Who is a God like You

The journey through the Twelve (Hosea to Malachi) ends in one hymn, sung by the man with the question for a name.

It is late summer, and the vineyards in the hill country of Judah have been gleaned. Anyone who still walks between the vines, looking for one cluster or one early fig to still his hunger, finds nothing. That is how Micah feels. Woe is me, he says, there is no cluster to eat (Mic 7:1). The faithful one has vanished from the land. The text says chasid, someone with chesed, someone who stays loyal even when it costs him, and Micah has searched the land the way one searches that vineyard: there is not one left. The judge holds out his hand, the powerful man says out loud what he craves, and the rot has reached all the way into the home. Trust no friend, he warns, guard your mouth even from the woman in your arms; the son despises his father, the daughter rises up against her mother, and a man finds his enemies among the people of his own house (7:5–6).

In the middle of that empty vineyard he turns around, away from the land and its judges, and lifts his eyes. But as for me, I will look to YHWH, I will wait for the God of my salvation; my God will hear me (7:7). To the enemy who gloats over his fall he says: do not rejoice over me; when I fall, I will rise; when I sit in darkness, YHWH will be a light to me (7:8). All his life he has carried a question for a name. Here, with his own household against him and no one faithful left in the land, he lifts it one last time, as a cry.

Who is a God like You, who carries guilt and passes over transgression, on behalf of the remnant of His possession?

He does not hold on to His anger forever, for He delights in steadfast love.

He will return, He will have compassion on us, He will tread our iniquities underfoot. And You will cast all their sins into the depths of the sea.

You will show faithfulness to Jacob, steadfast love to Abraham, as You swore to our fathers in the days of old. (Mic 7:18–20)

The first thing he sings about God is an act of lifting. God bends down and hoists a weight that was never His: the guilt of a people who betrayed Him. Micah uses the verb that sounded in God's Name on the mountain, nasa, to carry. The guilt is real, it weighs and it presses down, and God does not pretend it is not there. He takes it on His own shoulders and carries it out the door. Where the transgression should have barred the door, He passes it by, just as in Egypt He passed by the doors marked with blood.

All of this is for a handful: the remnant, the battered leftover that barely survived the judgment, people with empty hands and nothing left to appeal to. Micah calls them God's possession, with the word Moses used when he prayed on the mountain: take us as Your possession (Exod 34:9). An heirloom is not for sale, and God does not walk away from what is His, least of all when almost nothing of it is left.

He does not hold on to His anger forever. Why not? They deserved the rubble. Micah gives one reason, and it lies in God Himself: "for He delights in steadfast love." The verb is chafets, the delight with which God rescued David "because He delighted in me" (chapter 9). And what gives Him that delight is the very thing Micah could no longer find anywhere in the land. There was no chasid left, no one with chesed. With God there is an abundance of it, and He relishes it. He takes no pleasure in the verdict; He takes pleasure in staying faithful. That little line stands in the middle of the hymn, right before "He will return," like the music beneath everything that follows. He forgives without a sigh, and without the account still tucked under His arm. He forgives the way you do the thing you love most.

So He comes home. Through Hosea He had said that He would go back to His place until they sought His face (Hos 5:15). He went, the house stood empty, and where God is absent, no morning comes. Micah said he would wait for the God of his salvation, and now he sings what he sees coming. He will return. The Husband who left His house walks back through the door, without a cold face, with the compassion of the womb that sounded first in His Name on the mountain.

What drove Him away, He now settles with. He is no longer gentle; He has carried the guilt long enough. He puts His heel on it. The sins that held His people down, the way a conqueror holds down a defeated army, He tramples. He breaks their grip, so that they can never again come between Him and His own.

At the last, highest act the singer stops speaking about God and addresses Him: and You will cast all their sins into the depths of the sea. These are the depths of the song at the Red Sea, where horse and rider sank like a stone. Now no army sinks. The sins go down, into a depth no diver can reach, the water closes over them, and they do not rise again. What He did to the oppressor, He does to the oppression.

None of this is a passing squall that blows over by morning. The last line reaches back to an oath. God swore it alone, in the dark, when He passed like a smoking oven between the pieces of the sacrifice while Abraham slept. That is why Jacob receives faithfulness, the deceiver who never deserved it, and Abraham steadfast love, the friend who believed. The ground of it all lies in the oath and in Who God is, and nowhere in the people.

Who is a God like You? Egypt had its gods, and Babylon and Canaan and Rome had theirs. Not one of them carried the guilt of an unfaithful people on his own back, delighted in binding himself again, came home after the breach and buried the sins in a sea from which they never rise. The power to cast every sin into the depths and the tenderness to do it with joy meet only in this one Name. Micah searched a gleaned vineyard for one cluster and found nothing. He searched the whole land for someone with chesed and found no one. Then he lifted his eyes to a God who delights in it. That is why his book of ruins closes with a song of praise: no one, no one is like You.

A note on the source text. The closing hymn: Micah 7:18–20. The three movements: to YHWH, the question: 18aA; about YHWH, the acts: 18aB–19aB; to YHWH, the sins in the sea and the oath: 19b–20. Key choices in the working translation: לִשְׁאֵרִית נַחֲלָתוֹ as "on behalf of the remnant," so that this phrase opens the list of benefits; יָשׁוּב as a full verb, "He will return" (not "again"), in line with Hosea 5:15; חָפֵץ as "delight in": cf. Psalm 18:19; חֶסֶד as "steadfast love"; the ascending series in the dealing with sin (carrying, subduing, casting into the depths of the sea); the oath to Jacob (faithfulness) and Abraham (steadfast love) as the ground of the remnant's existence. The gleaned vineyard and the vanished faithful one (חָסִיד): Micah 7:1–2; the rot reaching into the home: 7:3–6; "I will look to YHWH" and "when I sit in darkness": 7:7–8. Moses' prayer to be taken as a possession: Exodus 34:9; the absence "until they seek My face": Hosea 5:15; Abraham's sleep and the smoking oven between the pieces: Genesis 15:12,17–18; the passing over on the Passover night: Exodus 12:23; the depths and the stone: Exodus 15:5. The hymn has 37 graphic words, as many as Exodus 34:6–7; the middle word is יָשׁוּב, "He will return," just as נֹשֵׂא, "carrying," was the middle of the Name on the mountain. The count can be checked; that it reflects deliberate design remains a conjecture. The divine Name as YHWH; the quotations in a modern working translation.