All Episodes
Displaying 21 - 40 of 67 in total
Episode 21: Eaten alive
Imagine going to court as a plaintiff seeking justice, and finding that the judge is taking bribes from the defendant. Such is the injustice in Jerusalem, and Micah do...
Episode 22: The slippery slope
Micah now turns his condemnation against the false prophets who are paid to tell the powerful what they want to hear. While the previous oracle against corrupt judges ...
Episode 23: Breaking through
In contrast to the false prophets--who may have been Micah's former colleagues!--Micah claims to be filled with the Spirit and therefore empowered to declare the peopl...
Episode 24: Paid by the word
Micah has already lashed out against corrupt judges and false prophets. Here, he again speaks against judges and prophets, but also priests. What do all these leaders ...
Episode 25: Drinking the Kool-Aid
As we've seen, the various kinds of corrupt leaders in Judah had all been swayed by lure of money. But what they also share in common is a spiritual delusion: despite ...
Episode 26: Reduced to rubble
In chapter 1, Micah already pronounced doom upon Samaria, the capital of the northern kingdom of Israel. Now, in 3:12, he uses similar language to predict the destruct...
Episode 27: Like moths to a flame
Chapter 3 ended with a grim prediction of the fall of Jerusalem. But chapter 4 opens with a hopeful vision of the city being restored to a place of prominence, with th...
Episode 28: Swords into plowshares
The oracle at the beginning of chapter 4 envisions Jerusalem a place to which the nations stream. Not only do they come to learn from God, they come seeking justice. A...
Episode 29: Relaxed and unafraid
Imagine living (as many in the world do) under the constant threat of war. Then imagine having that burden lifted, so that you were free to relax in your garden and ta...
Episode 30: Walking, not waiting
In previous verses, we've seen how Micah both predicts the punishment that is coming to Jerusalem and Judah, and yet also a future in which the nations will actually s...
Episode 31: Gathering the flock
We've already seen how the closing verses of chapter 2 uses the metaphor of God as the Shepherd-King. And we've seen how the opening verses of chapter 4 paint a beauti...
Episode 32: The long view
Micah's oracle promises God's care for his flock, for the remnant of the people left after the exile. None of this would happen in Micah's lifetime. And although the p...
Episode 33: The Shepherd-King
We've raised the question of how long it would take for Micah's prophecy to be fulfilled. In Micah, God is portrayed as the Shepherd-King--and followers of Jesus shoul...
Episode 34: Bad news, good news
Doom and gloom, heartache and hope. The oracles of Micah ping back and forth. We've seen some remarkable words of hope in recent verses--but now its time to go back to...
Episode 35: The threshing floor
Unless God fights their battles, the people of Judah have no hope against the forces of Assyria or Babylon. Yet this is what Micah promises. Using the metaphor of thre...
Episode 36: Past, present, and future
The beginning of Micah chapter 5 brings us to one of the best known passages from the book: the prophecy of the one who would come from Bethlehem to rule God's people,...
Episode 37: The view from above
Making sense of prophecy requires a different way of looking at history: the texts can refer to both the people's current situation and the near or distant future at t...
Episode 38: He will be our peace
In the previous episode, I suggested that we need to have both a view from below and a view from above to read Micah (and other prophecy) rightly. This episode will ex...
Episode 39: Like the dew
God's people were always meant to be a blessing to others. But the remnant--the much smaller number who would eventually return from Babylonian exile--would find thems...
Episode 40: Like a lion
In the previous episode, we saw how Micah 5:7 prophesied that the remnant would be a blessing to the nations, like dew in an arid climate. But the next two verses port...