Yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear: 
    Your hands are full of blood. 
    Wash you, make you clean;
    Put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes: 
    Cease to do evil; learn to do well: 
    Seek judgment, relieve the oppressed,
    Judge the fatherless, plead for the widow.[45]

Micah voices the questions that men raised in his day, answering them with the new thought: 

    Wherewithal shall I come before the Lord,
    And bow myself before the high God? 
    Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,
    With calves of a year old? 
    Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,
    Or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? 
    Shall I give my first born for my transgression,
    The fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? 
    He hath showed thee, O man, what is good,
    And what doth the Lord require of thee,
    But to do justly, and to love mercy,
    And to walk humbly with thy God?[46]

Two features of the work of the prophets bring out clearly their ethical inspiration.  Israel was at this period being drawn, for the first time, into the currents created by the strife of the mammoth empires of Assyria and Egypt, in whose maelstrom she at length went down.  Public affairs were becoming matters of international relationship.  The prophets threw themselves heartily into the national politics, standing between the party of Assyria and the party of Egypt, as independents concerned with the interests of neither faction, but seeking to lift both sides above the shifting sands of policy upon the firm ground of principle.  They sought to lead the nation to turn aside from its dazzling dream of a brilliant foreign policy to the humbler tasks of internal reform; to induce the State to busy itself with the labor of redressing civic disorders and of building a community of sober, pure, and just citizens, cultivating peace and equity with other peoples, and fearing God.  They were preachers to the corporate conscience of Israel, and dealt with subjects which the modern pulpit effeminately shuns.  In strains of pure and passionate patriotism, they delighted to vision before the people the ideal State and its ideal King; thus to lead the aspirations of the nation to a higher ambition than martial prowess and diplomatic craft.

    The spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him,
    The spirit of wisdom and understanding,
    The spirit of counsel and might,
    The spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord,
    And shall make him of quick understanding in the fear of the Lord: 
    And he shall not judge after the sight of his eyes,
    Neither reprove after the hearing of his ears: 
    But with righteousness shall he judge the poor,
    And reprove with equity for the meek of the earth. 
    And he shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth,
    And with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked. 
    And righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins,
    And faithfulness the girdle of his reins.[47]