Have you ever had young kids? See if this scenario sounds familiar. Somewhere, somehow, one or more of your kids get to see or play with an adorable little puppy or kitten. They come home and start begging for one of their own. “Oh, pleeeeez,” they whine. You trot out your standard-issue lecture on responsibility and how much work it is having a pet. You look at them sternly and ask, “Do you promise to take care of it?”

By the time you ask that question, the kids already know they’ve won. There’s just the one little formality left: they have to promise. No child on earth is going to say, “You know, Mom and Dad, you bring up a good point. I don’t really know if I can be as responsible for a pet as I should be. Perhaps I should wait until I’m a bit more mature. Thank you for your wisdom.”

Nope. They’re going to bounce up and down and promise you the moon.

And soon, you’re the one feeding, walking, and cleaning up after a puppy.

None of this is to suggest that kids are intentionally lying or being manipulative. They may make those promises with the best of intentions (more or less). And we as adults do the same thing. How many of us have stood at the altar, lovingly promising “I do,” only to discover that marriage was much more difficult than we expected? In one situation after another, we overestimate our good will and underestimate the challenges.

That might not matter much for minor promises. But not all promises are minor.

In previous posts, we’ve been looking at the oracle in Micah 6 in which God brings a lawsuit against his people for their failure to keep up their end of the covenant relationship. He reminds them of his faithfulness to them in the Exodus, in the incident of Balak and Balaam, and in the crossing of the Jordan River into Canaan. As I’ve suggested, these stories mark the bookends of the career of Moses and of the people’s wilderness journey before entering the Promised Land.

But the mention of “Balak, king of Moab” and “Balaam, son of Beor” may also be meant to echo another story, the only other place where both are mentioned together in this way. It’s from the last chapter of the book of Joshua, indeed, the last chapter of Joshua’s life.

Joshua’s last recorded act as a leader is to gather the people to renew their promise of covenant loyalty to God. He begins with an oracle in which God again recounts his acts of faithfulness: the making and fulfillment of his promise to Abraham; the sending of Moses and Aaron; the exodus from Egypt and the rescue at the Red Sea. The tale jumps ahead to the defeat of the Amorites and the incident between Balak and Balaam. It ends with this summary of the people’s conquest of Canaan: “So I gave you a land on which you did not toil and cities you did not build; and you live in them and eat from vineyards and olive groves that you did not plant” (Josh 24:13, NIV). These words echo the earlier words of Moses, who warned the people not to forget God when they entered the Promised Land (Deut 6:10-12).

Joshua then confronts the people to exact from them a renewed promise of faithfulness:

Now fear the LORD and serve him with all faithfulness. Throw away the gods your ancestors worshiped beyond the Euphrates River and in Egypt, and serve the LORD. But if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD. (Josh 24:14-15)

You can guess the answer. “Far be it from us to forsake the Lord to serve other gods!” they cry in response (Josh 24:16). They acknowledge the faithfulness God had already shown to them and their ancestors, and promise, “We too will serve the Lord, because he is our God” (vs. 18).

But Joshua pushes back, as if he doesn’t believe them. He warns them that God won’t put up with their nonsense: “If you forsake the LORD and serve foreign gods, he will turn and bring disaster on you and make an end of you, after he has been good to you” (vs. 20). But the people insist that they mean what they say. They make a solemn promise: “We will serve the LORD our God and obey him” (vs. 24). Joshua writes everything down, and sets up a stone as a memorial of their promise:

“See!” he said to all the people. “This stone will be a witness against us. It has heard all the words the Lord has said to us. It will be a witness against you if you are untrue to your God.” (vs. 27)

The oracle in Micah 6 is just one example of a passage in which God, a prophet, or a psalmist retells one or more stories of God’s covenant faithfulness to encourage God’s people to respond in kind. Here in the book of Micah, if indeed a reference to the story in Joshua 24 is intended, it may be a way of saying, “Remember the stories — and also remember, you’ve made these promises before. And you know how that turned out.”

Would such a prophetic word provoke the proper repentance and devotion? Again, we know how that turned out. Still, at the very least, it helps set up what comes next: one of the best known passages in the book of Micah, in which we are given a glimpse of what proper devotion means.