Enjoy anyway

Micah 5 Revised Standard Version (RSV)

Now you are walled about with a wall;

siege is laid against us;

with a rod they strike upon the cheek

the ruler of Israel.

But you, O Bethlehem Eph′rathah,

who are little to be among the clans of Judah,

from you shall come forth for me

one who is to be ruler in Israel,

whose origin is from of old,

from ancient days.

Therefore he shall give them up until the time

when she who is in travail has brought forth;

then the rest of his brethren shall return

to the people of Israel.

And he shall stand and feed his flock in the strength of the Lord,

in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God.

And they shall dwell secure, for now he shall be great

to the ends of the earth.

And this shall be peace,

when the Assyrian comes into our land

and treads upon our soil,

that we will raise against him seven shepherds

and eight princes of men;

they shall rule the land of Assyria with the sword,

and the land of Nimrod with the drawn sword;

and they shall deliver us from the Assyrian

when he comes into our land

and treads within our border.

Then the remnant of Jacob shall be

in the midst of many peoples

like dew from the Lord,

like showers upon the grass,

which tarry not for men

nor wait for the sons of men.

And the remnant of Jacob shall be among the nations,

in the midst of many peoples,

like a lion among the beasts of the forest,

like a young lion among the flocks of sheep,

which, when it goes through, treads down

and tears in pieces, and there is none to deliver.

Your hand shall be lifted up over your adversaries,

and all your enemies shall be cut off.

And in that day, says the Lord,

I will cut off your horses from among you

and will destroy your chariots;

and I will cut off the cities of your land

and throw down all your strongholds;

and I will cut off sorceries from your hand,

and you shall have no more soothsayers;

and I will cut off your images

and your pillars from among you,

and you shall bow down no more

to the work of your hands;

and I will root out your Ashe′rim from among you

and destroy your cities.

And in anger and wrath I will execute vengeance

upon the nations that did not obey.

Our first reading for Sunday is Micah 5:2-5a (in italics above), taken by Christians as messianic prophecy, and specifically by Matthew (2:4-6, scroll down) (Matthew's total presentation is colored by his agenda that involves lifting bits and pieces out of context from the Greek language Septuagint of the Hebrew Bible into his Greek language Gospel) but not by Luke, from whom our Gospel reading is taken, which makes it strange to me that the framers of the lectionary should pair this Micah reading with Luke; but whatever, I miss a lot, I just don't see it.

Along with Isaiah, Hosea and Amos, Micah is one of the so-called “eighth century (BC) prophets of doom.” But Micah is not all doomsday preaching, the prophecy has the oft-seen style of taking us down into the depths of horror only to raise us up again with beautiful passages of bright hope especially for the “remnant of God's people”. Micah does that too in a couple of places.

Micah himself seems to have been a man from the little town of Moresheth in Judah, actually preaching against the evil rule in Israel, the northern kingdom, though it seems in places that Micah may have been edited later, to include Judah and Jerusalem in the doomsday prophecy, and perhaps after the Assyrians had already overrun Israel and Samaria and dispersed its people among “the nations.” I don't know, Micah may have written during the horror of Assyrian king Sennacherib’s (701 BC) campaign into the southern kingdom, when Sennacherib raged against Jerusalem but did not succeed and finally withdrew, and may have entered Micah’s fortified town of Moresheth. We don’t know, but it’s fun to recall the story and go there in one’s mind. It would have been a frightening time.

Citing the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, Christians, including Matthew as a Jewish Christian writing to a Jewish Christian audience maybe about 85 AD is my guess and I’m sticking to it, may do whatever we wish with Micah as messianic prophecy, including cut and paste totally out of the prophet's context; but Micah himself and his later editors had nothing of the sort in mind. I love this particular bit of Micah, on which I got an A+ on my Old Testament term paper at seminary forty years ago (Bible language for “a long time”), and actually this time of year, December deep in Advent when messianic and messiah were on mind anyway. I kept the term paper all these years and would get it out and read it every few years, but finally tossed it earlier this year in our final clean-out for moving from our 13 room house to our 3 room condo apartment.

The paper was on what I love, this exact part of Micah, which reminds me of Paul writing to the Philippians, telling them (3:1) to “rejoice in the Lord,” then breaking into what I visualize as an almost rabid outburst diatribe about “Look out for the dogs” before he calms back down and resumes (4:1) with “rejoice in the Lord always.” Just so here, at least in my mind, Micah is writing along peacefully and beautifully about the wonderful ruler who in spite of all the doomsday nightmare will come from Bethlehem, and then suddenly Micah (5:5) goes rabid and starts jumping up and down and shrieking and banging on the pulpit and shouting, “And this shall be peace (by God), when the Assyrian comes on our soil we shall ...” and he tramples the Assyrians, stomps them, chops them to pieces with the sword. And I am reminded of one of my Die Deutsche Wochenschau episodes when the Leader stirs the audience into a frenzy of leaping to their feet shouting and saluting fanatically.

That simile is borderline blasphemous, perhaps, but it comes to mind anyway every time I see that we’ve conscripted Micah’s verse 5a and made it the end of his dream for Bethlehem when he actually used it as the beginning of his raging fury against the Assyrians, and I think probably king Sennacherib and his hordes.

Enjoy anyway.

Matthew 2 New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)

1 In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men[a] from the East came to Jerusalem, 2 asking, “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising,[b] and have come to pay him homage.” 3 When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him; 4 and calling together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah[c] was to be born. 5 They told him, “In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it has been written by the prophet:

‘And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,

are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;

for from you shall come a ruler

who is to shepherd[d] my people Israel.’”