True Justice #3

 

Read Micah 3

Background: Having taken us through the initial lawsuit of God against His people, Israel and Judah, with the charges, evidence, punishment, and hope for restoration, He now takes us through round two of the court process, again beginning with "Hear, you heads of Jacob and rulers of the house of Israel." The leaders themselves are being called out for how they had set an example and created an atmosphere of injustice, immorality, and idolatry in the land.  They had also rejected the pleas of the prophets to repent and re-establish justice in the land. Because of that a dark cloud of desolation would come over the land and they would have no land or people to rule.

Key Verses: 9 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,
10 who build Zion with blood
    and Jerusalem with iniquity.
11 Its heads give judgment for a bribe;
    its priests teach for a price;
    its prophets practice divination for money;
yet they lean on the Lord and say,
    “Is not the Lord in the midst of us?
    No disaster shall come upon us.”
12 Therefore because of you
    Zion shall be plowed as a field;
Jerusalem shall become a heap of ruins,
    and the mountain of the house a wooded height.

Thoughts: These words tell of the coming exile.  Notice that Micah is now focused on the Southern kingdom of Judah with its capital at Jerusalem.  They would befall the same fate as her northern counterpart, Israel.  The exile would be long enough that the barren city would be covered with full-grown trees.