Bible Commentaries

A Standard of Morality

Micah 7:2).

When we ourselves are down it is hard to believe that anybody else is up; when our prayer is choked in our throat it is easy to believe that God hears no prayer at all, nor cares for petitioning and supplicating man. We interpret all things by ourselves. There is a curious self-projection of the soul upon the disc of history, and we read according to the shadow which we throw upon that disc. This is what we call pessimism. We are always inventing strange words, and imagining that thereby we are making some kind of progress. Man has a fatal gift of giving names to things, and once give a name, and it will be almost impossible to obliterate it. We call this pessimism,—that Micah 7:4).

This is pessimism in all the completeness of its depression. The best is bad; the most upright, the picked men of society, are all thorns. Take care how you try to get through a thorn hedge; the scratches may identify you, the wounds may be witnesses against you in the day of visitation. This is what society comes to without God. Lose the religious element, and society falls to pieces. Society thinks not; for a time society thinks it can keep itself very well together, but experience shows that when the morale of society goes down, its money securities are waste paper. The reputation of a country is in its morality, and morality properly interpreted is the active or practical side of true spiritual religion. Morality may be derived from a word which signifies mere manner, attitude, posture, and the like; but not from this contemptible mos is morality truly derived, but from the very Spirit of God, and the very genius of the Cross. No morality can be trusted in the dark that is not metaphysical, spiritual, divine.

The Lord would send upon the people who acted criminally what is called "perplexity." The word "perplexity" has a singular meaning. Herod was "perplexed." He saw things in crosslights; all the roads came together, and he could not tell which one to take; it was not a question of two roads, but a question of five roads, bisecting and intersecting, and leaving the mind in a state of whirl and puzzle. That is perplexity. The Lord will send upon people who disbelieve him and disobey him the spirit of perplexity; they shall not know one another. Perplexity shall enter into the very use of words; terms shall lose their natural application. Man shall say to Micah 6:3-5 Jehovah speaks; the inquiry of the people follows in Micah 6:6, indicating their entire ignorance of what was required of them; their inquiry is met by the almost impatient rejoinder, "Will Jehovah be pleased with thousands of rams, with myriads of torrents of oil?" The still greater sacrifice suggested by the people, "Shall I give my firstborn for my transgressions?" calls forth the definition of their true duty, "to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with their God." How far they had fallen short of this requirement is shown in what follows (9-12), and judgment is pronounced upon them (13-16). The prophet acknowledges and bewails the justice of the sentence ( Micah 7:1-6); the people in repentance patiently look to God, confident that their prayer will be heard (7-10), and are reassured by the promise of deliverance announced as following their punishment (11-13) by the prophet, who in his turn presents his petition to Jehovah for the restoration of his people (14 , 15). The whole concludes with a triumphal song of joy at the great deliverance, like that from Egypt, which Jehovah will achieve, and a full acknowledgment of his mercy and faithfulness to his promises (16-20). The last verse is reproduced in the song of Zacharias ( Luke 1:72-73)."—Smith's Dictionary of the Bible.