Micah 1
1A WORD of the Lord came to Micah* the Morasthite in the days of Joatham and Achaz and Ezekias, kings of Juda, with regard to those things which he saw touching Samaria and touching Jerusalem:
2Hear, O peoples, words! and let this land attend and all who are in it. And let the Lord, Lord among you be a witness—the Lord from His holy temple.
3For behold, the Lord is coming forth from His place; and He will come down and walk on the heights of this land;
4and under Him the mountains will tremble, and the valleys shall melt like wax before fire, and be like water rolling down a precipice.
5(J) All this is on account of the impiety of Jacob, and for the sin of the house of Israel. What is the impiety of Jacob? Is it not Samaria? And what is the sin of the house of Juda? Is it not Jerusalem?
6Therefore I will make Samaria like a hut of a field and like a plant of a vineyard, and I will drag the stones thereof into a ditch and lay her foundations bare.
7And all her graven images shall be hacked to pieces; and all her earnings shall be burned with fire; and all her idols I will utterly destroy. Because she collected from the earnings of fornication, and from the earnings of fornication, amassed;
8therefore she shall wail and utter lamentations: she shall walk barefoot and naked; she shall utter a wailing like that of jackals; and moanings like the daughters of the ostrich,
9because her wound is large; because it hath come even to Juda and reached the gate of My people, even to Jerusalem.
10Magnify not yourselves ye men of Gath, and ye Enakims, rebuild not from a [ruined] house, in derision. According to your derision you shall sprinkle yourselves with dust.
11Sennaar, who dwelt at ease in her cities, went not forth to bewail a neighbouring house; from you she shall receive a painful wound.
12Who led the way to good for her who was dwelling in sorrows, because evils from the Lord, a sound of chariots and horsemen came down against the gates of Jerusalem?
13Was it the inhabitant of Lachis? She is a leader to sin for the daughter of Sion. Because in thee have been found the impieties of Israel,
14therefore even to the inheritance of Gath he will give up idolatrous houses as abandoned. To the kings of Israel they were of no avail.
15O inhabitant of Lachis! until the true heirs shall be brought in—O, Odollam! until an inheritance, the glory of the daughter of Israel, shall come,—
16shave thy locks and make thyself bald for thy delicate children; lengthen out thy widowhood like an eagle, for they shall be carried from thee into captivity.