Micah the Morashtite מיכה המורשתי

The opening verse names three kings of Judah: Jotham, Ahaz, Hezekiah. Micah is from Moresheth-gath, a small place in the foothills, and it shows: he speaks not of the palace but of the field that is seized and the house taken from its owner.

His charge is harsher than his contemporaries', because it is aimed not at the people at large but at those on top: the heads judge for a bribe, the priests teach for a fee, the prophets divine for silver — and all of them lean on the LORD and say, is not the LORD among us? No evil will come upon us. Micah's answer became the first explicit prophecy of Jerusalem's destruction in the Tanakh: "Zion shall be plowed as a field, Jerusalem shall become heaps of ruins, and the Temple mount a wooded height."

That line did its work a century later. When Jeremiah was nearly killed for saying the same, the elders stood up and reminded the court: Micah the Morashtite said exactly this in the days of Hezekiah — and he was not killed; the king humbled himself. A prophecy for which one man was spared saved another man's life.

Micah is also the source of the picture everyone knows: "they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, nor shall they learn war any more." And of the line with which Jewish tradition sums up all that the Torah asks of a person: "He has told you, O man, what is good and what the LORD requires of you: only to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God."