Relationship between Micah and Isaiah

 

 

Part One:

Some striking similarities

by

 

Damien F. Mackey

 

 

‘Because of this I will weep and wail; I will go about barefoot and naked.
I will howl like a jackal and moan like an owl.
For Samaria’s plague is incurable; it has spread to Judah’.

 

Micah 1:8-9

 

“In the year that the supreme commander, sent by Sargon king of Assyria, came to Ashdod and attacked and captured it— at that time the Lord spoke through Isaiah son of Amoz. He said to him, ‘Take off the sackcloth from your body and the sandals from your feet’. And he did so, going around stripped and barefoot”.

 

Isaiah 20:1-2

 

 

This is not the only instance of the prophets Micah and Isaiah saying/doing the same thing.

Consider the following extraordinary case of almost word-for-word parallelism:

 

Micah 4:1-3	Isaiah 2:2-4
In days to come the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be raised up above the hills. Peoples shall stream to it, and many nations shall come and say: ‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths’. For out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. He shall judge between many peoples, and shall arbitrate between strong nations far away; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more ….	In days to come the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be raised above the hills; all the nations shall stream to it. Many peoples shall come and say, ‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths’. For out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. He shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.

 

We know that these two prophets were contemporaries, both living at least during the reign of King Hezekiah of Judah. Cf. Jeremiah 26:18: “Micah of Moresheth prophesied in the days of Hezekiah king of Judah. He told all the people of Judah, ‘This is what the LORD Almighty says: “Zion will be plowed like a field, Jerusalem will become a heap of rubble, the temple hill a mound overgrown with thickets”’,” and Isaiah 1:1: “The vision concerning Judah and Jerusalem that Isaiah son of Amoz saw during the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, kings of Judah”.

And we can extend that contemporaneity even further, to include King Jotham (Micah 1:1): “The word of the Lord that came to Micah of Moresheth during the reigns of Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, kings of Judah—the vision he saw concerning Samaria and Jerusalem”.

But commentators - struck by such similarities between the two prophets as those noted above - are nevertheless divided about who may have borrowed from whom.

Philip J. King, for instance, writing on “Micah” for The Jerome Biblical Commentary (1968), believed that it was Isaiah who had influenced Micah (17:7, p. 284): “... the influence [upon Micah] of Isaiah, also Hosea and Amos, is evident”. {This may seem to be a logical conclusion considering that, whilst Isaiah informs us in 1:1 that he had been prophesying as far back as the reign of King Uzziah Judah, Micah (qua Micah) can claim to have gone back only as far as the reign of Uzziah’ son, Jotham}.

James-Michael Smith, however, in his “Micah 4 and Isaiah 2: Who Borrowed from Who??”, is far less decisive (http://jmsmith.org/downloads/Micah-4-and-Isaiah-2-Who-Borrowed-from-Who.pdf):

 

Because of their almost identical nature however, these two prophecies also raise controversy regarding authorship and inspiration. Are Micah 4:1-5 and Isaiah 2:1-5 two different prophecies given to two different prophets on two separate occasions? Or are they two remnants of one original anonymous saying, which was adapted into the books named after these prophets hundreds of years later? Or perhaps Micah was the original author and Isaiah borrowed from him—or vice versa.

[End of quote]

 

What I think is certain - on the basis of the undeniable similarities referred to above - is that there must have been a very close relationship between these two contemporary prophets, Micah and Isaiah.

And, in Part Two, I hope to be more specific about the nature of this perceived relationship.