The prophecy begins in verses 1 and 2 with a description of why God was angry with His chosen people. They had violated the 5th through 10th of the ten commandments summed up as “love your neighbor as you love yourself”. “Woe to you who lie awake at night, plotting wickedness; you rise at dawn to carry out your schemes; because you can, you do. You want a certain piece of land or someone else’s house (though it is all he has); you take it by fraud and threats and violence.”
In verses 3-5, Micah relates God’s warning to the people who did those kinds of things. He told them that God was going to bring in other nations, Assyria and Babylon though he didn’t identify them, and those nations would take them captive to other lands. But in verse 6, he records the response of the guilty parties. “Such evils surely will not come our way.” They were so self-righteous in their sin they couldn’t believe they were doing something God would object to.
Micah responded, “Is that the right reply for you to make, O House of Jacob? Do you think the Spirit of the Lord likes to talk to you so roughly? No! His threats are for your good, to get you on the path again.”
God’s love for His people whether saved or not never ends, but love is not His only attribute. He is also a God of holiness and justice. And while He loves us, His holiness does not love our sins and His justice requires our punishment. Fortunately, He loves His creation of human beings whom He created in His own image to have fellowship with us. He sent His Son to be born of a woman and experience human life without sin in order to die on the cross for the sins of the whole world that we might put our faith in Christ and receive eternal life.
But that is not the message people naturally want to hear. In verse 11, God told what the people liked to hear. “’I’ll preach to you the joys of wine and drink’ – that is the kind of drunken lying prophet that you like.”
In verses 12-13, we find a Messianic prophecy. Does this refer to the return from captivity in Assyria and Babylon, the return since 1948, or a later return? God’s message about the future is always true but it isn’t always clear in its timing. Jesus told His disciples only the Father knows when these things will happen. (Acts 1.)