We were supposed to walk about 6 miles that day. We walked at least twice that, because our leader did not know what he was doing. I was on Boy Scout trip sponsored by our area council, not with our own troop and usual leaders. A Boy Scout executive had arranged a bus ride for us to the Grand Canyon, where we were to hike down the Hermit Trail, spend a night, hike along the Tonto Trail in the Canyon to Indian Gardens for another night, then up the well-used Bright Angel Trail.
The problem was that executive’s lack of understanding of topographic maps. He simply laid a ruler along the course of the Tonto Trail to measure its distance. What he failed to account for is all the twists and turns and long trips up and back down side canyons needed to traverse any section of the Grand Canyon’s length. So what was supposed to be a morning hike to our second camp became an all-day slog with heavy packs loaded with all the water we needed. It could have been a dangerous situation, but fortunately some of the older boys from my own troop had more sense and backcountry experience than our leader did.
I will confess that many of us Scouts did not have very nice things to say about that leader by the end of the trip. Micah has even worse things to say in chapter 3 of his prophecy about those who mislead God’s people. Their failure is not just lack of knowledge and experience. It’s willful falsehood and exploitation of the people.
It’s hard to know how to forge any redemptive message out of this text, which begins in verses 2 and 3 by picturing the leaders of Israel as butchering cannibals boiling up a stew of human flesh and ends in verse 12 by decreeing the destruction of Jerusalem.
Those leaders are chastised for their concern for self-interest, while those they lead and teach suffer in poverty. One immediately thinks of politicians who look out for the special interests which fund their campaigns, but who only give lip service to any concern for the common good.
Part of the challenge of the text is that it is not only political rulers, the king and nobles, who are addressed, but religious leaders, the prophets and priests. They too are concerned only to make money on the prophecies and teaching they offer (verse 11), while those charged with justice are corrupted by bribes.
There is some redemption in this text in the very fact that through the voice of Micah God notices! Injustice and corruption will not go unpunished. Leaders who exact a price from the people will in the end pay the price themselves. God cares about what is happening in this world.
That in fact has been the great comfort and true peace of oppressed peoples in many times and places, whether African American slaves in this country or the poor refugees fleeing Syria and Iraq today. God knows and cares about their plight and will set the balances right and bring the powerful oppressors to justice. Perhaps one question for us is whether we will be on the right side of that balance when it happens. For that we need to turn our hearts and minds over to the one great and true leader our world has seen, the great Shepherd toward whom Micah pointed at the end of chapter 2.