Spiritual Crisis
Micah was too intelligent to imagine that the problems he was dealing with were unique to Israel and close connections with Jerusalem would have made him well aware that the problems were not going to be easy to solve. Wider experience probably told him also not to be over-optimistic that anything he said or did would make much difference. What motivates him is not so much a feeling that he can change anything as the firm and underlying conviction that something is dreadfully wrong, that those responsible must not get away it, and that he has a personal responsibility to keep it high on the agenda.
The problem is universal. At one level, it is structural violence. At another, it is the subordination of human rights. For the people of God, it is a spiritual crisis.
In Micah’s case its roots went back to land ownership. In the early days of the settlement in Israel, when land was being apportioned, some inevitably did better than others but for the most part they fought ‘on a level playing field’. Come the monarchy, with Solomon’s adventures and the ‘blessings’ of foreign trade, there had grown up a rich elite, and since land in the fertile valleys was more desirable that that on the hillsides who better to take advantage of the change than those in the know with both power and opportunity. So small landowners lost out to big landowners. Better land meant better crops. The discovery of iron meant better tools. Better tools meant better harvests and also better weapons. All of which made so much sense and could have brought much benefit to the whole community had it not been for the fact that those who had most grabbed more, added selfishness to corruption, and having taken the fields went on also to take the women and the children for slaves.
In some communities things like this might have ‘just happened’. But in Israel's case it was being positively stoked by those with vested commercial interests who were still lying awake at night working out how to help themselves at the expense of others. Cleverness seeking to outwit ‘the little man’ of what little he had. Now can you hear Micah?