294 TRANSLATION, NOTES, AND COMMENTS
some credible people resident in the city-at least, at this moment there were.
Virgil (Aeneid i 148-53) noted how, in a time of national turmoil, when base
fellows rage angrily, the common people will listen respectfully to a man
known for piety and good works. Josephus (Ant x 91) appears confused on how
the trial progressed, reporting that a decision was made to punish Jeremiah and
that supportive testimony of the elders was disregarded by the rulers, but he
adds that in the end the will of the elders prevailed. For other confusions in
Josephus's account of the trial, see Begg 1995. Compare the verdict here with
Pilate's words about Jesus in Luke 23:22: "I have found no crime in him deserv-
ing death."
- And men from among the elders of the land stood up and said to the en-
tire assembly of the people. The "elders" (zeqenfm) are men of age rather than
status, mature in years, whose words carry authority (Calvin). From very early
times, elders joined the judges in deciding legal cases (Deut 21:2). Elders are
able to put things in historical perspective; here they are the people who
remember.
- Micah the Morashtite was prophesying in the days of Hezekiah, king of
Judah. The elders remember Micah the Morashtite, who prophesied more
than 100 years ago. Active before the fall of Samaria (Mic 1:2-7), Micah ac-
cording to the superscription of his book (Mic 1: 1) is said to have prophesied
during the reigns of Jotham (742-735 B.c.), Ahaz (735-715 B.C.), and Hezekiah
(715-687/6 B.c.). Coming from a small town in Judah, Micah prophesied the
destruction of both Samaria and Jerusalem. Some of the elders now rising to
speak may also come from small towns and villages outside Jerusalem (v 2),
where memories live long and biases tend to locate evil in urban centers rather
than in the localities they inhabit. Micah's legacy may have been greater in the
outlying areas than in Jerusalem, where the prophet towering above all others
had been Isaiah. Isaiah prophesied that Jerusalem would not be taken by Sen-
nacherib in 701 B.C., and it was not. People from outlying districts would then
be less offended by a word against Jerusalem than would natives of the city, par-
ticularly priests and prophets in the orbit of the Temple. Among these pilgrims
to Jerusalem may also have been some who deeply resented Josiah's centraliza-
tion of worship in the capital city. In seeking to reconstruct the dynamic of the
present situation, we must reckon not only with the obvious tension between
priests and prophets on the one hand, and princes loyal to Jeremiah on the
other, but with an unstated tension between elders from outlying areas where
Yahweh worship was disallowed, and priests and prophets with vested interests
in the "legitimate" worship of the Jerusalem Temple. These elders, in any case,
were the ones who remembered Micah the Morashtite. Cornill points out that
this is the only direct citation of another prophet's words in the whole of pro-
phetic literature.
Micah, the Morashtite. The Kt spelling of "Micah" is mikaya; the Q is mfka,
a shorter form of the name occurring in Mic 1: 1. Moresheth was a town near
Gath (called Moresheth-Gath in Mic 1:14), which has been identified since
