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.
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.
- BSB 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.
- 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 22:12In that day, the Lord, Yahweh of Armies, called to weeping, and to mourning, and to baldness, and to dressing in sackcloth:
- Job 1:20Then Job arose, and tore his robe, and shaved his head, and fell down on the ground, and worshiped.
- Jer 7:29Cut off your hair, and throw it away, and take up a lamentation on the bare heights; for Yahweh has rejected and forsaken the generation of his wrath.
- Amos 8:10I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation; and I will make you wear sackcloth on all your bodies, and baldness on every head. I will make it like the mourning for an only son, and its end like a bitter day.
- Jer 16:6Both great and small shall die in this land; they shall not be buried, neither shall men lament for them, nor cut themselves, nor make themselves bald for them;
- Isa 3:16–26Moreover Yahweh said, “Because the daughters of Zion are haughty, and walk with outstretched necks and flirting eyes, walking to trip as they go, jingling ornaments on their feet;
- Isa 15:2They have gone up to Bayith, and to Dibon, to the high places, to weep. Moab wails over Nebo and over Medeba. Baldness is on all of their heads. Every beard is cut off.
- Isa 39:6–7‘Behold, the days are coming when all that is in your house, and that which your fathers have stored up until today, will be carried to Babylon. Nothing will be left,’ says Yahweh.
- Deut 28:56–57The tender and delicate woman among you, who would not venture to set the sole of her foot on the ground for delicateness and tenderness, her eye will be evil toward the husband that she loves, toward her son, toward her daughter,
- 2 Kgs 17:6In the ninth year of Hoshea the king of Assyria took Samaria, and carried Israel away to Assyria, and placed them in Halah, and on the Habor, the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes.
- Jer 6:26Daughter of my people, clothe yourself with sackcloth, and wallow in ashes! Mourn, as for an only son, most bitter lamentation; for the destroyer shall suddenly come on us.
- Lam 4:5–8Those who fed delicately are desolate in the streets: Those who were brought up in scarlet embrace dunghills.
- Deut 28:41You will father sons and daughters, but they will not be yours; for 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.