Micah

Several men share this name in Scripture, most of them barely more than a line in a family list: a son of Mephibosheth, and a descendant of Jonathan in 1 Chronicles 8. The one remembered is Micah of Moresheth, the prophet. When Jeremiah’s life was in danger for a hard message, the elders recalled that Micah had said Jerusalem would become heaps. Hezekiah did not put him to death; he “feared the LORD” and prayed instead, and judgment was held back. Jeremiah 26:17-19 tells it.

6 verses

2 Samuel

2 Samuel 9:12

And Mephibosheth had a young son, whose name was Micha. And all that dwelt in the house of Ziba were servants unto Mephibosheth.

1 Chronicles

1 Chronicles 8:34

And the son of Jonathan was Meribbaal; and Meribbaal begat Micah.

1 Chronicles 8:35

And the sons of Micah were, Pithon, and Melech, and Tarea, and Ahaz.

1 Chronicles 23:20

Of the sons of Uzziel; Michah the first, and Jesiah the second.

Jeremiah

Jeremiah 26:18

Micah the Morasthite prophesied in the days of Hezekiah king of Judah, and spake to all the people of Judah, saying, Thus saith the LORD of hosts; Zion shall be plowed like a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high places of a forest.

Jeremiah 26:19

Did Hezekiah king of Judah and all Judah put him at all to death? did he not fear the LORD, and besought the LORD, and the LORD repented him of the evil which he had pronounced against them? Thus might we procure great evil against our souls.

From Easton's Bible Dictionary

Matthew George Easton, 1897

A shortened form of Micaiah, who is like Jehovah? (1.) A man of Mount Ephraim, whose history so far is introduced in Judg. 17, apparently for the purpose of leading to an account of the settlement of the tribe of Dan in Northern Palestine, and for the purpose also of illustrating the lawlessness of the times in which he lived (Judg. 18; 19:1-29; 21:25).

(2.) The son of Merib-baal (Mephibosheth), 1 Chr. 8:34, 35.

(3.) The first in rank of the priests of the family of Kohathites (1 Chr. 23:20).

(4.) A descendant of Joel the Reubenite (1 Chr. 5:5).

(5.) “The Morasthite,” so called to distinguish him from Micaiah, the son of Imlah (1 Kings 22:8). He was a prophet of Judah, a contemporary of Isaiah (Micah 1:1), a native of Moresheth of Gath (1:14, 15). Very little is known of the circumstances of his life (comp. Jer. 26:18, 19).

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From Smith's Bible Dictionary

William Smith, 1884

(who is like God?), the same name as Micaiah. [MICAIAH]

(1.) An Israelite whose familiar story is preserved in the 17th and 18th chapters of Judges. Micah is evidently a devout believers in Jehovah, and yet so completely ignorant is he of the law of Jehovah that the mode which he adopts of honoring him is to make a molten and graven image, teraphim or images of domestic gods, and to set up an unauthorized priesthood, first in his own family, (Judges 17:5) and then in the person of a Levite not of the priestly line. ver. (Judges 17:12) A body of 600 Danites break in upon and steal his idols from him.

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(2.) The sixth in order of the minor prophets. He is called the Morasthite, that is, a native of Moresheth, a small village near Eleutheropolis to the east, where formerly the prophet’s tomb was shown, though in the days of Jerome it had been succeeded by a church. Micah exercised the prophetical office during the reigns of Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, giving thus a maximum limit of 59 years, B.C. 756-697, from the accession of Jotham to the death of Hezekiah, and a minimum limit of 16 years, B.C. 742-726, from the death of Jotham to the accession of Hezekiah. He was contemporary with Hosea and Amos during the part of their ministry in Israel, and with Isaiah in Judah.

(3.) A descendant of Joel the Reubenite. (1 Chronicles 5:5)

(4.) The son of Meribbaal or Mephibosheth, the son of Jonathan. (1 Chronicles 8:34,35; 9:40,41)

(5.) A Kohathite levite, the eldest son of Uzziel the brother of Amram. (1 Chronicles 23:30)

(6.) The father of Abdon, a man of high station in the reign of Josiah. (2 Chronicles 34:20)