Category: Micah

Blacksmithing – Micah 4:3

At the beginning of this blog I was reading through sections of the Bible that I did not know as well as passages that are taught quite frequently and I was letting God lead me in the process. This was my goal in 2023, and in 2024 I’m still doing that albeit a bit more chaotically than last year. I blame the move, but honestly, my focus has been all over the place except on my devotions since we moved which I am not proud of. Because of this I have been hopping around the Bible I was in Proverbs and then I was in Mark and now I’m sporadically reading through the minor prophets. I read through Jonah and now I’m back in Micah.

There was something that stuck out to me again as I read Micah chapter four yesterday but for a different reason than my reading in 2023. In 2023, verse three stood out to me because of the promise of peace, this time it was the historical process that caused me to stop and ponder.

He shall judge between many peoples,
    and shall decide disputes for strong nations far away;
and they shall beat their swords into plowshares,
    and their spears into pruning hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
    neither shall they learn war anymore;

Micah 4:3 ESV

I was watching an I Like to Make Stuff video recently where Bob constructed a forge, followed by another video where he forges his own machete from a piece of steel. The process was fascinating! It is such a different medium from the fiber crafts I do because the material requires more persuading than scissors, stitches, or thread to be transformed. It requires heat to allow the material to be pliable, but you can’t form it unless you have a hammer to beat the metal into the form you desire. It can take many attempts of heating and hammering to get a crude shape. This doesn’t take into account the angle grinder or sanding to adjust the shape, plus the tempering of the metal through heating and dipping the blade to make it stronger. It’s a complicated process to make something.

This verse about ‘beating swords into plowshares’ and ‘spears into pruning hooks’ well depending on how expertly these weapons were made this is a lot of craftsmanship to be destroyed, and not reformed in one beat of the hammer. This would be a process. These would be precious resources that would need to be heated in the forge, hammered into shape, and reinforced with tempering. It would be a full transformation and would require work and commitment, so full submission to God’s will and full trust that you’re not going to need that carefully crafted weaponry or I think you would hold on to it. Because there was no Amazon 2-day to get more materials or a replacement sword or spear if you changed your mind. This was it.

Because we’ve lost this technology in our modern culture to other means, this picture of blacksmithing seems like an insignificant detail but I think it has a lot of weight to the meaning of the larger message in Micah 4 and the book in general. This was a full 180-degree shift from war to planting, something you only do if you have hope for the future and stability because you have to be there to tend to the crops and harvest at a later time. You are committed to the process.

I think it is also important that the weapons are not just laid down and cast away, instead, they are reshaped and forged by fire to reveal their new life as necessary tools in the kingdom. They had a past of different goals, but are shaped by a refining fire to become a new thing and serve a new purpose. For being an Old Testament book this surely has New Testament significance, as this is what being a new creation in Christ through repentance and salvation looks like. You are not cast away for a new thing, you are transformed for a new form and a new function.

Like a blacksmith with a forge and a hammer, the Christian life transforms us from one thing to another for a new purpose. Even if our former life was filled with contradictions to the one we are living now, that forge of refining fire changes everything.

Micah 4

Before we begin, I am not a Biblical scholar. I am a girl, who loves the Lord and feels led to keep a journal of what I learned on my second read-through of the Bible as a believer with a deeper faith than my initial read-through in 2020-2021. The Lord brought this to my attention through my study of the book of Micah. Thank you reader for coming along on this journey with me. May we grow deeper in our faith together!

Cosmic Mountain

In my ESV Bible, this chapter is titled the Mountain of the Lord which struck a chord in my memory of a certain series of conversations between Tim Mackie and Jon Collins on the Bible Project Podcast. A conversation on the cosmic mountain! The cosmic mountain aka the garden of Eden is a metaphor that we see throughout the Bible with the exile from the garden aka the cosmic mountain, the tower of Babel, the temple, Mount Sinai where Moses goes to receive the law on a mountain, Mount Zion, and even Jesus’ transfiguration took place on a mountain. I’m getting ahead of myself so what are these moments and what cosmic mountain am I referencing from the Bible Project series? It’s complicated, and I was pretty thrown off when I first heard this metaphor too but here is a summary of what I understand from their research.

  • In Genesis 1&2 Eden is depicted as a cosmic mountain which is a historical reference to how other ancient religions viewed their gods
  • The Tower of Babel was man’s attempt to build a mountain without God, therefore challenging the created order and trying to make themselves gods which became the city of Babylon.
  • The Tabernacle and Temple are symbols of the cosmic mountain where God comes to dwell with us, the Holy of Holies.
  • Moses goes up to Mount Sinai to talk to God and receive the law covenant, the Ten Commandments. He spent many days with God like Adam and Eve did in the garden.
  • Mount Zion referred to the city of the Great King (Psalm 48:2)
  • When Jesus’ transfiguration took place, the pivotal moment when God’s glory shone upon his face, this happened upon a mountain

As I read through this passage in Micah, images came to mind of the Asbury Revival, the Lee University revival, and revivals going on around the world globally. This image of how there has been an outpouring to be in God’s presence, in a multitude, and worship our King. It made me think of the story behind the Jesus Revolution movie, how we as humans crave that connection with our creator and desire to worship Him, serve Him and come together as the body of Christ to work for His glory. Chapter Four describes a time when the mountain of the house of the Lord will be established (Micah 4:1) and people shall flow to it.

It shall come to pass in the latter days
    that the mountain of the house of the Lord
shall be established as the highest of the mountains,
    and it shall be lifted up above the hills;
and peoples shall flow to it,
   and many nations shall come, and say:
“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
    to the house of the God of Jacob,
that he may teach us his ways
    and that we may walk in his paths.”
For out of Zion shall go forth the law,
    and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
 He shall judge between many peoples,
    and shall decide disputes for strong nations far away;
and they shall beat their swords into plowshares,
    and their spears into pruning hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
    neither shall they learn war anymore;
 but they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree,
    and no one shall make them afraid,
    for the mouth of the Lord of hosts has spoken.
 For all the peoples walk
    each in the name of its god,
but we will walk in the name of the Lord our God
    forever and ever.

Micah 4:1-5

Thinking about the division in the world and how draining modern life has become, the thought of this future of peaceful existence is just so calming and encouraging. There is a passage in verse three that describes weapons being reshaped into farming tools and I thought about ongoing wars in our present world. The war in Ukraine is a foil to this picture, evil making farmland into a battlefield. How wonderful it will be when the battle ceases to exist because evil will lose!

I even thought about Jin and the other BTS members enlisting for their mandatory service, and if ARMY is so sad because when it comes down to the thought of war, it is unnatural. But music, dancing, and creativity are natural, God-given talents that we were given because we are created in God’s image, and when I think of the mountain of the Lord and the city of Zion, I hear music. I imagine the voices of many nations singing together like those revivals. I think we crave the idyllic, cottage core, beauty, the spectacle of those K-pop music videos because we are not created for the chaos of this world, we crave the order and the peace of the redeemed world in communion with God in the garden. Even if we don’t realize it, I believe we are most content when we are using the talents God has given us to glorify Him, thinking about this I crave the cosmic mountain and look forward to sitting under the trees with the peace spoken of in Micah 4.

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