Micah 4
The Mountain Everyone Will Come To
"Many nations will come and say, 'Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the temple of the God of Jacob. He will teach us his ways, so that we may walk in his paths.'" (Micah 4:2)
After the devastation of chapter 3, Micah turns and describes a future that seems impossible from where they’re standing. In the last days, the mountain of the Lord’s temple will be established as the highest of the mountains. Nations will stream to it. Peoples will come. They’ll beat their swords into plowshares. Their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation. They will sit under their own vine and fig tree and no one will make them afraid.
What a vision. After the wound that reached Jerusalem, the leaders who consumed people like meat, the prophets who sold their visions for food. After all of that, Micah says: but in the last days.
The hope isn’t pretending that the present situation is fine. It arrives precisely because the present situation is so clearly not fine. And the future God describes is specific. Nobody is afraid under their own vine. Everybody is sitting in peace. The tools of war converted into tools of cultivation.
We need that kind of hope. Not the kind that denies what’s wrong, but the kind that holds the full weight of what’s wrong and still says: but in the last days.
