Micah 1:5

"For the transgression of Jacob is all this, and for the sins of the house of Israel. What is the transgression of Jacob? is it not Samaria? and what are the high places of Judah? are they not Jerusalem?"

The reason for the summary judgment about to be executed upon the whole of Israel, Samaria first, afterwards Judah, lay in their sinful departure from the knowledge and service of the true God. Other nations likewise were guilty of the same transgressions; but "the house of Jacob," specifically mentioned here, were the covenant people, people who had received manifold favors from God and who had entered into solemn covenant with God to be his people and to honor his name and obey his commandments. Therein was the guilt of Israel intensified and aggravated. It has often been said that the Minor Prophets are proof of the prior covenant relationship between God and Israel. Without that preexisting covenant, none of these glorious prophecies could have been written. The full existence and understanding of the Pentateuch and related books is not merely suggested by all this, it is demonstrated.

"What is the transgression of Jacob? is it not Samaria ...?" Samaria here is the usual name for the northern kingdom, being recognized in this passage as an integral part of the "house of Jacob," the whole Israel. See extensive references to the apostasy in the book of Hosea, above. Samaria had repudiated the worship of Jehovah and had taken up the vile fertility gods of the Canaanite pagans who had preceded them in the land. Sacred prostitution and many other horrors were the "stock in trade" of that whole system.

"What are the high places of Judah? are they not Jerusalem ...?" This line is offensive to the strict modern grammarians who, as McKeating said, would have written it, "What is the sin of the house of Judah? is it not Jerusalem?"[17] See the introduction for comment on Micah's style. He cared nothing about meeting all the grammatical niceties regarding "an appropriate antithesis." As a result, his language is even more forceful. As McKeating said:

"The text as it stands, "What is the hill-shrine of Judah?," suggests that Micah's objections to Samaria and Jerusalem are mainly objections to the kind of worship that goes on in them. The much-vaunted sanctuary of the Lord at Jerusalem is no better than a pagan hill-shrine."[18]

In the view accepted here, that is exactly what Micah said, and what he meant to say. "Emendations" to improve Micah's rhetoric are absolutely uncalled for. "The crimes of the ten tribes of Israel are found in Samaria, and the transgressions of Judah are found in the high places of Jerusalem."[19] Ahaz (1 Kings 16:4ff) had led the way in the total corruption of the worship of God in Jerusalem. "Hezekiah's partial reformation had not taken place when Micah uttered the prophecy here."[20] The great disaster being prophesied will be brought on "by Israel's moral degeneracy; for both the capital cities, Samaria and Jerusalem, have become centers of idol-worship."[21]

In connection with this verse, Allen cited the great principle enunciated in the New Testament, that, "The time has come for judgment to begin at the household of God" (1 Peter 4:17). God will judge all the wicked nations of the earth; but, "Who is to stand trial first? None other than God's own people."[22]