Bible Strands
Micah 1:16
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.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — The prophet Micah delivers this divine warning to the people of Judah and Israel as a conqueror advances against Mareshah and the nation's glory retreats to Adullam. The command addresses the community at the moment of impending military defeat and forced displacement.
The words — The Hebrew imperative קָרְחִי (ka.re.Chi) commands the people to "make bald," while גֹּזִי (Go.zi) means "shear" or "cut off." These verbs direct the physical removal of hair in response to the loss of תַעֲנוּגַיִךְ (ta.'a.nu.Ga.yi), translated as "your delights" or precious children.
The thread — This specific mourning custom appears in Isaiah 22:12 and Jeremiah 7:29 as a commanded response to divine rejection and national judgment. It parallels Job 1:20, where shaving the head marks the physical expression of sudden, overwhelming loss.
Why it lands — The text demands recognition that national catastrophe will sever familial bonds and force exile. It requires the reader to understand that prescribed mourning rituals serve as public acknowledgment of irreversible divine judgment.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
Make thee bald, and poll thee for thy delicate children; enlarge thy baldness as the eagle; for they are gone into captivity from thee.
Cross-references
- Isaiah 22:12 On that day the Lord GOD of Hosts called for weeping and wailing, for shaven heads and the wearing of sackcloth.
- Job 1:20 Then Job stood up, tore his robe, and shaved his head. He fell to the ground and worshiped,
- Jeremiah 7:29 Cut 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.’
- Jeremiah 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.
- Amos 8:10 I 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.
- Deuteronomy 28:41 You will father sons and daughters, but they will not remain yours, because they will go into captivity.
- Deuteronomy 28:56 The 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 Kings 17:6 In 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.
- Isaiah 3:16 The 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—
- Isaiah 15:2 Dibon 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.