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 in 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 that stuff. They're oppressing

...