The Goal of Yahweh’s Action: The book of Micah is never content to rest with the message of one historical period or with one manifestation of Yahweh’s action. (See the introduction and the comment on 1:2–5b). The preceding oracles have dealt with the fall of Samaria (1:5c–7), with the Assyrian conquest of the Judean towns to the west of Jerusalem (1:10–16), with the threatened fall of Jerusalem (2:1–3, 10), and with the postexilic reversal of the fortunes of the oppressors and the oppressed (2:4–5).

But what is the goal of this history of some two hundred years? Its goal is Yahweh’s salvation of his chosen people. Yahweh’s intervention, his judgment on the northern and southern kingdoms, his dispossession of the oppressing Jerusalem leaders—all have one purpose: to make a new covenant peop…