The Prophet Names His Own Town
13 Harness the chariot to the swift steed, inhabitant of Lachish. She was the beginning of sin to the daughter of Zion; for the transgressions of Israel were found in you. 14 Therefore you will give a parting gift to Moresheth Gath. The houses of Achzib will be a deceitful thing to the kings of Israel. 15 I will yet bring a conqueror to you, inhabitants of Mareshah. The glory of Israel will come to Adullam. 16 Shave your heads, and cut off your hair for the children of your delight. Enlarge your baldness like the vulture, for they have gone into captivity from you!
The roll call of doomed villages reaches the prophet's own home, and he does not step around it.
Lachish is told to harness the chariot to the team, and the town's name plays on the word for a swift steed. The charge is unexpected: Lachish is called the beginning of sin to the daughter of Zion, because the transgressions of Israel were found there Micah 1:13. A fortress on the western approach is blamed for importing the north's guilt into the south.
Verse 14 turns on a legal word. Judah gives parting gifts H7964 to Moresheth-Gath H4182, and that noun is dowry language — the same term describes the town Pharaoh handed over with his daughter when she married Solomon 1 Kings 9:16. Judah is marrying off her own village to an enemy, and Moresheth-Gath is the prophet's home, named in the book's first verse Micah 1:1.
The pun in the same verse is the sharpest of the series: the houses of Achzib will prove an achzab H391, a thing that deceives, a word used elsewhere of a stream that runs dry exactly when it is needed Jeremiah 15:18.
Mareshah is given a dispossessor whose title comes from the town's own root, and the glory of Israel goes to Adullam Micah 1:15, the cave where a hunted David once hid 1 Samuel 22:1. The man who wrote the list lived on it.
held with reason What this mark means