Main news for 6 January 2018

The call of the prophet "arise, and depart" seems at first sight a little bit strange: where thus to go the yahvist believers of Judea, where lives (we do not know what, but all the same) the people of God, where is the Temple, where finally is the place of God's presence? Of course God Himself, through the mouth of the prophet, says that His people in this state, in which the prophet found them, were rather in particular "nothing", but indeed, God Himself is not going to begin the history of His people from the beginning, on a blank sheet; so then where are His believers going to go? We can understand that, probably, only in the context of all which the pre-captivity prophets, from Isaiah of Jerusalem, said about the remnant, which in the time of the general apostasy and the spiritual decline kept faith, remaining faithful to the God of their fathers.

But the historic fate of this remnant, according to the testimony of all the prophets, promised to be difficult: a historic disaster, which had to become the consequence of the spiritual decline threatened the people, and the remnant had to remain faithful to God in-exil, in the dispersal, in foreign countries, among the heathen (the fact that the country of expulsion will be in particular Babylon, was not clear immediately). In such a context the call of the prophet "depart" sounds as a warning that will soon be fulfilled the predictions of those who spoke about coming disasters and about the remnant. But there is another thing in the words of Micah: the understanding of the fact that God's longsuffering is not infinite. Certainly, God can wait, and He waits sometimes for a very long time. But He waits as long as it makes sense to wait.

And there is sense as much as remain the chances to correct the situation without cardinal measures, in which can be imputed such catastrophe as the defeat to the war, the eviction and the dispersal. On such extremes measures, God goes obviously only when all other possibilities are exhausted. But before the disaster He warns His faithful so that they should know what to prepare to. And the words of the prophet, as we see, should be understood again like this: it is the warning that the situation is critical, that the disaster is inevitable and God will not adjourn it any more, holding the situation from total collapse. Not because He changed His plans for His people, but because the people left Him only one possibility to realize His plans.