MICAH 6:6-8

 The prophet begins by asking the rhetorical question of his audience, “With what shall I come before the LORD and bow myself before God on high?” Then, as Schnittjer puts it, he “strings together over-the-top hyperbolic offerings to ridicule zealous but hypocritical worshipers and draw a contrast between empty worship and Yahweh's demands for justice and humble devotion. Micah thus concludes in verse 8 with what Mobley calls “a single sentence summing up a century of brilliant prophecy” – “What does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.”

It would be impossible to overestimate the importance of this passage in capsulizing what God requires of the believer in terms of attitude and activities. One measure of this importance can be seen in the fact that this passage is cited in almost twenty different articles by different authors appearing in Dictionary of Scripture and Ethics. These subject cover almost every subject from A to Z with citations from “African American Ethics” to “Virtue Ethics.” The comments below are all taken from those articles and are presented in somewhat random order just to demonstrate the influence of this short passage.

Birch: “A text that captures much of the biblical spirit of justice as a central covenant obligation in partnership with God is Mic. 6:1-8.”

Olson: “The prophets criticized Israel's life of worship, sacrifice, and ritual when it was not combined with concern for God's justice for widows, orphans, and the poor (Isa. 1:10-17; 58:6-12; Amos 5:21-24; Mic. 6:6-8). As a result, the prophets blamed Judah's exile to Babylon and the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple on Israel's disobedience of God's law (Isa. 42:24-25).”

Dowdy: “Balancing mercy and punishment is a delicate act...Oriented toward the inured, mercy and judgment occupy complementary jurisdictions. Relief from cruelty entails active defeat of offending agents. In Mic. 6:8 human judges are expected to demonstrate impartial attention to the poor; mercy and justice are to be partners.”

Carroll R.: “As in other prophetic books, acceptable worship of God is inseparable from ethics...In a hypothetical exchange with the people, God exposes their obduracy. They believed that extravagant offerings could regain divine favor...The mention of the 'good' in 6:8 points to the fact that God seeks a people of character who would manifest those ethical commitments toward others.”

Birch: “Undoubtedly, there is a relationship to the use of justice to describe governance and legal concerns in the Pentateuch, but the understanding of justice has transcended the boundaries of what is required legally or magisterially by formal institutions and offices.” One of the passages he cites in this regard is Micah 6:6-8.

Cox and Kallenberg: “Character in the OT is frequently a quality of the community in which the individual participates. The people are in covenant relationship with God, and the particular character that God expects of Israel – one marked by traits such as justice, mercy, and humility (Mic. 6:8), and ideally instantiated by the king – is defined with reference to that communal relationship.”

Reuschling: “What one may be commanded to do in Scripture is not always self-evident without requisite attention to the contexts of command. What God requires is communicated in forms other than imperatives. For example, the requirement to 'do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God' is contained in prophetic material (Mic 6:8).” And this is communicated in the form of a rhetorical question, no less.

Cheung: “The demand for community fidelity is expressed in terms of justice (e.g. Hos. 5:1; Mic. 3:11), righteousness (e.g. Isa. 33:5; Mic. 6:8), faithfulness (e.g. 1 Sam. 26:23; Jer. 5:1) and mercy (e.g. Hos. 12:6). All these are characteristics of Yahweh, whom Israel worships.” It should be mentioned that Micah 6:8 really encompasses all four of those categories.

McCann: “What this story [i.e. the Gospel] ultimately suggests regarding the role of the good in scriptural ethics is that what people commonly regard as good is not to be taken at face value. God is the source of all goodness, as well as any genuine insight into its nature...This challenge communicates no information that was not already implicit in the biblical story as a whole. It merely underscores the point made in the book of Micah the prophet [Mic. 6:8]. That humanity's good requires people to act justly and love mercy may or may not be common sense. But the invitation to 'walk humbly with your God,' if accepted, sets people in a path where common sense itself, and all the world's moral philosophies responsive to it, may have to be surrendered if we are to reach our ultimate good.”

J.W. Lewis applies this key passage and others in the Bible to the “liberationist or emancipatory impulse” of African Americans and feels it “was a central thread in how the Bible was read and a central tenet of interpretation.”

Carroll R. speaks of the populace of Israel which “crowded in the sanctuaries to celebrate the national deity, whom they felt would ensure their safety. But the Lord God of hosts will have none of this worship that ignores oppression and takes his endorsement for granted.”

Sours: “The prophetic tradition...includes fasting among those religious rites vitiated by economic injustice or religious insincerity.”

McFee: “Benevolence is an intentional disposition to perform good deeds or charitable acts...Genesis 1:10-12 emphasizes Gods benevolence in the acts of creation. Other OT passages exhort benevolence and link it to both wisdom and societal justice (Deut. 15:11; Prov. 14:21; Isa. 1:17; Mic. 6:8).”

Mott: “Justice is such a central duty of the children of God that God's provision of reconciliation to God will not be provided unless justice characterizes their actions.” That is a particularly important point for all of us to remember, and it appears again in Jesus' teachings where he rejects some “followers” with the solemn words “I never knew you.”

O'Neil: “The admonition to 'do right' is part and parcel of biblical ethics (Mic. 6:8). The notion of 'natural rights,' however, emerges only in late twelfth-century canonical jurisprudence.”

Cook: “The consistent witness of Scripture is that God's aim for humanity is shalom – health, well-being, and peace – and that this is achieved only in the context of dispositions and practices of justice and mercy (e.g. Mic. 6:8).”

J.R. Wilson: “In the prophets, the practice of covenant-keeping is participation in God's redemptive work that forms a people who are capable of remaining steadfast because of their vision of the telos [purpose, goal] for which we have been made. The call of Mic. 6:8...powerfully encapsulates this teaching.”

One could of course make the point that the teachings of Micah 6:8 are no longer important in light of Jesus' further revelations. But several writers in the Commentary on the New Testament use of the Old Testament would certainly take strong exception to that notion:

    Criticism of the Pharisees who neglected justice, mercy, and faith while tithing their mint, dill, and cumin (Matthew 23:23-24) “alludes to Mic. 6:8 with faithfulness equivalent to walking humbly with one's God,” according to Blomberg.

    Pao and Schnabel make a similar point regarding the parallel passage in Luke 11:42.

    Similarly, in Mark 7:1-13 Jesus confronts those who honor God with their lips while holding to human traditions such as Corban. Watts draws the parallel between this situation and that in Micah 6:6-8.

    Watts also feels that the reference to the “good” in Mark 10:18 comes from passages such as Micah 6:6-8. Mark 12:29-31 which deal with the great commandment. Watts says this reflects “a long tradition in Judaism that sought to encapsulate the Torah.” That tradition includes passages such as Micah 6:8.

“The scribe's surprising additional commentary [in Mark 12:20 refers] to the important scriptural theme that genuine and wholehearted love of the one true God (c.f. Deut. 4:35) and love of neighbor far surpasses any amount of sacrifice” as also expressed in Micah 6:6-8 and other OT passages.