What are the top three values that drive your life?
What would be the shorter version of the ten commandments for today, or the post-it size must-have laws for ethical and moral Jewish living?
Micah, like some other prophets, chooses a much shorter formula - he takes it down from 613 to just 3 principles. Justice. Love. Humility.
His most famous and quoted line shows up in today’s chapter and it includes this 3 top-three-tips recipe. This verse has been carved on sanctuary walls, quoted in endless sermons and continues to be a guideline for the good and moral life for Jews and Christians - on a wide spectrum of faithful positions on what exactly good, pious or ethical life choices means.
He delivers this line in the context of a passionate speech of protest against the sacrificial system in Jerusalem that has become bureaucratic and empty of meaning, displeasing to God and a betrayal to the essence of the nation.
What then should replace it?
הִגִּ֥יד לְךָ֛ אָדָ֖ם מַה־טּ֑וֹב וּמָֽה־יְהֹוָ֞ה דּוֹרֵ֣שׁ מִמְּךָ֗ כִּ֣י אִם־עֲשׂ֤וֹת מִשְׁפָּט֙ וְאַ֣הֲבַת חֶ֔סֶד וְהַצְנֵ֥עַ לֶ֖כֶת עִם־אֱלֹהֶֽיךָ׃
“You have been told, O mortal, what is good,
And what YHWH requires of you:
Only to do justice
And to love kindness,
And to walk modestly with your God”
Micah 6:8
Although he is not being super specific, what Micah is doing here is demand a religious reform that will change the focus of faith and community from the serving of the gods with offerings - to the service of humanity’s needs. It is a radical political-religious campaign to put justice front and center, and not the rituals of the cult. It is a balancing act that is still in progress.
Micha lived during the days of King Ahaz, who was a vassal of Assyria and adopted the empire’s ritual and cultural practices. He probably had to. The Assyrian religion was part of the political system and the role of sacrificial rites was central. Micah, Isaiah, and other prophets called their people to resist not simply the idolatrous aspect of the Assyrian religious ways but also the political affiliation with the occupying empire. Micah, conscious of the needs of his oppressed people, wants them to resist national identification with Assyria and its cult, and to focus on each other’s needs for justice and dignity as the main tenets of Judaic religion. He’s trying to rebrand. And on some levels he succeeded.
There is a famous Talmudic text in Tractate Makot that lists a few other proposals for rebrands, revisions and reducing of Jewish laws - prior to Micah:
“Rabbi Simlai preached: 613 Mitzvot were communicated to Moses… King David came and reduced them to eleven…The prophet Isaiah came and reduced them to six…Micah came and reduced them to three… And what does ‘walking humbly before thy God’ mean? It means that one should console the mourners at the funeral, and rejoice in bridal processions.”
Micah wanted less sacrifices and more justice and love. The Talmudic read of ‘walk humbly with God’ as a healthy integration with one’s stable society at both times of grief and joy is one of the reminders from our traditional wisdom of what it really is all about.
613 laws, 10 commandments or 3 principles - Micah represents another poetic human voice that’s calling us to prioritize what’s more meaningful, helpful and transformative to our lives and the lives of others: That’s the essence of the good life lived in accordance with the sacred.
In a recent search for more commentary on Micah I discovered these powerful words in a post Queering the Bible by Rev. Ashley Mcfaul-Erwin:
“As I approach the prophet Micah I bring my queerness to the text. I bring my identity as an immigrant to the United States from Northern Ireland. I bring my identity of growing up in a land marked by violent conflict in the early years of my life. I bring my pain, joy, frustration, and hope. What is it that you bring as we encounter the prophet Micah? What does Micah bring as he moves to the centre of power to tell the elite of God’s judgment and hope?
Each time Micah warns against societal corruption and the mistreatment of the vulnerable, he follows these words with a message of hope. This pattern continues throughout the book. Micah, the prophet from a rural village, delivers a powerful and poetic condemnation of the corruption within society and religion, as well as the exploitation of the economically vulnerable.”
Rev. Ashely follows the brave path charted by Micah and countless activists, artists, prophets and change makers of all types, raising up truth, challenging assumptions, rebranding the essential - and leaving us with less laws - more hope, and the refocusing on what matters most.
How else will we ever be able to confront the evil empires -out there and within?
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