What Micah describes is a time when powerful people are above the law. People lose their house, their inheritance, and yes, even as the saying goes, "the shirt off their back" (Micah 2:8).
In the prior chapters he speaks about the coming invasion and captivity. In this chapter, he tells those being oppressed the only way to escape the inevitable:
Arise and go,for this is no place to rest,because of uncleanness that destroyswith a grievous destruction.
His advice is to preempt captivity and scatter. Leave behind what would be taken anyway and go. For without law there is no rest.
How crushing this would have been to hear. Already their congregation is being ripped apart by the actions of powerful people, their prophet is now instructing them to scatter and leave it all behind.
But God is faithful to His promises. No matter how far they scatter, God will return them to the fold.
I will surely assemble all of you, O Jacob;I will gather the remnant of Israel;I will set them togetherlike sheep in a fold,like a flock in its pasture,a noisy multitude of men.
And the Lord himself will open the gate and lead them forth.
He who opens the breach goes up before them;they break through and pass the gate,going out by it.Their king passes on before them,the Lord at their head.
This task will be accomplished by the Lord, himself, as a promised Messiah. “He Who Opens” (pāraṣ) will lead them to the green pastures.
As Adolph Hitler rose to power in the 1930s, many Jews followed Micah’s advice. But to do so they had to leave everything. During this time the Christian Churches were split in their response (See https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-german-churches-and-the-nazi-state).
The Deutsche Christen ("German Christians”), which started in the 1920’s, “embraced the nationalistic and racial aspects of the Nazi ideology”. But the Bekennende Kirche (“Confessing Church”) rose in opposition.
Two clergy from the Confessing Church that stand out were Martin Neimoller and Dietrich Bonhoffer.
Martin Neimoller survived the war. But spent seven years of it in a Nazi concentration camp. Following the war, he is famous for saying:
“First, they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”
Martin Neimoller was silent like the majority of Christians.
Dietrich Bonhoffer, however, was not. He did not survive the war. He was hanged for his opposition on April 9, 1945 (less than a month away from Germany’s surrender on May 7th). He is famous for his April 1933 essay “The Church and the Jewish Question”. The three main points of which are:
· First, the church was called to question state injustice.
· Secondly, it had an obligation to help all victims of injustice, whether they were Christian or not.
· Finally, the church might be called to “put a spoke in the wheel” to bring the machinery of injustice to a halt.
There comes a point, when leadership is so corrupt, so self-centered, so filled with falsehood, that the fabric of society is torn.
In recent years, in the United States, depending on your position on the political spectrum, that tear can be seen occurring from both ends.
The church must remain that place of truth, that place of rest. We must remain at the loom weaving and mending the societal fabric from the center.
