Micah 1:9-11

Living Bible

⁹for my people’s wound is far too deep to heal. The Lord stands ready at Jerusalem’s gates to punish her. ¹⁰Woe to the city of Gath. Weep, men of Bakah. In Beth-leaphrah roll in the dust in your anguish and shame. ¹¹There go the people of Shaphir,^[a] led away as slaves—stripped, naked and ashamed. The people of Zaanan dare not show themselves outside their walls. The foundations of Beth-ezel are swept away—the very ground on which it stood.

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Footnotes

Micah 1:11 There go the people of Shaphir. In the Hebrew there is frequent wordplay in vv. 10-14. Micah bitterly declaims each town, demonstrating by the use of puns their failures. Shaphir sounds like the Hebrew word for “beauty,” here contrasted with their shame; Zaanan sounds like the verb meaning “to go forth,” here contrasted with the fear of its inhabitants to venture outside; Beth-ezel sounds like a word for “foundation,” which had been taken away from them.