Daily Thoughts from Micah: Mixing True and False Worship (1:2-7)

Daily Thoughts from Micah: Mixing True and False Worship

2 Hear, you peoples, all of you; pay attention, O earth, and all that is in it, and let the Lord God be a witness against you, the Lord from his holy temple.  3 For behold, the Lord is coming out of his place, and will come down and tread upon the high places of the earth.  4 And the mountains will melt under him, and the valleys will split open, like wax before the fire, like waters poured down a steep place.  5 All this is for the transgression of Jacob and for the sins of the house of Israel.  What is the transgression of Jacob?  Is it  not Samaria?  And what is the high place of Judah?   Is it not Jerusalem?  6 Therefore I will make Samaria a heap in the open country, a place for planting vineyards, and I will pour down her stones into the valley and uncover her foundations.  7 All her carved images shall be beaten to pieces, all her wages shall be burned with fire, and all her idols I will lay waste, for from the fee of a prostitute she gathered them, and to the fee of a prostitute they shall return. (Micah 1:2-7, ESV)

It appears that Yahweh Himself says to the “peoples,” presumably Israel and Judah, and perhaps all the nations, that He is a witness against them from His holy temple.  What a terrifying prospect this should be if the peoples indeed believe that Yahweh is the true and only sovereign, or even if they believe He is one among several sovereigns, and they have violated their relationship with Him.  And more than that, He is coming to judge them.

Yahweh’s temple is in heaven, not primarily Jerusalem, and so He must “come down” and tread upon the high places of the earth.  High places were places where pagans typically worshiped their gods, often in places of elevation because they felt closer to God, and believing them to be the temples of their gods, but for Yahweh they are a step down.  The high places are not being treated as holy by God. He is treading on them.  They are going to melt under Yahweh, and the valleys will be split open.  Surely this is figurative in the sense that these places are viewed as normally unmeltable and unsplittable natural features whose destruction would signal terrifying upheaval.  But lives will be so disrupted it will be as if these places are being destroyed.

The reason God’s judgment is coming is for the transgression of Jacob, which name stands for both kingdoms as those descended from Isaac’s son Jacob. God defines the northern kingdom’s sin as Samaria itself and the southern kingdom’s transgression as Jerusalem itself.  They have made themselves “high places” of worship in contradiction of the true worship of Yahweh.  Even if they are worshiping His name they are doing it in a way not prescribed by Him for true worship.

The consequences are the complete destruction of the city of Samaria and the destruction of her idols.  The phrase “from the fee of a prostitute she gathered them [her wages]” either means Israel engaged in temple prostitution as part of their worship, re-enacting god’s laying with the earth to impregnate her and make her produce fruit, or that in conducting worship of a god other than Yahweh she was prostituting herself and leaving the one she was married to, Yahweh.  And it is not that Jerusalem is avoiding judgment.  Her day will come.

What are our “high places”?  How has our nation mixed the worship of Christ with improper worship, even those of us who name the name of Christ?  We have worshiped our independence above the Lord.  We have worshiped the American dream of financial accumulation above the Lord.  We have worshiped our might above the Lord.  We have neglected the justice He requires.  We have let sexual pleasure rule our lives instead of vouchsafing God’s good gift to us and trusting Him with how it should be utilized.  Have we seen the destruction His judgment brings for our idolatry?  Where am I mixing false worship with true and what would repentance look like for me?