Controversy. Division. Hatred. We’ve always lived in a fractured world. But the perfect storm of the last few years threw pandemic anxiety together with political rage, and the world seems more divided than ever. These days, I simply wonder where the next war — on the ground or in the media — will break out.

But I imagine that the people of Micah’s day wondered something similar.

As I mentioned the previous post, I like to be right. So do you. And we’re not always subtle about it. In a sense, we like to be the heroes and heroines of our own stories, and there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with that.

But being the hero usually requires someone else to be the villain. Without even realizing that we’re doing it, we often reduce people to one-dimensional caricatures that suit the way we want to inhabit the stories we tell. For me to be good, in other words, someone else has to be bad. My anger is therefore righteous, but their anger is evidence of their maliciousness (or if we’re being generous, their lostness and confusion).

Not many people today would call themselves prophets in the biblical sense of the word. But that doesn’t mean that people don’t attempt to speak prophetically — not in the sense of predicting the future, but in speaking as those commissioned to bring a word straight from the mouth of God.

Micah, of course, does just that, as he pronounces God’s sentence on Samaria and the northern kingdom of Israel:

Therefore I will make Samaria a heap of rubble,
    a place for planting vineyards.
I will pour her stones into the valley
    and lay bare her foundations.
All her idols will be broken to pieces;
    all her temple gifts will be burned with fire;
    I will destroy all her images.
Since she gathered her gifts from the wages of prostitutes,
    as the wages of prostitutes they will again be used. (Mic 1:6-7, NIV)

The imagery continues from the previous verses, in which the coming of God melts the mountains before him. At the time of the oracle, the city of Samaria was still the crown of the northern kingdom (cf. Isa 28:1) — but through Micah, God declares that it will be a wasteland. The crime is continual and rampant idolatry, even to the point of religious prostitution. The grim imagery suggests that all of the money the nation earned through such prostitution will be taken away by an invading army, and the soldiers will then use that money again to hire prostitutes for themselves.

As the one through whom God speaks, what is Micah’s attitude toward all this?

If we wanted to speak like a prophet, we might imagine ourselves as Elijah atop Mount Carmel, humiliating the prophets of Baal with strong words and divine fire. That’s a clear heroic tale, the stuff of Disney movies.

But for Micah, it’s not so simple. He is heartbroken by the words he is commissioned to give:

Because of this I will weep and wail;
    I will go about barefoot and naked.
I will howl like a jackal
    and moan like an owl.
For Samaria’s plague is incurable;
    it has spread to Judah.
It has reached the very gate of my people,
    even to Jerusalem itself. (vss. 8-9)

As appropriate to his time and culture, Micah’s tears aren’t quiet and private. His grief is public and palpable. He knows that by now there is no cure for Israel’s sin, and that the disease must therefore run its tragic course. He knows that the contagion has spread to his own people in the south. He knows that there is nothing he can do to avert the coming disaster. He is fated to give the bad news and watch it unfold.

All would-be prophets should take note of Micah’s attitude. Is he disgusted and angry at the sin he sees? Undoubtedly. But he is also heartbroken over his people’s fate. He mourns openly.

And such mourning is entirely appropriate even to his role as the mouthpiece of God. Righteous anger can co-exist with compassion.

Dare we imagine that this expresses the heart of God as well?