Micah 3.6 Therefore night shall be unto you, that ye shall not have a vision; and it shall be dark unto you, that ye shall not divine; and the sun shall go down over the prophets, and the day shall be dark over them.
What is this verse talking about?
Context: This book is set in the days of the kings Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah- all kings of Judah, in the latter half of the 8th and early years of the 7th century BCE, approximately the same time that Isaiah lived. The figure is Micah, a Morashite prophet, from a town in Judah.
This book is a set of prophecies, the first concerns mostly divine judgment (1.2-2.13), also providing hope for the future (2.5, 12-13). The second prophecy (3.1-12) explains the fall of Jerusalem as due to horrible and unrighteous leadership. The third oracle (4.1-5.14) talks about a utopian future and hits on aspects of the relations between Israel and the nations at the time this was written
Septuagint
διὰ τοῦτο νὺξ ὑμῗν ἔσται ἐξ ὁράσεως καὶ σκοτία ὑμῗν ἔσται ἐκ μαντείας καὶ δύσεται ὁ ἥλιος ἐπὶ τοὺς προφήτας καὶ συσκοτάσει ἐπ᾽ αὐτοὺς ἡ ἡμέρα
διὰ τοῦτο νὺξ ὑμῗν ἔσται = through this night will be (future! – estai 3PS) to all you guys (2PP)
ἐξ ὁράσεως = out of vision/out from sight
καὶ σκοτία ὑμῗν ἔσται= and darkness (scotia) it will be (future middle 3PS) is to all you guys (2PP- ὑμῗν=dative 2PP) we are adding plurals and singulars here
ἐκ μαντείας= out of divination/prophecy/oracle/the power to divine
καὶ δύσεται= and go down/set/sink
ὁ ἥλιος= ho helios – the sun
ἐπὶ τοὺς προφήτας= upon the prophets (plural accusative)
καὶ συσκοτάσει = and will make dark (verb: future act ind 3PS)… from συσκοτάζω= to make dark, grow very dark, to become dark
ἐπ᾽ αὐτοὺς ἡ ἡμέρα = upon them that day
My translation: Through this (the pseudo-prophetic oracles to the kings) the night will be to all of you without sight and darkness it shall be unto all of you, for you will have no prophetic power to be seers and it will sink as darkness as the sun goes down upon the prophets, and it will grow very dark upon you in that day.
Micah 3:6, NIV: “Therefore night will come over you, without visions, and darkness, without divination. The sun will set for the prophets, and the day will go dark for them.”
Micah 3:6, ESV: “Therefore it shall be night to you, without vision, and darkness to you, without divination. The sun shall go down on the prophets, and the day shall be black over them;”
Micah 3:6, KJV: “Therefore night shall be unto you, that ye shall not have a vision; and it shall be dark unto you, that ye shall not divine; and the sun shall go down over the prophets, and the day shall be dark over them.”
Commentary:
This whole chapter is about the guild of professional prophets that taught for money. What? Did this really happen in the Old Testament? Yes. There were professional prophets at court who said smooth things that some of the kings wanted to hear. We read stuff like this in Mosiah where Noah’s “priests” teach and foretell smooth things to get Noah to make decisions that they want made. It is no different in the world of the Old Testament.
From The Jewish Study Bible we read the following:
Micah 3.4 The Targum understands He will hide His face from them as “He will remove His Shekhinah from them.” On the concept of the Lord’s hiding the divine face, see Deuteronomy 1.17. The concept, common in biblical texts, was developed later in Judaism and served to bridge the tension between divine goodness and acute suffering.
Micah 3.5 When they have something to chew, or more literally, “when they have something to bite with their teeth.” The point is not so much that prophets received gifts from their “clients.” This behavior seems to have been widely accepted (see 1 Sam. g.8; 1 Kings 14.3; 2 Kings 4.42; 8.8-g; Amos 7.12), and the prophets needed their bread too. Rather, these prophets shaped or announced their prophecies to please their clients, so as to increase the gifts they received from them. By doing so they perverted their office (and the LORD’s trust) for material gain. The precise choice of words in the Heb implies additional powerful connotations. The choice of expression “bite with their teeth” allows not only the wordplay between teeth and mouths, but also a description of the behavior of the prophets that evokes the animal behavior of other leaders (v. 3). The verb “nashakh,” “to bite,” has a sound reminiscent to that of “nahash,” “snake.” The same verb “nashakh” means in other contexts “to charge interest” and carries negative connotations (cf. Hab. 2.7; Deut. 23.20). To some extent, the text suggests that they are like beastly creditors or snakes that bite the flesh of Israel with their teeth (cf. v. 3).
Micah 3.8: The beginning of the v. offers an emphatic contrast between the true and the false prophet. Hebrew has no term for a false prophet; thus, in v. 5 they are called “nevi’im,” the same term that would be used of true prophets. In many such cases, the ancient Septuagint translation clarifies the meaning of the text by inserting the word “false” (“pseudo”).1
The Sons of the Prophets בְּנֵֽי־הַנְּבִיאִ֥ים
This idea of professional prophets can be unsettling the first time it is discovered for some students. We do need to realize that this book we call the Bible came out of culture. These cultures had times when things were a bit messy. Noah in the Book of Mormon is a good example: he used the writings of scripture, had priests who prophesied, and professed religious belief. He even justified his actions using these religious leaders.
We read about professional prophets in Amos, although the King James Version’s language seems to soften it a bit. In Amos 7 we read Amos speaking to Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, and the priest of the northern kingdom of Israel during the reign of Jeroboam II (around 786-746 BCE). In Amos 7.14 he says:
“Then answered Amos, and said to Amaziah, I was no prophet, neither was I a prophet’s son; but I was an herdman, and a gatherer of sycomore fruit.”
The Hebrew term for “prophet’s son” has no reference to being the son of a prophet. This is a technical term referring to being a member of a prophetic order or guild. Ira Price writes about these schools or guilds of prophets:
The prophetic order of the Old Testament is generally regarded as founded upon the authority of the utterances in Deut. 18:15,18. The order itself, however, did not exist until the time of Samuel. Between Moses and Samuel Israel passed through the middle ages of its history. Few characters appear who give shape to and mold political and religious life. No great character comes forth until Samuel is called. He is the last and the climax of the Judges, the end of the old order of things and the beginning of the new, the watershed, the borderland between the theocracy and the monarchy. He, the reformer, the reorganizer of Israel, politically and religiously, the priest, prophet and judge, anoints the first two kings of Israel. Political and religious Israel is revolutioned in his day. By later Old Testament writers he is compared with Moses (Jer. 15:1, cf. Ps. 99:6). During his life we find the existence of collections or schools of sons of the prophets. These are attributed to Samuel as their founder. They form the beginnings of the prophetic order, whose continuous existence can be traced down through Old Testament times, and whose influence is felt in all subsequent Old Testament history and literature. 2
Amos maintains that he is not a professional prophet, who may be hired for his services (see 1 Sam. 9-7) and thus “bought”; rather, God took him away from his job to perform a particular task (d. 2 Sam. 7.8). This being so, he has no alternative but to prophesy. Amos’s reply enhances the authority associated with his message.3
So, one way of interpreting the oracle in Micah 3 is that Micah is condemning the false prophets at court that were influencing the kings of his day. Micah, in the spirit of Abinadi and Amos, is calling out false religious leaders of his day, and like Joseph Smith, is confronted with professional paid prophets who are opposing his message. Such is the case today – we are to work to navigate through the mists of darkness and heed the messages of the true servants of God.
Notes
- Adele Berlin and Marc Brettler, The Jewish Study Bible, second edition, Oxford University Press, 2004, p. 1197-1198.
- Ira Price, The School of the Sons of the Prophets, The Old Testament Student, March, 1889, Vol. 8, No. 7, pp. 244-249.
- The Jewish Study Bible, p. 1178.
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