Bible Commentaries

You Hate The Good and Love Evil

- Micah Three -

God had a cause against the leaders of His people. Instead of leading in a godly way they were very violent and wicked. God spoke to all the people, but leaders have both a special accountability and responsibility to God. God said of the leaders, you "hate the good, and love the evil." The leaders were just pushing the people deeper and deeper into poverty, consuming them like cannibals eating the flesh of people. This figure should have awakened the conscience of the people.

Sadly those leaders and the people remained in their sins. When they cried out for help God did not and would not hear them. (Psalms 66:18, Proverbs 28:9) If you are living in sin and cry out to God for help with some difficulty you should only expect silence. The promise to the obedient is that God will make His face to shine upon His people. (Numbers 6:24-26) Here the prophet says concerning this disobedient people, "God will not hear them; He will even hide His face from them."

Micah expressed God's anger against the false prophets that spoke to His people. These false prophets said they brought peace and comfort to God's people when in fact they brought neither. God said, "The sun shall go down over the prophets." The false prophets would be carried into captivity. The day of restoration that would give comfort to others would be a day of darkness and calamity to them. Micah, God's true prophet, was contrasted with those false teachers. He was full of power by the Spirit of the Lord. He was on God's side. He spoke of and he spoke by the power of God. The Old Testament prophets had the job of exposing sin. Micah was no different. The warning from Micah could easily be spoken to the people of our day. "The heads thereof judge for reward, and the priests thereof teach for hire, and the prophets thereof divine for money: yet will they lean upon the LORD, and say, Is not the LORD among us?" (Micah 3:11) The leaders and the people had a false confidence. Judgment was coming and they felt that they were right with God when that was not the case at all. The people of Judah responded to the preaching of Micah. A great revival came in the days of Hezekiah.

The sins of the princes -- Micah 3:1-4 : In a simple, but very sad statement God said, "They love evil and hate good." Micah encouraged the leaders to listen to God. The princes were unjust and godless people that consumed others. Under such conditions they could never expect the Lord to answer their prayers. They would cry to Him but He would not hear because of their wickedness. You cannot continue to practice evil deeds and expect the Lord to answer your prayers. It is a sad commentary on a nation when the leading men of that nation, whether religious men or politicians are corrupt. These men are people that should have known how to act with good judgment, but in this case they had taken advantage of the unfortunate people for years.

The leaders were not righteous examples to the people. They preferred to do evil instead of what was right. Their mistreatment of the people caused God to say, "You skin my people alive. You strip off their flesh." This is the same picture as of Micah 2:8 when an innocent person passed by and they robbed him of his cloths and possessions. These wicked rulers devoured the goods, and livelihood of their brethren. The idea of breaking their bones was that of a bear or a lion attacking a defenseless lamb. They were very greedy for themselves and did not care who they hurt in the process. The time would come that God would bring judgment upon those wicked people. They would cry in vain for mercy. "Whoso stoppeth his ears at the cry of the poor, he also shall cry himself, but shall not be heard." (Proverbs 21:13) Their wickedness put them in such a horrible spiritual state that God would not hear them.

The sins of the prophets -- Micah 3:5-8 : The prophets declared peace when there was no peace. The very ones that should have helped the people walk with God caused them to err. These false prophets only served themselves. They were lying prophets that promised security for anyone that gave them food, but disaster for anyone that refuses to feed them. God promised a time of judgment to come upon Judah and Israel. It would be a time when he would take away prophetic abilities. Instead of being a time of spiritual light there would be darkness.

The false prophets had been selfish and abusive. God promised them that the time would come when they would have no message from Him. They would be in darkness. Simply stated God's message to the false prophet was, "You will live in the dark, far from the sight of the sun, with no message from me." (Micah 3:6) The false prophets would blush and cover their mouths because they had nothing to say. Micah, in contrast with the false prophets, was God's faithful prophet empowered by the Holy Spirit of God. It was by inspiration of God that Micah declared to Israel and to Judah their sins.

The sins of the leaders of Jerusalem -- Micah 3:9-11 : In a scathing rebuke Micah wrote about the injustice of rulers and love of money of prophets. He said, "You leaders accept bribes for dishonest decisions. You priests and prophets teach and preach, but only for money. Then you say, "The LORD is on our side. No harm will come to us." (Micah 3:11) Micah urged the heads of the Judah and Israel to heed the message of God. These people had been so evil and then they even said they would not be judged for their actions because God was with them.

These leaders abhorred right judgment. This attitude resulted in a perversion of all fairness in dealing with others. They had made "cruelty and murder a way of life in Jerusalem." Jeremiah 5:31 gives the same description, "The prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests bear rule by their means; and my people love to have it so: and what will ye do in the end thereof?" Micah tells us that the prophets are false prophets for the love of money. "They even pretended to believe that the Lord would preserve them from all harm in spite of their inconsistent lives."

Frightful judgment against Jerusalem -- Micah 3:12 : The evils of these people had brought things to such a point that both Jerusalem and the Temple would be destroyed. "Therefore shall Zion for your sake be plowed as a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high places of the forest." (Micah 3:12) God told those evil leaders, "because of you, Jerusalem will be plowed under and left in ruins. Thorns will cover the mountain where the temple now stands."

These are the words quoted in Jeremiah 26:18 "Micah the Morasthite prophesied in the days of Hezekiah king of Judah, and spake to all the people of Judah, saying, Thus saith the LORD of hosts; Zion shall be plowed like a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high places of a forest." In those days the people repented and changed their lives, and so the execution of this threat was prevented, and did not come at that time. It is the wickedness of those that preside in the nations that bring them to ruin.