Micah
The Book of Micah
1 Jehovah’s word which came to Micah the Morashtite in the times of Kings Jotham, Ahaz, Hezekiah, of Judah, which he beheld against Samaria and Jerusalem.
2 Listen, all peoples; give attention, earth and what it holds; and let Jehovah be witness against you, the Lord out of his holy temple. 3 For here is Jehovah coming out of his place and coming down and treading on earth’s heights; 4 and the mountains shall melt down under him and the vales shall split, like wax before a fire, like water spilled on a slope. 5** For Jacob’s crime is all this, and for the sins of the house of Israel. Who is Jacob’s crime? is not Samaria? and who is Judah’s heights? is not Jerusalem? 6 And I will make of Samaria a ruin in the open country, a place to plant vineyards, and spill her stones into the valley and uncover her foundations. 7* And all her carvings shall be smashed, and all her tips burned down, and all her idols I will reduce to a desolation, because out of a prostitute’s tips they were gathered and to a prostitute’s tips they shall go back.
8* For this I will wail and howl, go stripped and naked; I will make a wailing like the jackals and a mourning like the ostriches, 9 because her wound is desperate, for it goes in to Judah, it reaches my people’s gate, Jerusalem. 10*** Do not weep; at Beth-le-ʽAphrah I have daubed myself with earth. 11** Pass, dame of Shaphir, in the shame of nakedness; Saanan’s dame is not left out; the wail at Beth-ha-Esel takes its starting-point from you. 12* For the dame of Maroth has waited for good, when evil had come down from Jehovah to the gate of Jerusalem. 13*** Hitch up the blood-horse to the chariot, dame of Lakish; she was the beginning of sin for the daughter of Sion, because in you were discovered the crimes of Israel. 14* So you shall give good-bye gifts to Moresheth-Gath. The houses of Aczib are a disappointment to the kings of Israel. 15** I will yet bring you your possessor, dame of Mareshah; to ʽAdullam shall Israel’s glory come. 16 Go bald and shorn for your delicate children, extend your baldness like a vulture, because they are deported from you.