Micah 1:11
Depart in shameful nakedness, O dwellers of Shaphir. The dwellers of Zaanan will not come out. Beth-ezel is in mourning; its support is taken from you.
Sermons
Moral IncurablenessHomilist














Therefore I will wail and howl, I will go stripped and naked: I will make a wailing like the dragons, and mourning as the owls. For her wound is incurable; for it is come unto Judah; he is come unto the gate of my people, even to Jerusalem. These verses have been thus translated: "Therefore will I lament and howl; I will go spoiled and naked; I will keep lamentation like the jackats, and mourning like the ostriches. For her stripes are malignant; for it comes to Judah, reaches to the gate of my people, to Jerusalem." Micah's intention is not only to exhibit publicly his mourning for the approaching calamity of Judah, but also to set forth in a symbolical form the fate that awaits the Judaeans. And he can only do this by including himself in the nation, and exhibiting the fate of the nation in his own person. "Wailing like jackals and ostriches is a loud, strong, mournful cry, those animals being distinguished by a mournful wail." We shall take these words as suggesting the subject of moral incurableness. Samaria and Jerusalem were, in a material and political sense, in a desperate and hopeless condition. Our subject is moral ineffableness, and we make two remarks concerning it.

I. IT IS A CONDITION INTO WHICH MEN MAY FALL.

1. Mental philosophy shows this. Such is the constitution of the human mind, that the repetition of an act can generate an uncontrollable tendency to repeat it; and the repetition of a sin deadens altogether that moral sensibility which constitutionally recoils from the wrong. The mind often makes habit, not only second nature, but the sovereign of nature.

2. Observation shows this. That man's circle of acquaintance must be exceedingly limited who does not know men who become morally incurable. There are incurable liars, incurable misers, incurable sensualists, and incurable drunkards. No moral logician, however great his dialectic skill, can forge an argument strong enough to move them from their old ways, even when urged by the seraphic fervour of the highest rhetoric.

3. The Bible shows this. What did Solomon mean when he said, "Speak not in the ears of a fool, for he will despise the wisdom of thy words" (Proverbs 23:9)? What did Christ mean when he said, "Give not that which is holy to the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine"? And again, "If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! But now they are hid from thine eyes"? We often speak of retribution as if it always lay beyond the grave, and the day of grace as extending through the whole life of man; but such is not the fact. Retribution begins with many men here; the day of grace terminates with many before the day of death. There are those who reach an unconvertible state; their characters are stereotyped and fixed as eternity.

II. IT IS A CONDITION FOR THE PROFOUNDEST LAMENTATION. At the desperate condition of his country the prophet is brought into the most poignant distress. "Therefore I will wail and howl, I will go stripped and naked: I will make a wailing like the dragons, and mourning as the owls." Christ wept when he considered the moral incurableness of the men of Jerusalem. "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem!" etc. There is no sight more distressing than the sight of a morally incurable soul. There is no building that I pass that strikes me with greater sadness than the Hospital for "Incurables;" but what are incurable bodies compared to morally incurable souls? There are anodynes that may deaden their bodily pains, and death will relieve them of their torture; but a morally incurable soul is destined to pass into anguish, intense and more intense as existence runs on, and peradventure without end. The incurable body may not necessarily be an injury to others; but a morally incurable soul must be a curse as long as it lives. Were we truly alive to the moral state of wicked men around us, we should be ready to break out in the words of the prophet, "Therefore I will wail and howl, I will go stripped and naked," etc. - D.T.

The Word of the Lord that came to Micah the Morasthite
Homilist.
I. IT IS THE WORD OF THE LORD. What is a word?

1. A mind manifesting power. In his word a true man manifests himself, his thought, feeling, character. His word is important according to the measure of his faculties, experiences, attainments. Divine revelation manifests the mind of God, especially the moral characteristics of that mind — His rectitude, holiness, mercy, etc.

2. A mind influencing power. Man uses his word to influence other minds, to bring other minds into sympathy with his own. Thus God uses His Word. He uses it to correct human errors, dispel human ignorance, remove human perversities, and turn human thought and sympathy into a course harmonious with His own mind.

II. IT IS MADE TO INDIVIDUAL MEN. It came to Micah, not to his con temporaries. Why certain men were chosen as the special recipients of God's Word is a problem whose solution must be left for eternity.

III. IT IS FOR ALL MANKIND. God did not speak to any individual man specially that the communication might be kept to himself, but that he might communicate it to others. He makes one man the special recipient of truth that he may become the organ and promoter of it. God's Word is for the world.

(Homilist.)

This was a place in the Shepbelah, or range of low hills which lie between the hill country of Judah and the Philistine plain. It is the opposite exposure from the wilderness of Tekoa, some seventeen miles away across the watershed. As the home of Amos is bare and desert, so the home of Micah is fair and fertile. The irregular chalk hills are separated by broad glens, in which the soil is alluvial and red, with room for cornfields on either side of the perennial, or almost perennial streams. The olive groves on the braes are finer than either those of the plain below or of the Judaean table land above. There is herbage for cattle. Bees murmur everywhere, larks are singing, and although today you may wander in the maze of hills for hours without meeting a man, or seeing a house, you are never out of sight of the traces of human habitation, and seldom beyond the sound of the human voice — shepherds and ploughmen calling to their flocks and to each other across the glens. There are none of the conditions, or of the occasions, of a large town. But, like the south of England, the country is one of villages and homesteads, breeding good yeomen — men satisfied and in love with their soil, yet borderers with a fair outlook and a keen vigilance and sensibility. The Shephelah is sufficiently detached from the capital and body of the land to beget in her sons an independence of mind and feeling, but so much upon the edge of the open world as to endue them at the same time with that sense of the responsibilities of warfare, which the national statesmen, aloof and at ease in Zion, could not possibly have shared. Upon one of the westmost terraces of the Shephelah, nearly a thousand feet above the sea, lay Moresheth itself.

(Geo. Adam Smith, D. D.)

People
Ahaz, Hezekiah, Jacob, Jotham, Micah, Ophrah
Places
Achzib, Adullam, Beth-ezel, Beth-le-aphrah, Gath, Jerusalem, Lachish, Mareshah, Maroth, Moresheth, Moresheth-gath, Samaria, Shaphir, Zaanan, Zion
Topics
Base, Beth, Bethezel, Beth-ezel, Beth-e'zel, Escape, Exposed, Ezel, Forth, Inhabitant, Inhabitants, Inhabitress, Lamentation, Mourning, Naked, Nakedness, O, Pass, Protection, Receive, Resting-place, Saphir, Shame, Shameful, Shaphir, Shelter, Standing, Standing-place, Stay, Support, Thereof, Town, Uncovered, Wailing, Won't, Zaanan, Za'anan
Outline
1. The time when Micah prophesied.
2. He shows the wrath of God against Jacob for idolatry.
10. He exhorts to mourning.

Dictionary of Bible Themes
Micah 1:11

     5169   nakedness

Micah 1:10-11

     5880   humour

Library
A Holy Life the Beauty of Christianity: Or, an Exhortation to Christians to be Holy. By John Bunyan.
Holiness becometh thine house, O Lord, for ever.'--[Psalm 93:5] London, by B. W., for Benj. Alsop, at the Angel and Bible, in the Poultrey. 1684. THE EDITOR'S ADVERTISEMENT. This is the most searching treatise that has ever fallen under our notice. It is an invaluable guide to those sincere Christians, who, under a sense of the infinite importance of the salvation of an immortal soul, and of the deceitfulness of their hearts, sigh and cry, "O Lord of hosts, that judgest righteously, that triest
John Bunyan—The Works of John Bunyan Volumes 1-3

Micah
Micah must have been a very striking personality. Like Amos, he was a native of the country--somewhere in the neighbourhood of Gath; and he denounces with fiery earnestness the sins of the capital cities, Samaria in the northern kingdom, and Jerusalem in the southern. To him these cities seem to incarnate the sins of their respective kingdoms, i. 5; and for both ruin and desolation are predicted, i. 6, iii. 12. Micah expresses with peculiar distinctness the sense of his inspiration and the object
John Edgar McFadyen—Introduction to the Old Testament

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