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I. Micah’s name means “Who is like the Lord?”
II. Micah 1:1 puts the prophets ministry during “days of Jotham, Ahaz, and
Hezekiah, kings of Judah.”
A. This gives him a span of 20 to 55 years.
B. For Biblical background, read: 2 Kings 15:32–20:21 and 2 Chron. 27:1–32:33.
C. He was working about the same time that Isaiah was in Jerusalem.
III. “These years of the 8th century were earthshaking in their significance. 735 B.C. saw the Syro-Ephraimitic war as Pekah and Rezin threatened to depose Ahaz for his refusal to join them in a revolt against Assyria. They saw the Assyrian machine of aggression dismember Damascus and Israel in stages that led to the downfall of Samaria and to the exile of the northern tribes in 721 B.C. Ahaz maintained his state at the price of paying heavy tribute to Assyria, but in 711 B.C. the Philistine states were in a state of revolt which Sargon ruthlessly put down (Isa. 20). Sargon erected a victory stele at Ashdod, fragments of which have recently been recovered, as well as leaving behind in his palace at Khorsabad records of his victories in Palestine. All of the dangers came to a climax in 701 B.C. when Hezekiah raised a revolt that brought Sennacherib west to demand his tribute and the surrender of Jerusalem. Siege was laid to Lachish which is near Moresheth-Gath. The city fell. Sennacherib left to posterity a large picture, today to be seen in the British Museum, which depicts his siege of Lachish. He boasts that he took 46 of Hezekiah’s walled cities and shut the king up like a bird in a cage in his city, Jerusalem. The fact that Jerusalem was spared at the last moment does not affect the case that Micah’s territory was devastated.” (Jack P. Lewis, Minor Prophets, pgs. 23,24).
IV. Message of the book: the holiness of God and the righteousness of His rule.
V. What we can learn from Micah: His summary of what the Lord requires of us, i.e., “to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God” (6:8).
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