Why any discrepancy should be perceived between the statement in Jeremiah, that " ^licah the IMorasthite prophesied in tlie days of Ilezekiah king of Judah," and the title of liis book, which tolls us that the word of the Lord came to him '-in the days of Jotham, Aliaz, and Hezekiah," it is difiicult to imagine. The former does not limit the pcriud of Micah's prophecy, and at most
applies only to the passage to which direct allusion is made. A confusion appears to have existed in the minds of those who see in the jmiphecy in its present form a connected whole, between the actual delivery of the several portions of it, and their collection and tran- scription into one book. In the case of Jeremiah, wc know that he dictated to Baruch the prophecies which he had delivered in the interval between the 13th year of Josiah and the 4th of Jehoiakim, and that when thus committed to writing they were read before the people on the fast daj' (Jer. xxxvi, 2, 4, 6). There is reason to believe that a similar process took place with the prophecies of Amos. It is, therefore, conceivable, to say the least, that certain portions of Micah's prophecy may have been uttered in the reigns of Jotham and Ahaz, and for the probability of this there is strong in- ternal evidence, while they were collected as a whole in the reign of Hezekiah and committed to writing. Cas- pari {Micha, p. 78) suggests that the book thus written may have been read in the presence of the king and the whole people on some great fast or festival day, and that this circumstance may have been in the minds of the elders of the land in the time of Jehoiakim, when they appealed to the impunitj' which Jlicah enjoyed under Hezekiah. Knobol (I'rophelisnui.i, ii, § 20) im- agines that the iirojihecies which remain belong to the time of Hezekiah, and that those delivered under Jo- tham and Ahaz have perished. It is evident from 3Iic. i, 6 that the section of the prophecy in which that verse occurs must have been delivered before the de- struction of Samaria by Shalmanescr, which took place in the 6th year of Hezekiah (cir. B.C. 722), and con- necting the "high-places" mentioned in i, 5 with those which existed in Judah in the reigns of Ahaz (2 Kings xvi, 4 ; 2 Chron. xxviii, 4, 25) and Jotham (2 Kings xv, 35), we may be justified in assigning chap, i to the time of one of those monarchs, probably the latter; al- though, if chap, ii be considered as part of the section to which chap, i belongs, the utter corruption and demoralization of the people there depicted agree bet- ter with what history tells us of the times of Ahaz. Caspari maintains that of the two parallel passages, ]\lic. iv, 1-0, Isa. ii, 2-5, the former is the original, and the latter belongs to the times of Uzziah and Jotham, and this view is maintained by Hcngstenberg {Chrts- tolof/y, i, 480), and accejited by I'usey (Minor Projihefs, p. 289). But the evidence on the point is not at all conclusive. Mic. iv, 1-4 may possibly, as Ewald and others have suggested, be a jiortion of an older prophe- cy current at the time, which was adopted by both Mi- eah and Isaiah (Isa. ii, 2-4). The denunciation of the horses and chariots of Judah (v, 10) is ajipropriate to the state of the country under Jotham, after the long and prosperous reign of Uzziah, by whom tlie military strength of the people had been greatly developed (2 Chron. xxvi, 11-15; xxvii, 4-6). Compare Isa. ii, 7, which belongs to the same period. Again, the forms in which idolatry manifested itself in the reign of Ahaz correspond with those which arc threatened with de- I struction in Mic. v, 12-14; and the allusions in vi, IG to [ the " statutes of Omri," and the " works of the house of Ahab," seem directly pointed at the king, of whom it is \ expressly said tliat " he walked in the way of the kings of Israel" (2 Kings xvi, 3). It is impossible in dealing Avith internal evidence to assert iiositively that the in- ferences deduced from it are correct ; but in the ]iresent instance tlicy at least establish a iirobability that, in , placing the period of Micah's proiihetical activity be- I twcon the times of Jotham and Hezekiah, the super- I scription is correct. In the first years of Hezekiah's reign the idolatry which prevailed in the time of Ahaz was not eradicated, and in assigning the date of ^licali's I prophecy to this period there is no anachronism in the allusions to idolatrous practices. JIaurer contends that [ chap, i was written not long before the taking of Samaria; but the third and following chapters he places in the in- terval between the destruction of Samaria and the time
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that Jerusalem was menaced by the armj- of Sennacherib in tlie 1-ith year of Hezekiah. The passages, however, which he quotes in support of his conclusion (iii, 12 ; iv, 9, etc. ; V, 5, etc. ; vi, 9, etc. ; vii, 4, 12, etc.) do not ap- pear to be more suitable to that period than to the first years of Hezekiah, while the context, in many cases, requires a stiU earlier date. In the arrangement adopt- ed by Wells (pref. to Micah, § iv-vi), chap, i was deliver- ed in the contemporary reigns of Jotham king of Ju- dah and of Pekah king of Israel ; ii, 1-iv, 8 in those of Ahaz, Pekah, and Hosea ; iii, 12 being assigned to the last year of Ahaz, and the remainder of the book to the reign of Hezekiah.