Micah 1

¹ The word of Yahweh which came to Micah the Morashite in the days of Jotham and Ahaz and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, which he perceived concerning Samaria and Jerusalem: ² "Hear, you peoples, all of you! Attend, O earth and its fullness! My Lord Yahweh is coming among you as a Witness - My Lord, from His holy temple. ³ For behold! Yahweh will fare forth from His place, and He will descend and tread on the fane heights of the land. ⁴ And the mountains will be melted under Him, and the vales will rend as wax from the presence of fire, as water being spilled on a descent. ⁵ All this comes 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 is the sin of the house of Judah? Is it not Jerusalem? ⁶ And I will make Samaria a rubbish heap, a field for the plantings of a vineyard. And I will spill her stones into the ravine, and her foundations will I expose. ⁷ And all her carvings shall be pounded to pieces, and all her fees shall be burned with fire. And all her grief fetishes will I make a desolation; for from the fee of a prostitute she got them together, and unto the fee of a prostitute shall they return. ⁸ On this account will I wail and howl; I will go looted and naked. I will make a wailing as the jackals, and a mourning as the daughters of the ostrich; ⁹ for her smiting is mortal, for it comes unto Judah. It touches unto the gateway of my people, unto Jerusalem. ¹⁰ In Gath you must not magnify it. In Accho you must not lament. In the house of Aphra, wallow in the soil. ¹¹ Pass away! To you, dweller of Saphir, is naked shame! The dweller of Zaanan will not fare forth. The wailing of Beth-ezel will take from you its standpoint. ¹² For the dweller of Maroth will travail for good, seeing that evil will descend from Yahweh to the gateway of Jerusalem. ¹³ Harness the chariot to a stallion, dweller of Lachish. She is the beginning of sin to the daughter of Zion, for in you are found the transgressions of Israel. ¹⁴ Wherefore you shall give dismissing notices to the tenants of Gath; the houses of Achzib are for a lie to the kings of Israel. ¹⁵ Still I will bring a tenant to you, dweller of Mareshah. Unto Adullam shall come the glory of the daughter of Israel. ¹⁶ Make yourself bald, and shear yourself over the sons of your delicacies. Widen your baldness as the vulture, for they are deported from you."