“WELL, THAT’S ENOUGH of that!” someone might say, before putting a firm stop to some behavior. Maybe it’s in your household: the kids are fighting over a toy again, and you decide to institute rules for sharing. Maybe it’s in your organization: you’ve just discovered an unfair business practice, and draft a new policy to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

Or you’ve made plans, and something happens to scuttle them. You were going to enjoy a day at the beach, and a storm came out of nowhere. You wanted to run errands, but the car won’t start. You hoped to get a promotion, but suddenly the organization you work for has to downsize. In such situations, one might say that you as a parent put the kibosh on the kids’ squabbling, or the rain put the kibosh on your family outing, or the state of the economy put the kibosh on your hope of getting ahead.

Mysteriously, nobody seems to know where or how the phrase originated. Some think it might be Irish; others suggest it’s Yiddish. Personally, I vote for the latter. Of course, I can’t prove it. But there’s an ancient Hebrew word, kabash, which suggests stepping on something, literally or figuratively. It’s a metaphor for conquering or subduing it. Could this word at some point have passed into Yiddish?

Who knows? But here’s what we do know: at the end of the book of Micah, the prophet uses the word kabash to describe what God does with sin. Here’s how the verse is translated in the Common English Bible:

He will once again have compassion on us;
        he will tread down our iniquities.
You will hurl all our sins into the depths of the sea. (Mic 7:19)

Remember, this is in the context of a book filled with prophetic words of condemnation for the people’s out-of-control greed and injustice. But the final chapter moves steadily from misery to hope, from deep lament over the sorry state of God’s people to confidence in the mercy and faithfulness of a covenant God. He will turn from his righteous anger to an equally holy compassion and forgiveness.

What Micah describes is not a kind of grudging acquiescence on God’s part. It’s not, “So, have you learned your lesson, you miserable sinner? All right, I’ll let you back in the club, just this once.” Nor does God excuse sin or look the other way — surely, anyone tempted to think that hasn’t read the rest of the book.

No: God puts the kibosh on sin. The people have let their disobedience and wrongdoing run wild and take control, but God stomps it all down and subdues it. And having done so, he hurls it far away, into the very depths of the sea.

For the ancients as well as for us, the sea can be a place of foreboding, where things can be lost forever to its murky depths. Picture that dramatic moment in a movie when the main character stands at the rail of a ship or the edge of a cliff overlooking the ocean, and heaves something far out into the water. It’s a symbolic act that says, “I’m done with this thing and everything it represents forever.”

Does Micah have something like this in mind? Previously, we’ve seen how his words seem to echo how God revealed himself to Moses in Exodus 34:6. A similar reference can be found in Psalm 103:

He made known his ways to Moses,
    his deeds to the people of Israel:
The Lord is compassionate and gracious,
    slow to anger, abounding in love.
He will not always accuse,
    nor will he harbor his anger forever;
he does not treat us as our sins deserve
    or repay us according to our iniquities.
For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
    so great is his love for those who fear him;
as far as the east is from the west,
    so far has he removed our transgressions from us. (Ps 103:7-12)

God’s love for those who worship him is so great that even when he punishes them for their sin, he doesn’t give them the full punishment they deserve and doesn’t stay angry. Indeed, the psalmist declares, he separates their sin from them “as far as the east is from the west.” Of course, we can’t take this to mean that God makes his people sinless; what God removes, what God takes far away, is the guilt that accompanies the sin they’ve committed. In Micah’s words, he hurls it into the sea.

But there’s another possible echo of the Exodus narrative here as well. To say that God hurls our sins into the depths of the sea may be a reference to the people’s escape from Egypt. Pharaoh thought he had the Israelites trapped at the edge of the sea. It’s a measure of his arrogance that he wasn’t warned off by the pillar of fire and cloud that stood between him and his prey, or by the miracle of the parting of the waters.

I have to imagine that at least some of his commanders or charioteers had second thoughts about pursuing these people into the sea and going up against their God. But what could they do? Pharaoh’s armies obeyed and gave chase. They didn’t openly admit their mistake until their chariots were stuck in the mud. By that time, it was too late. God closed the waters over them, and the entire Egyptian army drowned.

God, we might say, put the kibosh on Pharaoh.

And Micah reminds us that when God shows mercy, he puts the kibosh on our guilt as well.