV followed Wellhausen, who inserted an extra letter (ה) to the end of this word to change it to mean “Shall I forget?” (However, the only times we see the phrase “I forget” in the HOT, it is spelled אשׁכח not אשה). The NET and NLT tried changing other letters in the Hebrew word to invent “I overlook” (אביט or אצפה ?) and “I say” (אמר) – neither of which have a plausible explanation for the morphological changes which would be required to get such words. Furthermore, every English version (except, commendably, the NIV and NET) inserted the preposition “in” (or “about”) after this word, but no such preposition is there in the Hebrew or Greek (although “in” was inserted in the Vulgate, Peshitta, and one of the two Targums). Keil commented, “...the emphasis is laid upon the עוֹד, which stands for that very reason before the interrogative particle, as in Gen. 19:12, the only other place in which this occurs. אִשׁ, a softened form for יֵשׁ, as in 2 Sam. 14:19... The meaning of the question is..., ‘Does the wicked man still bring such treasures into the house?’”
NThe only “treasuries/storehouses” ever mentioned in the O.T. history books were the ones in the temple and in the king’s palace (cf. Isa. 2:7, 39:2-4). During Micah’s time, the kings of Judah used the contents of these two treasuries to pay off foreign kings every time they were threatened with invasion: 1 Kings 15:18 (Asa), 2 Kings 12:18 (Jehoash), 2 Kings 14:13-14 (Amaziah), 2 Kings 16:8 (Ahaz), 2 Kings 18:14-15 (Hezekiah).
OWaltke suggested that, instead of God cursing those who use the scant measure (as He clearly did in the Law), the curse came from the mouth of the defrauded party against the oppressor, and that is why Micah used this adjective, but I remain skeptical.
POwen of Thrussington reported: “Jerome renders the phrase, numquid justificabo? Junius and Tremelius, an purum haberem? Grotius, numquid approbabo? Our own version is no doubt correct.”
QAlthough in Hebrew, it would be possible to construe the word “wicked” as the object of the verb (“Shall I justify the wicked by means of scales?”), it is not grammatically possible to construe the “wicked” as the subject of the verb, as the LXX did here. All the other versions construed “wicked” in construct with “scales” (“Shall I come off clean using scales of wickedness?”).
RThis word appears also in Job 15:14; 25:4; Ps. 51:6; 73:13; 119:9; Prov. 20:9; and Isa. 1:16. Geneva, NASB, NIV, and ESV all translate it “acquit/justify,” following the Vulgate and LXX traditions, but lexicographers agree it does not have this meaning, and in none of the standard versions is it translated “acquit/justify” in any of those other places except for Ps. 51, where the KJV, NIV, and ESV translated it “justified” and the NKJV corrected the KJV to “blameless.” The standard meaning is “clean/purify” (cf. Keil). MT, Vulgate, all standard English versions, and one of the Targums (also the commentators Metsudath David, Calvin, Fausset, Keil, and Waltke) spell this verb in 1st person active voice (although the NET Bible makes the mistake of changing the interrogative into a negative), but LXX, Peshitta and one of the Targums read as 3rd plural middle /passive voice (“How can they be justified?”), which, despite the subject change, amounts to the same idea. Fausset commented, “But as “I,” in Mic. 6:13, refers to Jehovah, it must refer to Him also here.” Waltke oddly inserted a whole phrase (“If I forgive”) and then wrote commentary on the phrase he inserted!
SThis mistake in the Greek translation is understandable because the Hebrew word for “exalted” also has the two strong letters רמ, but the Hebrew spelling here is nothing like a passive verb.
TI
suspect that this goes together with the beginning of the next verse
to form a sort of protasis – apodosis. Fausset agreed with me, and
Waltke cited Wolff in agreement with me. However, Caspari, Owen,
Keil and Waltke interpreted it according to its more-common meaning
as a relative pronoun (“which”): “There is nothing in what
goes before for which a reason is given here: hence this אשר
cannot be rendered [“for” as Calvin did]. It is an
instance of a peculiarity in Hebrew, when a double pronoun is used.
Literally it is, ‘Which the rich men of hers;”” ~Owen
“[T]he
true explanation of אֲשֶׁר, has been
a matter of dispute. We must reject... the combination of Mic. 6:12
and 6:13 (“Because their rich men, etc., therefore I also,”
etc.)... because Mic. 6:12 obviously forms the conclusion to the
reproof, and must be separated from what precedes it [which seems
self-contradictory ~NAW]… take אֲשֶׁר
as a relative, as Caspari does, and understand the verse as
an exclamation, which the Lord utters in anger over the city: ‘She,
whose rich men are full [but that is not a relative but a
vocative, which seems to me a stretch ~NAW]”” ~Keil
U“Rich men” and “residents” are in emphatic positions in Hebrew. Of all people, it should not be the rich who are violent or the citizens who are liars!
VVulgate, LXX, and Targums all render this word singular, as the Hebrew does, so it is strange that most English versions rendered it plural “lies.” The Peshitta (דגלותא) looks plural to me, but Lamsa translated it plural and Bauscher translated it singular. It really makes no difference in meaning, though. Waltke agreed with me that the conjunction which comes next is ascensive “yes/indeed.”
WAquilla’s and Theodotian’s Greek versions support this translation. Symmachus, however, chose a different word that means “strike/sicken.”
XCuriously, both Aq. and Theod. add the word “all,” which isn’t in any manuscript as far as I can tell.
YCohen
summarized Kimchi as saying, “Just as they smote the poor and the
oppressed with their devices and guile, so will God smite them with
sore wounds.”
Pointed differently, this word can mean
“begin,” and that was the interpretation of the church for its
first 1500 years. Despite the concurrence of the modern English
versions on the Masoretic pointing meaning “weaken/sicken,” BHS
(perhaps influenced by Newcome) suggested going back to the ancient
interpretation (which advice the NIV and I have followed).
ZIn fulfillment of the curses of Lev. 26. It is interesting that all the Greek and Aramaic versions insert the pronoun “you” as the object of this verb. NASB and NIV followed them. The Latin versions follow the MT without “you,” followed by KJV and ESV. No DSS are legible at this point for corroboration of the Hebrew text.