Shave yourselves bald and cut off your hair in mourning for your precious children; make yourselves as bald as an eagle, for they will go from you into exile.
Parallel translations
- WEB Shave your heads, and cut off your hair for the children of your delight. Enlarge your baldness like the vulture; for they have gone into captivity from you!
- KJV Make thee bald, and poll thee for thy delicate children; enlarge thy baldness as the eagle; for they are gone into captivity from thee.
- NKJV Make yourself bald and cut off your hair, Because of your precious children; Enlarge your baldness like an eagle, For they shall go from you into captivity.
- NASB Shave yourself bald, yes, cut off your hair, Because of the children of your delight; Extend your baldness like the eagle, For they will go from you into exile.
- NLT Oh, people of Judah, shave your heads in sorrow, for the children you love will be snatched away. Make yourselves as bald as a vulture, for your little ones will be exiled to distant lands.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
Micah calls Judah to shave their heads in mourning as their children are carried into captivity. It closes the chapter with a vivid image of grief over exile.
Overview
Shaving the head and making oneself bald like a vulture were customary signs of deep mourning. The 'children of your delight' going into captivity points to the exile that awaits a people who have abandoned their God. The chapter ends on grief, yet within Micah the threat of exile will later be answered by promises of restoration.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 13
- Isa 22:12On that day the Lord GOD of Hosts called for weeping and wailing, for shaven heads and the wearing of sackcloth.
- Job 1:20Then Job stood up, tore his robe, and shaved his head. He fell to the ground and worshiped,
- Jer 7:29Cut off your hair and throw it away. Raise up a lamentation on the barren heights, for the LORD has rejected and forsaken the generation of His wrath.’
- Amos 8:10I will turn your feasts into mourning and all your songs into lamentation. I will cause everyone to wear sackcloth and every head to be shaved. I will make it like a time of mourning for an only son, and its outcome like a bitter day.
- Jer 16:6“Both great and small will die in this land. They will not be buried or mourned, nor will anyone cut himself or shave his head for them.
- Isa 3:16–26The LORD also says: “Because the daughters of Zion are haughty—walking with heads held high and wanton eyes, prancing and skipping as they go, jingling the bracelets on their ankles—
- Isa 15:2Dibon goes up to its temple to weep at its high places. Moab wails over Nebo, as well as over Medeba. Every head is shaved, every beard is cut off.
- Isa 39:6–7The time will surely come when everything in your palace and all that your fathers have stored up until this day will be carried off to Babylon. Nothing will be left, says the LORD.
- Deut 28:56–57The most gentle and refined woman among you, so gentle and refined she would not venture to set the sole of her foot on the ground, will begrudge the husband she embraces and her son and daughter
- 2 Kgs 17:6In the ninth year of Hoshea, the king of Assyria captured Samaria and carried away the Israelites to Assyria, where he settled them in Halah, in Gozan by the Habor River, and in the cities of the Medes.
- Jer 6:26O daughter of my people, dress yourselves in sackcloth and roll in ashes. Mourn with bitter wailing, as you would for an only son, for suddenly the destroyer will come upon us.
- Lam 4:5–8Those who once ate delicacies are destitute in the streets; those brought up in crimson huddle in ash heaps.
- Deut 28:41You will father sons and daughters, but they will not remain yours, because they will go into captivity.
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Christ at the center
Micah names the town — 'But you, Bethlehem... from you shall come forth one who is to be ruler in Israel, whose origins are from of old' — the birthplace of the eternal King.
How Micah 1:16 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
Each word below is tagged with its Strong’s number — tap one to see the underlying Hebrew word, its meaning, and every verse that uses it.