Page:06.CBOT.KD.PropheticalBooks.B.vol.6.LesserProphets.djvu/965

 prophecies, that we are warranted in inferring the contemporaneous labours of the two prophets (compare Mich. Isa 2:11 with Isa 28:7; Mich. Mic 3:5-7 with Isa 29:9-12; Mich. Mic 3:12 with Isa 32:13-14; and Mich. Mic 4:1-5 with Isa 2:2-5; Mic 5:2-4 with Isa 7:14 and Isa 9:5). To this we may add the account in Jer 26:18-19, that certain men of the elders of Judah, when seeking to vindicate Jeremiah, who was condemned to death on account of his prophecies concerning the destruction of Jerusalem, quoted word for word Mic 3:12, to show that in the days of Hezekiah Micah had predicted the destruction of Jerusalem, without having been put to death by king Hezekiah and all Judah. It is true that Hitzig, Ewald, and others, have founded an argument upon this against the correctness of the heading to our book, according to which Micah prophesied not only under Hezekiah, but also under Jotham and Ahaz, interpreting it as meaning that the elders of Judah knew from good historical tradition the time when the particular words in Micah 3-5 had first been uttered. But they are wrong in this. For even if Micah had uttered this prophecy for the first time in the reign of Hezekiah, it would by no means follow that he had not also prophesied before that, namely, in the reign of Hezekiah. The relation in which Mic 4:1-5 stands to Isa 2:2-5 is sufficient of itself to point to the times of Jotham (see at Mic 4:1). Again, Mic 6:16 does not suit the times of Hezekiah, but only those of Ahaz, who walked to such an extent in the ways of the kings of Israel (2Ki 16:3; 2Ch 28:2), that Judah could be charged with holding by the statutes of Omri and all the deeds of the house of Ahab. Moreover, the assumption that the elders of Judah in the time of Jehoiakim knew from good traditional authority the precise time in which Micah uttered that threat, is quite an unfounded one. They simply knew that Micah's prophetic writings sprang from the time of Hezekiah; and of the kings under whom Micah prophesied according to the statement of the writings themselves (Mic 1:1), they mention only Hezekiah, because he was the only one who “constituted a spiritual authority” (Hengstenberg). But the fact that Micah's prophecies were committed to writing in the time of Hezekiah by no means precludes the supposition that either the prophecies themselves, or certain portions of them,