Safety. Trust. Security. All of these words circle around a basic human need. From the moment we emerge helpless from the womb, we need adults who will not only feed us and change our diapers, but care for us in a consistent and reliable way that lets us know that the world is a reasonably safe place. When that security is lacking — for example, when we’ve been abused or neglected — we may grow up to be anxious people who find it difficult to trust others.

The Bible doesn’t speak directly about this psychological aspect of how humans grow and develop. But some passages directly or indirectly raise the issue of whether God can be trusted to keep us safe. As we’ve seen during our tour of the book of Micah, the people of Judah were living under the nearly constant threat of military invasion by Assyria. How would they respond? In what or whom would they find their security?

Let’s go back to the story of Hezekiah, one of the kings of Judah during Micah’s ministry, and one who was probably affected by Micah’s words. As we read in 2 Kings 18, Hezekiah was a faithful king who trusted God (vs. 5) and sought to do what was right in God’s eyes (vs. 3). He diligently combated idolatry in Judah by destroying the sacred relics of Canaanite religion that had wormed their way into the people’s worship of God. He broke the sacred pillars. He cut down the Asherah poles, wooden monuments to the Canaanite mother-goddess whom the Israelites may have begun worshiping as God’s wife.

On the political front, when he began his reign, Hezekiah tried to shake off Assyrian domination. But over time, the Assyrian king Sennacherib invaded Judah and captured even the fortified cities. As we’ve seen, Hezekiah’s response was to try bribing him to leave, which ended up being an expensive and futile gesture. What else could Hezekiah do?

He could do what other kings before him had done: look to other nations for help. Hezekiah, apparently, sought help from Egypt, hoping for chariots and horsemen (2 Ki 18:24). Sennacherib knew this, and sent a messenger to Hezekiah to publicly mock him for trusting in Pharaoh and trusting in God. The messenger also called out to the people not to trust Hezekiah, warning that he was leading the nation into disaster.

That story, I think,is part of the background against which we should understand the oracle we read in the previous post. Here it is again, and this time, see how much of it resonates with the story of Hezekiah versus the Assyrians:

I will destroy your horses from among you
    and demolish your chariots.
I will destroy the cities of your land
    and tear down all your strongholds.
I will destroy your witchcraft
    and you will no longer cast spells.
I will destroy your idols
    and your sacred stones from among you;
you will no longer bow down
    to the work of your hands.
I will uproot from among you your Asherah poles
    when I demolish your cities.
I will take vengeance in anger and wrath
    on the nations that have not obeyed me. (Mic 5:10-15, NIV)

We know from both Micah and Isaiah that idolatry was rampant in Judah, and again, Hezekiah’s zealous religious reforms may have been provoked by Micah’s preaching. Note that both this passage in Micah and the story in 2 Kings specifically mention sacred stones and Asherah poles, the Canaanite relics that Hezekiah destroyed. Moreover, we might hear in the beginning of Micah’s oracle a criticism of Hezekiah’s reliance on Egypt for horses and chariots — a criticism Isaiah would have shared.

In the end, after being taunted by Sennacherib’s messenger, and as the Assyrians encamped against Jerusalem, Hezekiah turned in prayer to God alone. He acknowledged that only God is sovereign over all the kingdoms of earth; he asked God to take note of Sennacherib’s blasphemous boasts. And though he acknowledged the might and power of Assyria, he ended his prayer with this plea: “Now, LORD our God, deliver us from his hand, so that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you alone, LORD, are God” (2 Ki 19:19).

And as we’ve seen, God answered Hezekiah’s prayer. He sent the prophet Isaiah to reassure the king that Assyria would not even set foot in Jerusalem; and that very night, God decimated the Assyrian army and sent Sennacherib packing.

Both Micah’s oracle and the story of Hezekiah raise the issue of trust. When God repeatedly says in the oracle, “I will destroy,” it’s not simply a matter of God punishing the people for bad behavior. After all, when God says he will tear down their strongholds, for example, it’s not because there’s anything intrinsically bad about fortifying the walls of a city.

The question is rather one of faithful trust. In what or whom do the people find their security? When disaster looms, what do they do and where do they turn? The people of Judah and even Hezekiah himself were tempted to put their faith in Egyptian chariots, reinforced walls, and even occult practices (Oh, sure, we believe in God, but it wouldn’t hurt to have all our spiritual bases covered, right?).

That is, after all, what the voices of the surrounding culture would have advised. But the voices of the prophets said otherwise, because God said otherwise. And the question is: what would God say to us?