In Micah 3:1-3, Micah speaks to the wicked leaders of Jacob and Israel: "Aren’t you supposed to know Judgment? You hate the good and love the evil."

Here, peoples' bones stand for the things they know. Their muscles represent the things they love. The flesh and skin are things about them that are more and more external. ¹

And here, Micah is saying that if any of these things, no matter how external, are still good, the evil leaders wish to destroy them.

Micah 3:4. If those destructive leaders cry out to Jehovah for help, He will not hear them.

Micah 3:5-7. These verses are pretty plain as to what they are saying to those wicked leaders: They will end up in darkness. ² They can prophesy nothing true, because they are so perverted that they know nothing about truth.

In 3:8, Micah says that he has the spirit of Jehovah and can truly prophesy.

In 3:9-11, Micah tells those "heads" and "captains" just how evil they have been, and that still they claim that God is with them. Because they have falsified all truth and good, they can’t tell the difference anymore.

Finally, in verse 12, because of all this, Zion and Jerusalem, meaning the whole of the Israelitish church, will cease to be a representative of the Lord’s ongoing church on earth. ³

Applying this, today... there are a couple of very powerful ideas in this chapter. One is that evil hates good, and wants to destroy even remnants of it. Another scary idea here is that human beings can get to the point of not being able to tell the difference between what's true, and what's false, or between what's good, and what's evil.

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3. We must briefly say here, too, what themes concerning the Lord are found in general and in particular throughout the Prophets of the Old Testament, from Isaiah to Malachi:

1. The Lord came into the world in the fullness of time, which is to say, when the Jews no longer knew Him, and when for that reason nothing of the church remained. And if the Lord had not then come into the world and revealed Himself, mankind would have perished in eternal death. He Himself says in John, “If you do not believe that I am [who I am], you will die in your sins” (John 8:24).

[2] 2. The Lord came into the world to execute a last judgment, and by doing so conquer the hells that were reigning at the time. This He did by combats, that is, by temptations or trials, which He permitted His humanity from His mother to undergo, and by continual victories in them then. If the hells had not been conquered, no one could have been saved.

[3] 3. The Lord came into the world to glorify His humanity, that is, to unite it to the Divinity that He had in Him from conception.

[4] 4. The Lord came into the world to establish a new church which would acknowledge Him as its Redeemer and Savior, so as to be redeemed and saved through love for and faith in Him.

[5] 5. At the same time He did so in order to set heaven in order, in order for it to be in harmony with the church.

[6] 6. His suffering of the cross was the last combat, or temptation or trial, by which He thoroughly conquered the hells and fully glorified His humanity.

That the Word deals with no other matters will be seen later in a short work on the Sacred Scripture.