A Lament Begun in David's Words
8 For this I will lament and wail. I will go stripped and naked. I will howl like the jackals and mourn like the ostriches. 9 For her wounds are incurable; for it has come even to Judah. It reaches to the gate of my people, even to Jerusalem. 10 Don’t tell it in Gath. Don’t weep at all. At Beth Ophrah I have rolled myself in the dust. 11 Pass on, inhabitant of Shaphir, in nakedness and shame. The inhabitant of Zaanan won’t come out. The wailing of Beth Ezel will take from you his protection. 12 For the inhabitant of Maroth waits anxiously for good, because evil has come down from Yahweh to the gate of Jerusalem.
The prophet answers his own message with mourning, and he opens the lament by reversing the most famous lament in Israel.
Verse 8 is the prophet's reaction to what he has just announced. He goes stripped and barefoot, wailing like jackals and mourning like ostriches — creatures chosen for the sound they make at night. Nothing in it suggests satisfaction at being right. Verse 9 explains the grief: the blow is incurable, and it has not stopped at the northern border but reached the gate of his own people, Jerusalem itself.
Verse 10 then begins a roll call of towns, and its first clause is borrowed. David's lament over Saul and Jonathan opens with the words tell it not in Gath 2 Samuel 1:20. Micah uses the same three Hebrew words in reverse order, putting Gath first, so a lament over villages begins in the words of a lament over a king.
What follows works by the names themselves. Beth-le-Aphrah means a house of dust, and it is told to roll in dust. Shaphir means fair, and it goes past in nakedness and shame. Zaanan sounds like the verb to come out, and it does not come out. Maroth means bitter, and it waits for good while evil comes down to the gate of Jerusalem Micah 1:12. Each town is sentenced by its own name, which is a way of saying the judgment was latent in what they already were.
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