THE MAMMON OF THE PROPHETS.
Micah 3:5-12.
Jesus said, ‘Ye cannot serve God and Mammon’ (cf. Matthew 6:24). Yet this was what “the prophets” of Prophet Micah’s day were trying to do: they would preach “Peace” to those who fed them, but would “prepare war” against those who “putteth not into their mouths” (MICAH 3:5). They would even go so far as to “divine” for money (MICAH 3:11)!
Such prophets, says the LORD, “make my people to err” (MICAH 3:5). They would speak words of “Peace” when their hearers fed them, but effectively declared war against those who could not afford to pay them. ‘There is no peace,’ says the LORD, ‘unto the wicked’ (cf. Isaiah 48:22). ‘They have healed the hurt of my people slightly, saying, “Peace, peace;” when there is no peace’ (cf. Jeremiah 6:14).
So there would be a punishment to fit the crime: the prophets would have the gift of prophecy taken from them. Their light would become darkness to them; and they certainly would no longer be able to “divine” (MICAH 3:6).
If we abuse our privileges and gifts, even as Christians, we may find that our ministry is not only compromised, but taken from us. This would be both a disgrace and a shame for those with a pretended renown as a servant (or minister) of God.
“Then shall the seers be ashamed, and the diviners confounded” (MICAH 3:7a). “Seer” is another name for prophet (cf. 1 Samuel 9:9). “Divination” is the seeking of spiritual light in any place other than in the LORD Himself, and is condemned throughout the Bible (cf. Deuteronomy 18:10), and cost King Saul his kingdom (cf. 1 Samuel 28:8).
“Covering the lips” (MICAH 3:7b) could signify the distress of the leper, or perhaps even that of the awakened sinner (cf. Leviticus 13:45). It also signified mourning (which is what the truly awakened sinner will do). Either way, they may as well cover their lips since they had nothing to say from God!
Micah stood over against these sorry prophets, not so much beating his own drum as beating the LORD’s (MICAH 3:8). Micah was “full” of “the Spirit of the LORD.” Consequently, he stood powerfully on the side of justice, and, inevitably, since he stood for justice, he necessarily had to “declare unto Jacob his transgression, and to Israel his sin.”
Earlier in this chapter, the prophet addressed leaders of the nation, who ‘ought to know judgment (justice)’ (cf. Micah 3:1). Now he returns to these “heads of the house of Jacob, and princes of the house of Israel” and speaks of them as those who “abhor judgment (justice), and pervert all equity” (MICAH 3:9).
There is more than a hint of corruption, and of oppression, when we read that “Zion” is built “with blood, and Jerusalem with iniquity” (MICAH 3:10).
The judicial heads of the nation were open to bribery. The religious elite were no better: the priests teach for hire; and the prophets, as we have seen, “divine for money” (MICAH 3:11a). What they share in common is a love of money: and as Apostle Paul informs us, ‘the love of money’ (not money itself, but an idolatrous love of it) ‘is the root of all evil’ (cf. 1 Timothy 6:10).
Somewhat ironically, these corrupt leaders, both in church and state, presumptuously “lean” or ‘rely’ upon the name of the LORD (MICAH 3:11b). After all, they might reason, we are the people of God, this is the city of God, and up the hill there is the Temple of God. “Is not the LORD among us? None evil can come upon us.”
They sound like those in Jeremiah’s day, who put their reliance upon ‘the Temple of the LORD’ (cf. Jeremiah 7:4).
After the dedication of the Temple, the LORD had appeared to Solomon and warned him what would happen in the event of a national apostasy (cf. 1 Kings 9:6-8). Now Micah told the complacent leadership of his day that because of them, this city built with ‘blood’ and ‘iniquity’ (cf. MICAH 3:10) was in danger of being destroyed: “Therefore shall Zion for your sake be ploughed as a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the house (i.e. the Temple) as the high places of the forest” (MICAH 3:12).
This must have sounded like treason to those who heard Micah. However, this verse became the only verse in the OT to be quoted by another OT writer: ‘The priests and the prophets’ were petitioning for the death sentence against Jeremiah for ‘prophesying against this city’ (cf. Jeremiah 26:11). ‘The princes and all the people’ (cf. Jeremiah 26:16) defended Jeremiah against them. ‘Thus saith the LORD,’ they said (cf. Jeremiah 26:18), and quoted MICAH 3:12.
Eventually, although not for another century, that is exactly what befell Jerusalem, and its splendid Temple. And all because of the unfaithfulness and love of mammon on the part of its prophets, priests, princes, and other leaders.
