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From Micah, chapter 7 verses through 7 from the NIV bible it says, 1 What misery is mine! I am like one who gathers summer fruit at the gleaning of the vineyard; there is no cluster of grapes to eat, none of the early figs that I crave. 2 The godly have been swept from the land; not one upright man remains. All men lie in wait to shed blood; each hunts his brother with a net. 3 Both hands are skilled in doing evil; the ruler demands gifts, the judge accepts bribes, the powerful dictate what they desire— they all conspire together. 4 The best of them is like a brier, the most upright worse than a thorn hedge. The day of your watchmen has come, the day God visits you. Now is the time of their confusion. 5 Do not trust a neighbor; put no confidence in a friend. Even with her who lies in your embrace be careful of your words. 6 For a son dishonors his father, a daughter rises up against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law— a man's enemies are the members of his own household. 7 But as for me, I watch in hope for the LORD, I wait for God my Savior; my God will hear me. This set of verses from the prophetic book of Micah speaks of what is called the misery of Israel, a specific time in history when lots seemed to be going wrong and some of it was reaching right to the doorstep of the prophet Micah himself. The picture presented by him is one of where everything seems to be crumbling or going wrong and a percentage of it involves manifested intentions of others, where the intent was along the lines of power plays, where everybody seemed to be on the take and nobody could be ultimately trusted, even someone’s close companion. The lines apparently were well drawn in this direction where there was also a coalition of forces that seemed to join together to conspire for further sinister strongholds. The situation that Micah described was such where everything around him was going wrong. Within this context Micah is speaking to the Lord about his troubles and watching for his answers which he is hoping in. Here though he must be waiting for any number of things, some of them big things and things that range into a variety of areas as the problems stated go into several areas and in several directions. We don’t know exactly Micah was requesting but his watch wasn’t to these problems but towards the response of the Lord who he hoped would hear him and bring about resolutions so although the problems where real, he is handing them over to the Lord in prayer and then watching for what the Lord will do. Obviously the Lord he hoped would have his ear to any number of problems he was experiencing starting with the cluster of grapes that he craved and then general troubles throughout the land some of which included that lack of any godly ways seen throughout the land, where he said they had been swept out or swept away, the opposite of the good way of things. It might have been that with this safety was also swept away with the violence mentioned in these verses, wealth in the hands of the common man was also swept way, and garnered by the powerful. Even the last keepers of the gate went to the other side and real judges and real rulers were also swept away and replaced by charlatans. From Micah’s perspective, just about everything had gone wrong. There is a sense that this was a developing situation and there had been for example some godly who were there and now none remained. There had been some grapes that had satisfied him and now there were none. There had been trustworthy friends and now there weren’t any left. So much of what had gone wrong also involved loss of what had been there and there was an element of what could have happened to all these good things and good intentioned people. From these verses you would say that Micah should be the one who would feel quite confused. But the place of confusion that he speaks of is upon the betrayers of the good, to whom the watchman who is the Lord will visit with confusion. The word visit in the Bible conjures up images of angels as messengers of the Lord and they will always be for the advancement of the community of the faithful, while in this case it is apparently down to one person. These set of verses offer an interesting model of prayer. There are several key points. One is that the backdrop of prayer might be where a lot of things have gone wrong and it seems almost limitless in how it has gone wrong, yet it really doesn’t seem like prayer even from the position of being in the middle of this is necessarily desperate or confused. Micah is still standing and still on his feet and can be in the position to both pray and watch for the provisions given. He is watchful and able to pray even from being in the middle of circumstances that are very disadvantageous. Also, he is able to name the troubles. When in the middle of troubles, there is no reason from these verses not to name what the troubles are and what the arrangements are around these difficulties. But within this, an individual such as Micah does not need to feel like he has lost hope and he feels that he can speak to the Lord about anything and be heard. He brings in a litany of complaints and difficulties but also puts a watch on for what the Lord will do about these many items of difficulty. He is relying at this point on his own voice in prayer, that it will be heard and his own relationship with the Lord. Anybody else who could have joined with him in his requests seems to have been swept out of the land, so his voice is more singular in this prayer case. As the problems throughout have directed themselves now towards him in particular, he will need a number of remedies. But he speaks of the Lord as watching all of this, and the confusion and panic which he might have otherwise felt, was deflected away and he was able to say that the Lord would hear him and no particular limits were put on what the Lord would hear. A key understanding of how Micah viewed these circumstances that the Lord was someone who could visit the particular situation, whatever it might be. In the case of those acting maliciously the Lord would visit confusion, but the Lord might also visit in many other ways as well to many other situations and even would visit maybe the fields which had grown desolate of the fruit he preferred. There might be a visitation of angels to restore the fields just for Micah and in response to his complaints. This would be an example of how in response to an individuals pleas in prayer the Lord might visit the wider world. The answer is going to one person, but through the wider world, or the "fields" out there. The field of answered prayer can be very wide, even for one individual. These verses speak to someone who could have many problems and might have a whole laundry list of troubles. The Lord is capable of hearing it all and responding to it all and there is therefore the part to play of watching for what he will do. The thing to do is not to just isolate on praying about one of your troubles when in fact there may be many of kind and type and again the Lord will according to Micah hear and hear it all and may come back with answers on many fronts. And Micah believed he would do something in all these cases as he said he was on watch for just that. To redress Micah's complaints, the answers would have to go into the wider world, as his complaints involved the wider world specifically. And then his own watch would also therefore go to the wider world. From the beachfront of his difficulties, Micah could stand and watch in every direction and on every front of those sandy shores, for the help of the Lord and his holy angels because he had been heard.
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