5Thus says the Lord concerning the prophets
who lead my people astray,
who cry “Peace”
when they have something to eat
but declare war against those
who put nothing into their mouths.
6 Therefore it shall be night to you, without vision,
and darkness to you, without revelation.
The sun shall go down upon the prophets,
and the day shall be black over them;
7 the seers shall be disgraced
and the diviners put to shame;
they shall all cover their lips,
for there is no answer from God.
8 But as for me, I am filled with power,
with the spirit of the Lord,
and with justice and might,
to declare to Jacob his transgression
and to Israel his sin.
9 Hear this, you rulers of the house of Jacob
and chiefs of the house of Israel,
who abhor justice
and pervert all equity,
10who build Zion with blood
and Jerusalem with wrong!
11 Its rulers give judgment for a bribe;
its priests teach for a price;
its prophets give oracles for money;
yet they lean upon the Lord and say,
“Surely the Lord is with us!
No harm shall come upon us.”
12 Therefore because of you
Zion shall be plowed as a field;
Jerusalem shall become a heap of ruins,
and the mountain of the temple a wooded height.
– Micah 3:5-12 (NRSVue)
Micah does not mess about when describing the circumstances in which the people of Israel find themselves, particularly in relation to the people who should know better, and thus should act accordingly. This includes the entire religious and political leadership: from the royal house, to the priest and scribes of the Temple, and down to the prophets and seers. Micah rails against them all, accusing them of lying, cheating, and using their positions of public trust and divinely-granted power to line their pockets at the expense of poor, desperate saps. Of course, the bill will eventually come due, when the nation and its people will be annihilated by any of the surrounding empires eagerly licking their lips at the prospect of conquering Israel. This is pretty standard prophetic language, particularly for Micah.
Then, there are the cannibal metaphors, and that’s where things get interesting.
Micah begins this chapter (verses 3:1-4, in a section not included in the lectionary) with a vivid description of the injustices perpetrated by the rulers who are enamored with evil and dismissive of good. They don’t simply hoard the wealth of the country solely for themselves and leave the poor with nothing, as can be expected from selfish, greedy rulers and is likely baked into the fabric of reality.
Instead, they are cannibals who not only tear the skin and flesh from the people, but even spend the time to prepare an entire meal, chopping up their flesh, breaking their bones, and tossing it all in a giant, boiling cauldron. They then engorge themselves on their meal, and even have the audacity to tell the people to calm down when they inevitably complain about being hungry.
I can’t help but imagine someone sucking the marrow from those broken bones and tossing them back in the pot while settling back onto a cushion with a satisfied sigh.
While verses 5-8 focus mainly on these greedy false prophets, Micah’s intent here is to sweep the entire power structure of Israel into one pile, as their actions are all focused on the same goal of sucking the marrow and lifeblood from the poor, whether that be stealing the food from their mouths or claiming power over their bodies (verse 9). They even cheat the people by demanding money for doing the things they should be doing anyway (verse 11): the rulers giving justice, the priests teaching the people, and the prophets offering guidance for the future. They take and take and take, and then declare war on those with the temerity to complain (verse 5). Above it all, they claim that God is on their side, and that they are safe from any harm (verse 11).
Of course, Micah reminds these greedy charlatans that God sees all of this, and indigestion might be the least of their problems. Both the prophets and the rulers will receive their just reward for these injustices, particularly calibrated to their sins. While the prophets will lose their ability to have revelations and their prophetic sight will go as dark as night (verse 6-7), the rulers will lose their city, their country, and even their holy sites, as Zion is plowed under, Jerusalem is a ruin, and the temple becomes a wasteland (verse 11).
In other words, the powerful slathering over the pot will now become the meal.
There is a fascinating, and even thrilling, sense of balance that emerges here as the greedy become the tasty morsels in some larger empire’s pot. Now, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that God desires this outcome, as all of this punishment comes too late for the people the greedy rulers have already digested. Yet, I don’t think that Micah minds too much…and I don’t either.
One of the beauties of the prophetic witness is how fresh it all is. I don’t need to spend a great deal of time exploring the context of Micah’s words in order to understand his message, because it’s happening right now.
This especially includes the cannibalism of the rich. The poor starve while billionaires carve them up, whether it’s the tech bros expanding AI and surveillance technology just because they can, or the oligarchs and their sycophants speculating our futures on crypto and tech centers. It takes a special kind of ravenous, rapacious greed to make money off skyrocketing oil prices that gulp down entire paychecks for the rest of us. It also takes a special kind of greed for political power to scapegoat tiny communities (such as trans people) simply to ensure winning an election. Yet here we are: time and space have folded, and we can see Micah speaking directly to our condition.
How are we to respond? I’d argue that food is the answer here.
(Well, chewing is the answer, actually.)
First, let’s imagine the act of eating. You put food in your mouth, and your tongue and teeth start working on it. Depending on the food, we might enjoy its crispiness, its crunch, its texture, its flavour, and even its chewiness: when all of these aspects work in harmony, the experience can feel like heaven. A plate of crispy, chewy fries? Yum! A pile of crunchy grilled vegetables? Awesome! For those who eat meat, a slab of juicy steak steaming as a knife slices it apart can be rapturous.
Now imagine eating one of those charred fries that always fall to the bottom of the bag, an inedible husk of fibre in the shape of a broccoli stalk, or a thick chunk of gristle squeaking between your teeth. Suddenly, the ecstasy of your meal comes to a shocking, unpleasant end akin to a record scratch.
You’ve got poppy seeds embedded in your gums. A long stalk of asparagus dangles down the back of your throat. Caramel works itself into the grooves between your teeth and clamps your jaw together like glue. Globs of dry peanut butter and bread stick at the top of your throat and choke you as you gasp for water. (And that’s not even mentioning when your food actually moves, like certain sea animals whose tentacles can wrap around your tongue.)
Your food has become ornery, unwieldy, uncooperative, and even unruly. Suddenly, the tasty morsels you were so excited about have become hazards, not just unappetizing but actually, literally inedible and maybe even dangerous. In other words, your food is fighting back.
Of course, we’re not talking about actual food here. We’re talking about us: the poor, the persecuted, and the ones whose bodies and souls those in power find so tasty. The ones that those in power expect to meekly accept our culinary fate. How are we to respond?
By becoming completely inedible and unappetizing, and even dangerous to chew.
I’ve always appreciated the witness of Bayard Rustin, a black, gay, Quaker pacifist and civil rights agitator whose very existence screamed “tough to chew”. He is best known outside Quaker circles as the towering force of nature behind many of Martin Luther King’s most impactful actions, including the 1963 March on Washington.
Within the Quaker world, though, he’s seen as a prophet of social action whose understanding of the combined power of many small actions was unparalleled. Many Quakers (including me, I’ll readily admit) have his famous quotes about the power of resistance hung on our walls, including how every community needs groups of “angelic troublemakers”.
He understood resistance in a deeply physical way, noting that the power of mass movements lies with our bodies and our ability to tuck them into the wheels and gears of the world, ensuring that the entire machine becomes unworkable. He understood Micah’s cannibalism metaphor viscerally – he was black, gay, and a pacifist after all. He not only understood the value of being fibre and gristle, he incarnated it in every aspect of his life.
There’s a neat parallel here with the powerful toughening of the former morsels fighting back against data centers slurping water and energy supplies and surveillance cameras feasting on the movements of our lives. Every time I see another video of yet another person fighting back at a town council meeting, I can’t help but imagine those who dreamt of scrumptiousness choking as their supposed food shows itself to be very much still alive and kicking.
One of my heroes these days is Vivian Wilson, a fantastically brave and unrepentantly unruly piece of fibre with the misfortune of being the child of Elon Musk. See, Vivian is a trans woman, and Musk hates trans people with the heat of a thousand cooking fires. Musk was so insistent on only having a son that he demanded that Vivian’s mother, Justine Wilson, use in-vitro fertilisation purely because he could then choose which embryo to implant.
A male embryo, naturally…and a most delicious irony, to be sure.
Of course, as these things tend to go, Vivian always knew who she really was, and began the process to transition as soon as she was able. Her father reacted exactly as you might expect a spoiled glutton to react to someone yucking his yum: he not only lashed out at Vivian and those who supported her, he decided to use his monstrously massive wealth to pummel the rest of us back into the meek, succulent submission he expected of his child.
Musk has stated, unequivocally, that the tough fibre of Vivian’s bravery was what compelled him to not only buy Twitter, but to stride into the kitchen and start cooking all of the recipes he’s force-fed the world: DOGE, election tampering, misinformation campaigns, blackmail, and coercion. All because Vivian refused to become a victim of Musk’s aching to become Saturn in power and deed.
Does transphobia harm everyone, and not just those of us blessed to be trans?
Obviously yes – and there’s all the proof you should ever need.
How did Vivian respond when the long knives of Musk’s power came after her? She refused to silence herself in any form, using every inch of the influence and power her father’s name accorded her to speak out against nearly everything he stands for, especially wealth inequality, the dangers of tech intrusion into our lives, and both transphobia and the quietly-simmering misogyny which feeds it. She put her money where her mouth is, and hasn’t received a dime from her father in years.
She became inedible, a witness that feeds me when I also need the strength to be tough, fibrous, and unworkable.
Who are you: a tasty morsel or unpalatable fibre?
Choose wisely, because the dinner bell is ringing.
