Micah's Prophecy

Long ago, God spoke through the prophet Micah giving His people more clues about the birth of Christ. He still didn’t share a time—that was always part of the surprise. But he did share a place: Bethlehem. 

Bethlehem was the name of a small, seemingly insignificant town within Israel. He could have given Micah the name of a broader region or area, but instead, his details were so specific that it would be like aiming an arrow in the exact center of a target: the bullseye. 

Scripture points us to Bethlehem long before Jesus was born. In the book of Ruth, Naomi and her husband left Israel because of a famine, but years later Naomi and her daughter-in-law, Ruth, returned home to the town called Bethlehem. Ruth gave birth to Obed who was the father of Jesse, and Jesse was the father of David (Matthew 1:5-6). When David was a teenager, God sent another prophet, named Samuel, to Bethlehem because He had chosen a king among the sons of Jesse. That king was David, the youngest of Jesse’s sons who, at that time, was shepherding their sheep. But David was only the first king of his line. God had planned an eternal King that would be David’s great, great, great, great (many many more greats) grandson. Now the arrow pointed toward a specific family lineage from within the little village—a bullseye within a bullseye.