Micah

Micah

"Who is like God?" A shortened form of Micaiah. "The Morasthite," so called to distinguish him from Micaiah, the son of Imlah.1 He is the sixth of the minor prophets and prophesied ca. 737-696 BCE in Judah, in the days of Hezekiah,2Jotham, and Ahaz. He was a native of Moresheth of Gath,3 and a contemporary of Isaiah.4 Very little is known of the circumstances of his life.

The Book of Micah foretells the destruction of Samaria and Jerusalem, and prefigures the Messiah. It is the thirty-third of the Old Testament. It consists of three sections, each commencing with a rebuke and closing with a promise, (1) ch. 1; 2; (2) ch. 3-5, especially addressed to the princes and heads of the people; (3) ch. 6-7, in which Jehovah is represented as holding a controversy with his people: the whole concluding with a song of triumph at the great deliverance which the Lord will achieve for his people. The closing verse is quoted in the song of Zacharias.5 The prediction regarding the place "where Christ should be born," i.e. Bethlehem,6 is quoted in Matt. 2:6.