Hey Bible readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble, and I'm your host for the Bible Recap.

Today we finished our 20th book of the Bible. Congratulations. We're still hovering over the same time period,

and we will be for a while.

We'll continue to switch back and forth between a variety of prophecies

and some of the narrative history portions like Kings and Chronicles,

where we'll often see those prophecies being fulfilled.

Today we're in another minor prophet, Micah.

I find his writing style very confusing, so I'm really glad he's not a major

prophet, just seven chapters instead of 70. He's sometimes viewed as Isaiah Jr. because God appointed

them both to speak the same message to the same people in approximately the same time frame.

One primary difference apart from the length is that Isaiah's message was directed more

toward the ruling authorities, while Micah speaks mainly to the general population. He even opens by

saying, here are you peoples, all of you, pay attention. He says God is about to take action against

their sins, and one of God's first moves is to trample down the high places.

Finally! He addresses the sins of Israel and its capital Samaria, as well as Judah and its capital

Jerusalem. And when God sends destruction, Micah tells them how to grieve and mourn. And it seems they're

supposed to do it privately, possibly because if news of their grief reaches

the enemy nations, they'll rejoice over their destruction.

First, Micah calls them out on the same things we've already talked about, stealing land from the

poor and oppressing them. In Micah's words, we see that greed may start with just wanting more

stuff, but it eventually

becomes so all-encompassing that you begin to oppress others in order to find a way to get

...