1 The word of the Lord which came to Micah of Moresheth in the days of Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and which he saw regarding Samaria and Jerusalem.
2 Hear, you peoples, all of you;
Listen carefully, earth and all it contains,
And may the Lord God be a witness against you,
The Lord from His holy temple.
3 For behold, the Lord is coming forth from His place.
He will come down and tread on the high places of the earth.
4 The mountains will melt under Him
And the valleys will be split,
Like wax before the fire,
Like water poured down a steep place.
5 All this is due to the wrongdoing of Jacob
And the sins of the house of Israel.
What is the wrongdoing of Jacob?
Is it not Samaria?
What is the high place of Judah?
Is it not Jerusalem?
6 For I will make Samaria a heap of ruins in the open country,
Planting places for a vineyard.
I will hurl her stones down into the valley,
And lay bare her foundations.
7 All of her idols will be crushed,
All of her earnings will be burned with fire,
And all of her images I will make desolate;
For she collected them from a prostitute’s earnings,
And to the earnings of a prostitute they will return.
8 Because of this I must mourn and wail,
I must go barefoot and naked;
I must do mourning like the jackals,
And a mourning like the ostriches.
9 For her wound is incurable,
For it has come to Judah;
It has reached the gate of my people,
Even to Jerusalem.
10 Do not tell it in Gath,
Do not weep at all.
At Beth-le-aphrah roll yourself in the dust in mourning.
11 Go on your way, inhabitant of Shaphir, in shameful nakedness.
The inhabitant of Zaanan does not escape.
The mourning of Beth-ezel: “He will take from you its support.”
12 For the inhabitant of Maroth
Waits for something good,
Because a disaster has come down from the Lord
To the gate of Jerusalem.
13 Harness the chariot to the team of horses,
You inhabitant of Lachish—
She was the beginning of sin
To the daughter of Zion—
Because in you were found
The rebellious acts of Israel.
14 Therefore you will give parting gifts
In behalf of Moresheth-gath;
The houses of Achzib will become a deception
To the kings of Israel.
15 Moreover, I will bring on you
The one who takes possession,
You inhabitant of Mareshah.
The glory of Israel will enter Adullam.
16 Shave yourself bald, yes, cut off your hair,
Because of the children of your delight;
Extend your baldness like the eagle,
For they will go from you into exile.
1 Woe to those who devise wrongdoing,
Who practice evil on their beds!
When morning comes, they do it,
Because it is in the power of their hands.
2 They covet fields, so they seize them;
And houses, so they take them.
They exploit a man and his house,
A person and his inheritance.
3 Therefore this is what the Lord says:
“Behold, I am planning against this family a catastrophe
From which you cannot remove your necks;
And you will not walk haughtily,
For it will be an evil time.
4 On that day they will take up against you a song of mocking
And utter a song of mourning and say,
‘We are completely destroyed!
He exchanges the share of my people;
How He removes it from me!
To the apostate He apportions our fields.’
5 Therefore you will have no one applying a measuring line
For you by lot in the assembly of the Lord.
6 ‘Do not prophesy,’ so they prophesy.
But if they do not prophesy about these things,
Insults will not be turned back.
7 Is it being said, house of Jacob:
‘Is the Spirit of the Lord impatient?
Are these His works?’
Do My words not do good
For the one walking rightly?
8 Recently My people have arisen as an enemy—
You strip the robe off the garment
From unsuspecting passers-by,
From those returned from war.
9 You evict the women of My people,
Each one from her pleasant house.
From her children you take My splendor forever.
10 Arise and go,
For this is no place of rest
Because of the uncleanness that brings on destruction,
A painful destruction.
11 If someone walking after wind and falsehood
Had lied and said,
‘I will prophesy to you about wine and liquor,’
He would become a prophet to this people.
12 “I will certainly assemble all of you, Jacob,
I will certainly gather the remnant of Israel.
I will put them together like sheep in the fold;
Like a flock in the midst of its pasture
They will be noisy with people.
13 The one who breaks through goes up before them;
They break through, pass through the gate, and go out by it.
So their king passes on before them,
And the Lord at their head.”
1 And I said,
“Hear now, you leaders of Jacob
And rulers of the house of Israel:
Is it not for you to know justice?
2 You who hate good and love evil,
Who tear off their skin from them
And their flesh from their bones,
3 Who eat the flesh of my people,
Strip off their skin from them,
Smash their bones,
And chop them up as for the pot,
And as meat in a cauldron!”
4 Then they will cry out to the Lord,
But He will not answer them.
Instead, He will hide His face from them at that time
Because they have practiced evil deeds.
5 This is what the Lord says concerning the prophets who lead my people astray:
When they have something to bite with their teeth,
They cry out, “Peace!”
But against him who puts nothing in their mouths
They declare holy war.
6 Therefore it will be night for you—without vision,
And darkness for you—without divination.
The sun will go down on the prophets,
And the day will become dark over them.
7 The seers will be put to shame,
And the diviners will be ashamed.
Indeed, they will all cover their lips
Because there is no answer from God.
8 On the other hand, I am filled with power—
With the Spirit of the Lord—
And with justice and courage
To make known to Jacob his rebellious act,
And to Israel his sin.
9 Now hear this, you heads of the house of Jacob
And rulers of the house of Israel,
Who despise justice
And twist everything that is straight,
10 Who build Zion with bloodshed,
And Jerusalem with malice.
11 Her leaders pronounce judgment for a bribe,
Her priests teach for pay,
And her prophets divine for money.
Yet they lean on the Lord, saying,
“Is the Lord not in our midst?
Catastrophe will not come upon us.”
12 Therefore on account of you,
Zion will be plowed like a field,
Jerusalem will become a heap of ruins,
And the mountain of the temple will become high places of a forest.
1 And it will come about in the last days
That the mountain of the house of the Lord
Will be established as the chief of the mountains.
It will be raised above the hills,
And the peoples will stream to it.
2 Many nations will come and say,
“Come and let’s go up to the mountain of the Lord
And to the house of the God of Jacob,
So that He may teach us about His ways,
And that we may walk in His paths.”
For from Zion will go forth the law,
And the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
3 And He will judge between many peoples
And render decisions for mighty, distant nations.
Then they will beat their swords into plowshares,
And their spears into pruning hooks;
Nation will not lift a sword against nation,
And never again will they train for war.
4 Instead, each of them will sit under his vine
And under his fig tree,
With no one to make them afraid,
Because the mouth of the Lord of armies has spoken.
5 Though all the peoples walk,
Each in the name of his god,
As for us, we will walk
In the name of the Lord our God forever and ever.
6 “On that day,” declares the Lord,
“I will assemble those who limp
And gather the scattered,
Those whom I have afflicted.
7 I will make those who limp a remnant,
And those who have strayed a mighty nation,
And the Lord will reign over them on Mount Zion
From now on and forever.
8 As for you, tower of the flock,
Hill of the daughter of Zion,
To you it will come—
Yes, the former dominion will come,
The kingdom of the daughter of Jerusalem.
9 “Now, why do you cry out loudly?
Is there no king among you,
Or has your counselor perished,
That agony has gripped you like a woman in childbirth?
10 Writhe and scream,
Daughter of Zion,
Like a woman in childbirth;
For now you will go out of the city,
Live in the field,
And go to Babylon.
There you will be rescued,
There the Lord will redeem you
From the hand of your enemies.
11 And now many nations have been assembled against you
Who say, ‘Let her be defiled,
And let our eyes gloat over Zion!’
12 But they do not know the thoughts of the Lord,
And they do not understand His plan;
For He has gathered them like sheaves to the threshing floor.
13 Arise and thresh, daughter of Zion,
For I will make your horn iron,
And I will make your hoofs bronze,
So that you may pulverize many peoples,
And dedicate to the Lord their unjust profit,
And their wealth to the Lord of all the earth.
1 Then I saw when the Lamb broke one of the seven seals, and I heard one of the four living creatures saying as with a voice of thunder, “Come!” 2 I looked, and behold, a white horse, and the one who sat on it had a bow; and a crown was given to him, and he went out conquering and to conquer.
3 When He broke the second seal, I heard the second living creature saying, “Come!” 4 And another, a red horse, went out; and to him who sat on it, it was granted to take peace from the earth, and that people would kill one another; and a large sword was given to him.
5 When He broke the third seal, I heard the third living creature saying, “Come!” I looked, and behold, a black horse, and the one who sat on it had a pair of scales in his hand. 6 And I heard something like a voice in the center of the four living creatures saying, “A quart of wheat for a denarius, and three quarts of barley for a denarius; and do not damage the oil and the wine.”
7 When the Lamb broke the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature saying, “Come!” 8 I looked, and behold, an ashen horse; and the one who sat on it had the name Death, and Hades was following with him. Authority was given to them over a fourth of the earth, to kill with sword, and famine, and plague, and by the wild animals of the earth.
9 When the Lamb broke the fifth seal, I saw underneath the altar the souls of those who had been killed because of the word of God, and because of the testimony which they had maintained; 10 and they cried out with a loud voice, saying, “How long, O Lord, holy and true, will You refrain from judging and avenging our blood on those who live on the earth?” 11 And a white robe was given to each of them; and they were told that they were to rest for a little while longer, until the number of their fellow servants and their brothers and sisters who were to be killed even as they had been, was completed also.
12 And I looked when He broke the sixth seal, and there was a great earthquake; and the sun became as black as sackcloth made of hair, and the whole moon became like blood; 13 and the stars of the sky fell to the earth, as a fig tree drops its unripe figs when shaken by a great wind. 14 The sky was split apart like a scroll when it is rolled up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place. 15 Then the kings of the earth and the eminent people, and the commanders and the wealthy and the strong, and every slave and free person hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains; 16 and they *said to the mountains and the rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the sight of Him who sits on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb; 17 for the great day of Their wrath has come, and who is able to stand?”
1 Behold, bless the Lord, all you servants of the Lord,
Who serve by night in the house of the Lord!
2 Lift up your hands to the sanctuary
And bless the Lord.
3 May the Lord bless you from Zion,
He who made heaven and earth.
1 The words of Agur the son of Jakeh, the pronouncement.
The man declares to Ithiel, to Ithiel and Ucal:
2 I am certainly more stupid than any man,
And I do not have the understanding of a man;
3 Nor have I learned wisdom,
Nor do I have the knowledge of the Holy One.
4 Who has ascended into heaven and descended?
Who has gathered the wind in His fists?
Who has wrapped the waters in His garment?
Who has established all the ends of the earth?
What is His name or His Son’s name?
Surely you know!
