THE SHORT COURSE SERIES

Edited by Rev. John Adams, B.D.

The Prophecy of Micah

By Rev. Arthur J. Tait, D.D.

Chapter 1 THE WORD OF THE LORD

Micah 1:1.

1. Revelation.

There was a time when the familiar phrase with which the Book of Micah begins would have been accepted without question. To-day it challenges thought. To some the change of attitude in respect of the Divine element in Holy Scripture is an offence, to others it has meant salvation from unbelief; but whichever way it is, we have to recognise the fact that we live in times of transition and new interpretation, and that transition inevitably involves unsettlement. The necessity is laid upon all alike in the present day of being prepared with a reasoned answer to the question? Is there such a thing as the word of the Lord? Must we cast on one side the idea of revelation, as part of the childish thought which was good enough for a past age, but cannot survive the searching criticism of our own day?

To this question we must reply that God and revelation are complementary terms: both reason and experience lead us to this position. Reason demands that God must be the perfection of all that is good and noble and true; but it would be impossible to maintain belief in such perfection, if it were imagined that God has left His moral creatures in darkness and ignorance, either in respect of Himself and His will, or in respect of their own duty and destiny. Reason cannot rest satisfied with a conception of God from which the idea of revelation is eliminated.

And this postulate of reason is supported by the testimony of experience; for amongst moral beings fatherhood, which is true to its name, involves self-manifestation to the offspring. A man who allows his child to grow up in ignorance of him has denied the most elementary conception of fatherhood. Such a man is not a true father; he behaves in a manner which we speak of as unnatural. And the higher we look in the scale of virtue, the more confidently do we expect to find intercourse between father and child.

Since, then, God is the supreme Father, the creator of moral beings, from whom all fatherhood in heaven and on earth is named; since, moreover, He is at the same time the perfection of goodness (for this is as essential an element in the conception of God as Fatherhood is), it is as certain as anything can be that God has revealed Himself. The fundamental problem of revelation is in reality a problem not for the Christian, but for the unbeliever. The true form of the problem is not "How can a man believe that God has revealed Himself?" but "How can a man justify his refusal to believe that God has revealed Himself?"

It is possible to get rid of the problem by denying the existence of God; but in that case a man must discover a philosophy of life which can dispense with the idea of an intelligent First Cause, he must eliminate from history all conception of an overruling Providence, he must find some means of doing away with the fact of Jesus Christ. Yet even Atheism is to be preferred to Agnosticism, for the conception that there may be God but nothing is or can be known about Him is condemned alike by reason' and experience. If God is, then the word of God is to be found somewhere and somehow.

2. Prophecy.

A prophet was a man through whom revelation was mediated. It mattered not what form the revelation took: it might be the interpretation of past experience, or the proclamation of present duty, or the preparation for future developments. In any case the prophet was the forth-teller of the message from the Lord. But while maintaining this larger and truer conception of the prophet's function as being the forthteller rather than the foreteller, we must be on our guard against a capricious refusal to recognise the element of prediction in prophecy. Reaction from the fanciful exegesis of an earlier age has led us to think more readily of prophetic reflection upon the past than of prophetic prediction of the future. It is therefore necessary for us to remember that prediction had an established place in Israelite prophecy. If it were not so, the challenge so frequently addressed to idolaters that they should declare the things that are to come hereafter would have been meaningless.1

Moreover, it is as reasonable to believe in prediction as an essential element of revelation as it is to regard revelation as an essential element in the conception of God. An alleged revelation of God which gave no indication of the things which were in store would on that very account have been open to suspicion. Surely the Lord God will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the 'prophets.2

But let us return to the idea of the prophet as the forth- teller of the revelation of God. It was the word of the Lord which came to him. In other words, he was the messenger of God to the Church, not the messenger of the Church to her members. True, he was a member of the Church, and it was through his fellowship in her life that he was prepared for the reception of the revelation, but that fact gave to the Church no part or lot in the original mediating of the particular revelation. Again, the Church was in existence before the prophet was born; and after the delivery of his message and its committal to writing, the Church acted as the witness and keeper of the prophecy, yet this did not constitute the Church the author of the message. It was the word of the Lord which was thus written and preserved. The Church was the recipient, witness, and keeper of it, but not the originator. The language in which the message was expressed, the garb in which the truth was clothed, were suggested and provided by the times in which the prophet lived and by the circumstances of the prophet's life, but the inner meaning, the underlying idea, the enshrined truth, was of and from the Lord.

We have here the explanation of the genesis of one fragment of the Bible, but it is equally applicable to the other books of the Divine Library. The various portions of the Bible came into being because individual men were conscious that they had revelation to record, and the collections of writings which make up the two Testaments came into being because there was a general consciousness that the claim was valid.

The historians of Israel exhibit a consciousness that they are recording Divine revelation in history; the Psalmists give expression to the working of the Spirit in their meditations and aspirations; the Prophets write as men who are media of direct communication; the Evangelists manifest a conviction that they are recounting the life and teaching of the Incarnate Son of God; the Apostles write their Epistles with the claim made or implied that they are to the Church of the New Covenant what the Prophets were to the Church of the Old Covenant. Upon the whole volume the claim is stamped that its contents came to be written because the word of the Lord had come, whether directly through the action of the Spirit upon the mind of the writer, or indirectly through the Providential dealings which the writer was recording. God hath spoken — that is the source of confidence, the ground of appeal. It only remained for the Church to recognise the claim, to collect the writings so recognised, to preserve and transmit them as the records of revelation. This process did not constitute the Church the author of the writings; on the contrary, the writings were delivered to the Church, and are the supreme court of appeal by which her doctrine has to be tested.

3. The Prophet.

The word of the Lord that came to Micah.

Micah was a contemporary of Isaiah, but the qualifications, opportunities, and outlook of the two men were different. Isaiah belonged to the aristocracy, Micah to the people: the one was a companion of princes, the other was a man of the countryside. Isaiah figured largely in the political life of the nation, Micah devoted himself to its social and religious problems. Isaiah's outlook embraced the destiny of the surrounding nations, Micah was absorbed by the interests of his own people.

The comparison provides us with an illustration of the Divine method which is referred to in Heb. i. 1. God spake in the prophets by divers portions and in divers manners. He employed a variety of instrument and method to present the different aspects of truth and to fulfil different parts of His purpose. It was so in the past, and it is so still. Amos proclaims the severity of offended Righteousness, Hosea gives voice to wounded Love. The Lord Jesus mixed with men as the friend of publicans and sinners, the Baptist was the rigorous ascetic, living in the solitary grandeur of the desert. The impetuous leader of men is pressed into the service, in the person of St. Peter; the possessor of a heart of tenderness and sympathy, in the person of St. Barnabas. The Jewish publican takes his place by the side of the Gentile physician as transmitter of the Gospel tradition. St. James urges the necessity of works, against the lifeless formalism of barren orthodoxy; St. Paul emphasises the centrality of faith in contrast with a reliance upon ceremonial activity. Thus it has always been, and thus will it continue to be: difference of qualification, difference of character, difference of position, difference of emphasis, but underlying all the diversity, unity of service, and presentation of the one revelation.

It was this fact of diversity in unity which St. Paul proclaimed in the face of the jealousies and division of the Church at Corinth.3 On the one hand there is the one sovereign Spirit, and the one body into which He incorporates believers; on the other hand there is the diversity of gift and function which He assigns according to His will. Hence one of the first necessities for the servant of God is that he should recognise his own gift and function. This will guard him against despondency, when he finds others enjoying what he himself does not possess.4 The next necessity, of no less importance, is that he shall recognise the gifts and functions of others. This will save him from exclusiveness and pride.5 And inasmuch as it is to service that the believer is called, and not to the enjoyment of privilege as an end in itself, there is yet a third necessity. Each must strive earnestly for the best gifts so that he may be of the utmost value to the body of which he has been made a member.6 But these three necessities do not make up the whole requirement for Christian service. Neither separately nor in combination do they constitute the life without which every other gift is rendered ineffectual.7 And this gift which is the greatest of all gifts is offered to all alike. It is the gift of love, the very nature of God.8 This each can possess, this each must possess, if he is to be of any real use for the service of God here, and to abide in the Presence of God hereafter.