Who Is a God Like You
14 Shepherd your people with your staff, the flock of your heritage, who dwell by themselves in a forest. Let them feed in the middle of fertile pasture land, in Bashan and Gilead, as in the days of old. 15 “As in the days of your coming out of the land of Egypt, I will show them marvelous things.” 16 The nations will see and be ashamed of all their might. They will lay their hand on their mouth. Their ears will be deaf. 17 They will lick the dust like a serpent. Like crawling things of the earth, they will come trembling out of their dens. They will come with fear to Yahweh our God, and will be afraid because of you. 18 Who is a God like you, who pardons iniquity, and passes over the disobedience of the remnant of his heritage? He doesn’t retain his anger forever, because he delights in loving kindness. 19 He will again have compassion on us. He will tread our iniquities under foot. You will cast all their sins into the depths of the sea. 20 You will give truth to Jacob, and mercy to Abraham, as you have sworn to our fathers from the days of old.
The book ends by asking the question the prophet's own name asks, and answers it with the words God once used of himself.
The closing movement opens as a prayer: shepherd your people with your staff, and let them graze in Bashan and Gilead as in the days of old Micah 7:14. The answer in verse 15 dates itself to the exodus. Verses 16 and 17 show the nations with a hand over the mouth, licking dust like the serpent sentenced in the garden Genesis 3:14.
Verse 18 is the summit, and it is a question: who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over the rebellion of the remnant H7611 of his inheritance. The prophet's name asks who is like Yah; the book's last movement asks it aloud. And the remnant that has run through six chapters turns out to be the object of the pardon rather than the reward of the faithful.
The answer is assembled from words God once spoke about himself — bearing iniquity and rebellion, slow to anger, abounding in covenant love H2617 Exodus 34:6–7. This is the fourth prophet here to reach for that self-description, and each takes a different part of it: one pleads it to escape a commission Jonah 4:2, one preaches it as grounds for turning back Joel 2:13, one cites its other half against an empire Nahum 1:3. Micah puts it as a question.
And he answers with the sea. The sins go into the depths Micah 7:19, and the oath that closes the book is older than every charge in it Micah 7:20.
settled What this mark means