by
Damien
F. Mackey
“Not only did Micah live in the vicinity
of Amos’ home, Tekoa, but he was like
Amos in many respects. He was so much
influenced by the spirit of Amos that he
has been called “Amos redivivus”.”
Could
Amos even have been the same person as the prophet Micah?
In my EXCURSUS: LIFE AND TIMES OF HEZEKIAH’S CONTEMPORARY, ISAIAH, beginning on p. 87
(Volume Two) of my university thesis:
A Revised
History of the Era of King Hezekiah of Judah
and its
Background
I advanced an original view that the “Uzziah” of
the Book of Judith, a Simeonite, may have been the great prophet Isaiah
himself, and that, if so, then this Uzziah’s father, “Micah”, would be Amos the
father of Isaiah. Thus I wrote:
Isaiah
and his Father Amos
Relevant to my
efforts to merge [Kings, Chronicles and Isaiah] with [Book of Judith] is the
need now to test whether Isaiah finds his appropriate match in the Simeonite Uzziah,
chief magistrate of Bethulia, who
– in the context of my reconstruction – must have been a great man in
Hezekiah’s kingdom. We saw recently, in Chapter 3 (on
p. 67), that Uzziah was entitled
both ‘the prince of Judah’ and ‘the prince of the people of Israel’. Now such
an identification, of Isaiah with Uzziah, would
necessitate that Uzziah’s father, Micah,
be the same as Isaiah’s father, Amos (or Amoz). This is
interesting. Whilst the names Amos and Micah do not immediately appear to share
any similarity whatsoever, scholars find an incredible similarity though
between whom they consider to be these ‘two’ prophets. Thus King:1356
Not only did
Micah live in the vicinity of Amos’ home, Tekoa, but he was like Amos in many
respects. He was so much influenced by the spirit of Amos that he has been
called “Amos redivivus”. Both
[sic] rustic prophets attacked in a direct and forceful way the socio-economic
abuses of their day.
Micah’s
origins we do know. He hailed from the town of ‘Moresheth’ (Micah 1:1) -
thought to be Moresheth-Gath, a
border town of southern Judah. It is in this location, Moresheth-Gath,
I suggest, that we discover the place of origin of Isaiah and his
father.
Micah’s Moresheth
is thought to have been near (a suburb of) Gath, whose location is disputed,
but Tell-es-Safi is definitely the favoured site. King may be being a bit
liberal by describing Micah’s town as “in the vicinity of … Tekoa”. It is some
distance away.
“Belonging to Gath, Moresheth must have
lain near the Philistine border …. Moresheth was, therefore, a place in the Shephelah,
or range of low hills which lie between the hill country of Judah and the
Philistine plain”: http://biblehub.com/commentaries/expositors/micah/1.htm
There are reasons,
though, why I think that Tekoa would not have been the actual home of the
prophet Amos. When confronted by Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, Amos retorted
(7:14-15): ‘I was neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet, but I was a
shepherd, and I also took care of sycamore-fig trees. But
the Lord took me from following the flock and said to me, ‘Go, prophesy to
my people Israel’.’
Now, commentators such
as Eugene Merrill have been quick to point out “that sycamores were abundant in
the Shephelah but not
around Tekoa” (The
World and the Word: An Introduction to the Old Testament, p. 431, n. 4).
So,
my first point would be that Amos’s cultivating of sycamore-fig trees would be most
appropriate in Moresheth, but highly unlikely in Tekoa. Moresheth, we read, “is the opposite
exposure from the wilderness of Tekoa, some seventeen miles away across the
watershed. As the home of Amos is bare and desert, so the home of Micah is fair
and fertile” (Bible hub).
My second point is that Amos, apparently a
herdsman (בַנֹּקְדִים) - some
think a wealthy “sheepmaster”, whilst others say that he must have been poor - was,
as we read above, “following the flock” מֵאַחֲרֵי הַצֹּאן)), meaning that, seasonally,
he was a man on the move. Stationed at his home town of Moresheth in the
Shephelah, I suggest, where he trended the sycamore trees, the prophet also had
to move with the flock from time to time.
And this is apparently where Tekoa (about 6 miles SE of Bethlehem) comes
into the picture.
Having attempted
to reconcile the Judaean geography of the prophet Amos with that of Micah (of Moresheth-gath), deemed “Amos redivivus”, it is now to be considered whether Amos
is also chronologically compatible with the prophet Micah.
In my EXCURSUS: LIFE AND TIMES OF HEZEKIAH’S CONTEMPORARY, ISAIAH, beginning on p. 87
(Volume Two) of my university thesis (parts of the original version of the Excursus
now needing a fair bit of modification), I
advanced an original view that the “Uzziah” of the Book of Judith, a Simeonite,
may have been the great prophet Isaiah himself, and that, if so, then this
Uzziah’s father, “Micah”, would be Amos the father of Isaiah. Thus I wrote:
Amos began his
prophetic ministry in the latter days of the Jehu-ide king, Jeroboam II of Israel
(c. 785-743 BC, conventional dates …). …. Amos was called to leave Judah and
testify in the north against the injustices of Samaria. (Cf. Micah 1:2-7). Most
interestingly, Amos was to be found preaching in the northern Bethel, which I
have identified with Bethulia of [the Book
of Judith] (refer back to pp. 71-72 of this volume). Not unexpectedly, Amos’
presence there at the time of Jeroboam II was not appreciated by the Bethelite
priesthood, who regarded him as a conspirator from the southern kingdom (Amos
7:10). Being the man that he was, though, Amos would unlikely have been frightened
away by Jeroboam’s priest, Amaziah, when he had urged Amos (vv.12-13): ‘O seer,
go, flee away to the land of Judah, earn your bread there, and prophesy there;
but never again prophesy at Bethel, for it is the king’s sanctuary, and it is
the temple of the kingdom’.
….
Presumably
Amos had chosen Bethel/Bethulia in
which to settle because there, more than likely, he had Simeonite ancestors.
Judith’s husband Manasseh would later be buried near Bethulia
“with his ancestors” (Judith 8:3). This town would thus have been
one of those locations in which the migrant Simeonites of king Asa of Judah’s
reign (more than a century earlier) had chosen to settle; perhaps re-naming the
place Bethul [Bethel] after
a Simeonite town of that name in south western Judah (Joshua 19:4). ….
[End of quote]
Chronologically, Micah
would be considered to have been somewhat later than Amos, based on Micah 1:1: “The
word of the Lord
that came to Micah of Moresheth during the reigns of Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah,
kings of Judah …”. His ministry to Judah began apparently during the reign of
Jotham, who was the son of Uzziah. But Uzziah was a later contemporary of
Jeroboam II of Israel, during whose reign Amos had been called to northern
Bethel. Interestingly, Micah’s prophetic ministry also included - like that of
Amos - the north. For verse 1 continues, “… the vision [Micah] saw concerning
Samaria and Jerusalem”.
Quite feasible,
therefore, would appear to be the following speculative scenario, incorporating
into one Amos/Micah.
Amos from Judah, not accustomed to playing the part of
a prophet, was called to testify in northern Bethel during the reign of king Jeroboam
II. He then, during the reign of king Jotham, returned, as Micah, to focus upon
Judah - though not without further reference to the north - in which rôle he
continued down to the reign of king Hezekiah of Judah (cf. Jeremiah 26:18) at
some point during which, presumably, he died.
Now, if Isaiah
were actually the son of Micah, as I suspect, then we could expect that Micah
had been prophesying - like Amos - even earlier than the reign of Jotham, given
that Isaiah’s ministry went back to the time of Jotham’s father, Uzziah (Isaiah
1:1): “The vision concerning Judah and Jerusalem that Isaiah son of Amoz saw
during the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, kings of Judah”.
I continue with now
my thesis commentary:
Whilst this
Simeonite family was not descended from the prophetic line, as Amos himself would
testify to the priest of Bethel (7:14), it was certainly a ‘family’ from the
point of view of its striking the same prophetic chord. Commentators have
recognised a similar strain in the writings of Amos,
Micah, Hosea and Isaiah,
whilst having no idea of what was - at least, as far as I see it -
their proper (father-to-son) relationship. Thus King has written, in regard to
the prophet Micah:1362 “... the influence
[upon Micah] of Isaiah, also Hosea and Amos, is evident”. But it was rather Micah,
as Amos, I suggest, who
was doing the ‘influencing’; he upon his son Isaiah/Hosea.
….
We should
expect that Isaiah would have been back in the south again, more than a decade
later, when the Assyrian Turtan came
to ‘Ashdod’. For it was precisely then that he had begun to perform that
strange pantomime or “street drama”1366 of
his of going ‘barefoot and naked’ (Isaiah 20:1-2) as a vivid demonstration to
Judah that its dependence upon Egypt/Ethiopia would end in disaster and
captivity. This prophetic action would presumably have been more effective if
undertaken in Judah, rather than in the north. Fortunately for Isaiah, he may
not have been alone in this; for Micah his father, who like Isaiah had foretold
firstly the destruction of Samaria, with wrath flowing over into Judah, was
similarly warning (Micah 1: 8-9):
This is why I
am going to mourn and lament, go barefoot and
naked, howl like the jackals, wail like the
ostriches. For there is no healing for the blow Yahweh strikes; it reaches into
Judah, it knocks at the very door of my people, reaches even unto Jerusalem.
This, I
suggest, was a father-and-son prophetic combination!
Not only did
their prophetic careers overlap chronologically, but they also said and did similar
things. (For a classical example of their speaking similar utterances, see the comparison
of their respective oracles [below]…). And that Micah, too, had prophesied in
the time of king Hezekiah - who was in fact receptive to the prophet’s message
- is apparent from the Book of Jeremiah, in which Hezekiah’s response is contrasted
with that of the Davidides of Jeremiah’s own day, more than a century after Micah
(Jeremiah 26:16, 18-19). Thus I would not generally accept what Irvine has
given as being a traditional view concerning the relationship between the
prophets Micah and Isaiah and the Davidic kings (and I would also of course
reject that Micah was ‘younger’ than Isaiah); though I would have no
disagreement with Irvine’s concluding remarks re Ahaz:1367
Scholars
traditionally have viewed Isaiah and his younger contemporary, Micah, as
antagonists of the Davidic monarchs, Ahaz and Hezekiah. The conclusion of G. von
Rad is typical: “All the evidence suggests, however, that these prophets increasingly
wrote off the reigning members of the house of David of their own day, and even
that they regarded the whole history of the monarchy from the time of David as
a false development”. As for Isaiah’s attitude toward Ahaz specifically, the
prophet’s change from support to opposition is thought to have occurred during
the course of the Syro-Ephraimitic crisis. A detailed explanation of this shift
and a delineation of the issues were given classical formulation in K. Budde’s Jesaja’s
Erleben (1928).
Far from its
being anti-Davidic, the Tendenz of
the Isaian Denkschrift seems
to me – and this view is based on discussions such as the following by Irvine,
with reference to Würtheim - to have been a seeking to confirm Ahaz and
Hezekiah in the covenant anciently established with king David:1368
Verse 9b [of
Isaiah chapter 7] is a warning to the entire Davidic court (the verbs are
plural): “If you don’t stand firm (’im lo’
ta’amînû),
you won’t stand at all” (kîlo’
te’amenû).
…. The prophet engages here in a clever word-play: ta’amînû
and te’amenû
not only sound alike, but derive in fact from the same Hebrew
root, ’mn [1369].
The second verb, a nifal form, clearly
refers to the political survival of the house of David. The meaning of the
first verb, a hifil form of ’mn
used absolutely, is less certain. … Scholars generally translate
the term as “believe”, but disagree over the prophet’s application of the word
…. E. Würtheim contends that the implied object of “believe” is the Nathan
prophecy (2 Samuel 7) and the covenant thereby established between Yahweh and
the Davidic house. Isaiah is warning Ahaz not to break the covenant by
appealing to Assyria [to Tiglath-pileser III] for help ….
Micah and
Isaiah were, as I said, a father-and-son prophetic combination. Most striking of
all of their ‘interconnections’ perhaps is the following case, in which one of
Micah’s ‘Oracles’, regarding the future reign of Yahweh in Zion, is virtually
word for word exact with one of Isaiah’s ‘Oracles’ on the same subject.
I am referring
to (NRSV translation):
Micah 4:1-3
In
days to come the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as the
highest of the mountains, and shall be raised up above the hills. Peoples
shall stream to it, and many nations shall come and say: ‘Come,
let
us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; that
he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths’. For out of Zion
shall go forth instruction, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. He shall
judge between many peoples, and shall arbitrate between strong nations far
away; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into
pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall
they learn war any more ….
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Isaiah 2:2-4
In
days to come the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as the
highest of the mountains, and shall be raised above the hills; all the
nations shall stream to it. Many peoples shall come and say, ‘Come,
let
us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; that
he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths’. For out of Zion
shall go forth instruction, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. He shall
judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall
beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any
more.
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