Micah 1:2-7

All the high places that we have, our self righteousness in our cultural views and mans’ sense of entitlement to people and possessions, will mean nothing when Jesus reigns. The proud will be brought down and the humble lifted up…

until He comes whose right it is to judge the world.

Only by His grace does He delay His Judgement.

Micah’s prophetic oracle is addressed to the entire earth.

The idols of Israel are compared to the wages of a harlot. They had been made from the metal given to the temple by worshipers. Israel had accumulated wealth by engaging in idolatry, an act God regarded as adultery. These same wages will return to pay a harlot—the enemy soldiers who plunder the city will spend their loot on prostitutes. 

Yahweh’s judgment on Samaria was fulfilled in 722 bc when the city was destroyed by the Assyrians. Faithlife Bible.

The faithlessness of the people provoked the Lord God to enter into a judicial dispute with them.

This is the language of epiphany, the dramatic coming of God to earth, here in a solemn procession of judgment. In other texts the language of epiphany is used to describe God’s dramatic acts of deliverance.

Judah’s sins were centered in its capital, Jerusalem. In this verse, the intent of the term high places is made plain. Jerusalem, which was once “beautiful in elevation”, was nothing more than another platform of pagan worship, like the “high places” of the Canaanites.

Idolatry is often described in the Hebrew Bible as spiritual adultery. Israel is pictured as a wife who is unfaithful to her husband. This is not just a metaphor, however; the worship system of Canaan was sexual in nature. The word idols here has the sense of “disgusting images,” probably referring to the explicit sexual nature of these idols. NKJ Bible.

Micah 1:2–7 (NKJV)

² Hear, all you peoples!

Listen, O earth, and all that is in it!

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;

He will come down

And tread on the high places of the earth.

⁴ The mountains will melt under Him,

And the valleys will split

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 are the high places of Judah?

Are they not Jerusalem?

⁶ “Therefore I will make Samaria a heap of ruins in the field,

Places for planting a vineyard;

I will pour down her stones into the valley,

And I will uncover her foundations.

⁷ All her carved images shall be beaten to pieces,

And all her pay as a harlot shall be burned with the fire;

All her idols I will lay desolate,

For she gathered it from the pay of a harlot,

And they shall return to the pay of a harlot.”

Isaiah 26:21 (NKJV)

²¹ For behold, the Lord comes out of His place

To punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity;

The earth will also disclose her blood,

And will no more cover her slain.

Ezekiel 13:14 (NKJV)

¹⁴ So I will break down the wall you have plastered with untempered mortar, and bring it down to the ground, so that its foundation will be uncovered; it will fall, and you shall be consumed in the midst of it. Then you shall know that I am the Lord.