Micah 1:1-16
1 Jehovah’s word which came to Micah the Morashtite in the times of Kings Jotham, Ahaz, Hezekiah, of Judah, which he beheld against Samaria and Jerusalem.
2 Listen, all peoples; give attention, earth and what it holds; and let Jehovah be witness against you, the Lord out of his holy temple.
3 For here is Jehovah coming out of his place and coming down and treading on earth’s heights;
4 and the mountains shall melt down under him and the vales shall split, like wax before a fire, like water spilled on a slope.
5 ** For Jacob’s crime is all this, and for the sins of the house of Israel. Who is Jacob’s crime? is not Samaria? and who is Judah’s heights? is not Jerusalem?
6 And I will make of Samaria a ruin in the open country, a place to plant vineyards, and spill her stones into the valley and uncover her foundations.
7 * And all her carvings shall be smashed, and all her tips burned down, and all her idols I will reduce to a desolation, because out of a prostitute’s tips they were gathered and to a prostitute’s tips they shall go back.
8 * For this I will wail and howl, go stripped and naked; I will make a wailing like the jackals and a mourning like the ostriches,
9 because her wound is desperate, for it goes in to Judah, it reaches my people’s gate, Jerusalem.
10 *** Do not weep; at Beth-le-ʽAphrah I have daubed myself with earth.
11 ** Pass, dame of Shaphir, in the shame of nakedness; Saanan’s dame is not left out; the wail at Beth-ha-Esel takes its starting-point from you.
12 * For the dame of Maroth has waited for good, when evil had come down from Jehovah to the gate of Jerusalem.
13 *** Hitch up the blood-horse to the chariot, dame of Lakish; she was the beginning of sin for the daughter of Sion, because in you were discovered the crimes of Israel.
14 * So you shall give good-bye gifts to Moresheth-Gath. The houses of Aczib are a disappointment to the kings of Israel.
15 ** I will yet bring you your possessor, dame of Mareshah; to ʽAdullam shall Israel’s glory come.
16 Go bald and shorn for your delicate children, extend your baldness like a vulture, because they are deported from you.
Footnotes
^ 1:5 Var. sin
^ 1:5 Var. and who is the sins of the house of Judah
^ 1:7 (tips) Unc.; susp.
^ 1:8 (stripped) Unc.
^ 1:10 Conj. Do not weep at Bochim; at
^ 1:10 (daubed) Unc.
^ 1:10 The Hebrew for earth here is ʽaphar
^ 1:11 The Hebrew for be left out here has sa as its principal letters
^ 1:11 (starting-point) Unc.; susp.
^ 1:12 (waited) Unc.; susp.
^ 1:13 Or that was the beginning of sin for the daughter of Sion, that in you
^ 1:13 Or were found
^ 1:13-14 Or Sion. Because in you were found the crimes of Israel, therefore
^ 1:14 (disappointment) Heb. aczab
^ 1:15 The Hebrew for possessor has resh as its principal letters
^ 1:15 (end) Unc.
