Rulers Who Eat Their Own People
1 I said, “Please listen, you heads of Jacob, and rulers of the house of Israel: Isn’t it for you to know justice? 2 You who hate the good, and love the evil; who tear off their skin, and their flesh from off their bones; 3 who also eat the flesh of my people, and peel their skin from off them, and break their bones, and chop them in pieces, as for the pot, and as meat within the cauldron. 4 Then they will cry to Yahweh, but he will not answer them. Yes, he will hide his face from them at that time, because they made their deeds evil.”
The second address opens by telling the leaders that knowing justice was their job, and then describes what they did instead in the language of butchery.
The summons in verse 1 is the book's second, and it is aimed at the heads of Jacob and the rulers of the house of Israel. The question put to them is not whether they are good men but whether justice H4941 is their business. The word falls five times in this book, and the five carry its whole argument: the rulers ought to know justice, this prophet is filled with it Micah 3:8, those rulers detest it Micah 3:9, it heads the list of what God actually asks Micah 6:8, and at the end God performs it himself for someone who waited Micah 7:9.
Verses 2 and 3 answer the question by image rather than by charge. Skin torn off, flesh stripped from the bone, the bones broken up and put in a pot like meat for boiling. The metaphor is deliberately intolerable, and its force lies in who is being cooked: the text calls them my people, which makes the rulers cannibals of their own household.
Verse 4 sets the penalty, and it is silence. They will cry to Yahweh and he will not answer; he will hide his face at that time. Men who did not listen when they were asked are not heard when they ask. Nothing is said about the punishment being disproportionate, because the passage is built so that the reader will notice it is not.
settled What this mark means