2 And he bdid what was right in the eyes of the Lord according to all that his father Uzziah had done, except he did not center the temple of the Lord. But the people still followed corrupt practices.
35 Nevertheless, the high places were not removed. The people still sacrificed and made offerings on the high places. He built the nupper gate of the house of the Lord.
1 The word of the Lord that came to aMicah of Moresheth in the days of bJotham, cAhaz, and dHezekiah, kings of Judah, which he saw concerning Samaria and Jerusalem.
The Coming Destruction
2 eHear, you peoples, all of you;1
fpay attention, O earth, and all that is in it,
and let the Lord God be a witness against you,
the Lord from his gholy temple.
3 hFor behold, the Lord is coming out of his place,
and will come down and itread upon the high places of the earth.
4 And the jmountains will melt under him,
and the valleys will split open,
like wax before the fire,
like waters poured down a steep place.
5 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?
And what is the high place of Judah?
Is it not Jerusalem?
6 Therefore I will make Samaria a heap in the open country,
a place for planting vineyards,
and I will pour down her stones into the valley
and uncover her foundations.
7 All her carved images shall be beaten to pieces,
all her wages shall be burned with fire,
and all her idols I will lay waste,
for from the fee of a prostitute she gathered them,
and to the fee of a prostitute they shall return.
8 For this I will lament and wail;
I will go kstripped and naked;
I will make lamentation like the jackals,
and mourning like the ostriches.
9 For her wound is lincurable,
and it has come to Judah;
it has reached to the gate of my people,
to Jerusalem.
10 mTell it not in Gath;
weep not at all;
in Beth-le-aphrah
nroll yourselves in the dust.
11 Pass on your way,
inhabitants of Shaphir,
in nakedness and shame;
the inhabitants of Zaanan
do not come out;
the lamentation of Beth-ezel
shall take away from you its standing place.
12 For the inhabitants of Maroth
wait anxiously for good,
because disaster has come down from the Lord
to the gate of Jerusalem.
13 Harness the steeds to the chariots,
inhabitants of Lachish;
it was the beginning of sin
to the daughter of Zion,
for in you were found
the transgressions of Israel.
14 Therefore you shall give parting gifts2
to Moresheth-gath;
the houses of Achzib shall be a deceitful thing
to the kings of Israel.
15 I will again bring a conqueror to you,
inhabitants of Mareshah;
the glory of Israel
shall come to Adullam.
16 Make yourselves obald and pcut off your hair,
for the children of your delight;
make yourselves as bald as the eagle,
for they shall go from you into exile.
Woe to the Oppressors
1 Woe to those who qdevise wickedness
and work evil on their beds!
When the morning dawns, they perform it,
because it is in the power of their hand.
2 They covet fields and seize them,
and rhouses, and take them away;
they oppress a man and his house,
a man and his inheritance.
3 Therefore thus says the Lord:
behold, against this family I am devising disaster,3
from which you cannot remove your necks,
and you shall not walk haughtily,
sfor it will be a time of disaster.
4 In that day they shall ttake up a taunt song against you
and moan bitterly,
and say, u“We are utterly ruined;
he changes the portion of my people;
how he removes it from me!
To an apostate he allots our fields.”
5 Therefore you will have none to cast the line by lot
in the assembly of the Lord.
6 v“Do not preach”—thus they preach—
“one should not preach of such things;
disgrace will not overtake us.”
7 Should this be said, O house of Jacob?
Has the Lord grown impatient?4
Are these his deeds?
Do not my words do good
to him who walks uprightly?
8 But lately my people have risen up as an enemy;
you strip the rich robe from those who pass by trustingly
with no thought of war.5
9 The women of my people you drive out
from their delightful houses;
from their young children you take away
my splendor forever.
10 Arise and go,
for this is no place to rest,
because of uncleanness that destroys
with a grievous destruction.
11 If a man should go about and utter wind and lies,
saying, “I will preach to you of wine and strong drink,”
whe would be the preacher for this people!
12 I will surely assemble all of you, O Jacob;
I will xgather the yremnant of Israel;
I will set them together
like sheep in a fold,
like a flock in its pasture,
a noisy multitude of men.
13 He who opens the breach goes up before them;
they break through and pass the gate,
going out by it.
Their king passes on before them,
the Lord at their head.
3 He built the dupper gate of the house of the Lord and did much building on the wall of Ophel. 4 Moreover, he built cities in the hill country of Judah, and forts and towers on the wooded hills. 5 He fought with the king of the Ammonites and prevailed against them. And the Ammonites gave him that year 100 talents1 of silver, and 10,000 cors2 of wheat and 10,000 of barley. The Ammonites paid him the same amount in the second and the third years. 6 So Jotham became mighty, because he ordered his ways before the Lord his God.
