The prophet speaks:—
Tell it not in Gath,
Weep not in Acco,[828]
In Beth-le-'Aphrah[829] roll thyself in dust.
Pass over, inhabitress of Shaphir,[830] thy shame uncovered!
The inhabitress of Sa'anan[831] shall not march forth;
The lamentation of Beth-esel[832] taketh from you its standing.
The inhabitress of Maroth[833] trembleth for good,
For evil hath come down from Jehovah to the gate of Jerusalem.
Harness the horse to the chariot, inhabitress of Lachish,[834]
That hast been the beginning of sin to the daughter of Zion;
Yea, in thee are found the transgressions of Israel.
Therefore thou givest ...[835] to Moresheth-Gath:[836]
The houses of Achzib[837] shall deceive the kings of Israel.
Again shall I bring the Possessor [conqueror] to thee, inhabitress of Mareshah;[838]
To Adullam[839] shall come the glory of Israel.
Make thee bald, and shave thee for thy darlings;
Make broad thy baldness like the vulture,
For they go into banishment from thee.
This was the terrible fate which the Assyrian kept before the peoples with whom he was at war. Other foes raided, burned and slew: he carried off whole populations into exile.
Having thus pictured the doom which threatened his people, Micah turns to declare the sins for which it has been sent upon them.
[CHAPTER XXVI]
THE PROPHET OF THE POOR
Micah ii., iii.
We have proved Micah's love for his countryside in the effusion of his heart upon her villages with a grief for their danger greater than his grief for Jerusalem. Now in his treatment of the sins which give that danger its fatal significance, he is inspired by the same partiality for the fields and the folk about him. While Isaiah chiefly satirises the fashions of the town and the intrigues of the court, Micah scourges the avarice of the landowner and the injustice which oppresses the peasant. He could not, of course, help sharing Isaiah's indignation for the fatal politics of the capital, any more than Isaiah could help sharing his sense of the economic dangers of the provinces;[840] but it is the latter with which Micah is most familiar and on which he spends his wrath. These so engross him, indeed, that he says almost nothing about the idolatry, or the luxury, or the hideous vice, which, according to Amos and Hosea, were now corrupting the nation.