1:9 For Samaria’s 1 disease 2 is incurable.
It has infected 3 Judah;
it has spread to 4 the leadership 5 of my people
and has even contaminated Jerusalem! 6
3:2 yet you 7 hate what is good, 8
and love what is evil. 9
You flay my people’s skin 10
and rip the flesh from their bones. 11
1 tn Heb “her”; the referent (Samaria) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
2 tc The MT reads the plural “wounds”; the singular is read by the LXX, Syriac, and Vg.
tn Or “wound.”
3 tn Heb “come to.”
4 tn Or “reached.”
5 tn Heb “the gate.” Kings and civic leaders typically conducted important business at the city gate (see 1 Kgs 22:10 for an example), and the term is understood here to refer by metonymy to the leadership who would be present at the gate.
6 tn Heb “to Jerusalem.” The expression “it has contaminated” do not appear in the Hebrew text, but have been supplied to fill out the parallelism with the preceding line.
map For location see Map5-B1; Map6-F3; Map7-E2; Map8-F2; Map10-B3; JP1-F4; JP2-F4; JP3-F4; JP4-F4.
7 tn Heb “the ones who.”
8 tn Or “good.”
9 tn Or “evil.”
10 tn Heb “their skin from upon them.” The referent of the pronoun (“my people,” referring to Jacob and/or the house of Israel, with the
11 tn Heb “and their flesh from their bones.”
sn Micah compares the social injustice perpetrated by the house of Jacob/Israel to cannibalism, because it threatens the very lives of the oppressed.