Micah 3:1-4:7
Dear RTB’ers,
Another travel day, so another delayed post, this time packing and leaving our 3-month time in Nitra, now two nights in Bratislava, with a missionary pastor and his family whom we met twenty years ago. Good memories!
Yesterday Micah seemed to take the entire people to task, saying that Judah was being infected by Samaria All this is for the transgression of Jacob and for the sins of the house of Israel. What is the transgression of Jacob? Is it not Samaria? (Micah 1:5a; See also verse 1:13.) Today it’s the leaders with whom he finds fault. And I said: Hear, you heads of Jacob and rulers of the house of Israel! Is it not for you to know justice? — Hear this, you heads of the house of Jacob and rulers of the house of Israel, who detest justice and make crooked all that is straight, who build Zion with blood and Jerusalem with iniquity. (3:1, 9-10)
But what a shift in tone when we move to chapter 4, including another of my all-time favorite verses! …and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore; but they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree, and no one shall make them afraid, for the mouth of the LORD of hosts has spoken. (vv. 3b-4) Ask me at our Christmas Eve service why it’s a favorite verse for me.
Blessings!