Bible Commentaries

SECOND DISCOURSE

Micah 2:1 to Micah 3:12.¹

1 Woe to them that devise iniquity, and work evil upon their beds ! In the morning 2 light they will practise it, because it is in the power of their hand.² And they have coveted fields, and seized them, and houses, and taken them; and have oppressed a man and his house, even a man³ and his possession 3 Therefore thus saith Jehovah: Behold, I am devising against this family an evil, from which ye shall not remove your necks; and ye shall not walk loftily, for an evil time is this 4 In that day shall one take up a by-word concerning you, and wail a wail of woe,⁴ [and] say:

We are utterly destroyed!

He changeth the portion of my people;

How he removeth it from me!⁵

To an apostate he divideth our fields!

5Therefore thou shalt have none to cast a cord upon a lot [of ground] in the assembly of Jehovah 6 Prophesy ye not, they prophesy.⁶ They shall not prophesy to7 [or, of] these: shame shall not depart. Thou that art called⁷ the house of Jacob, was the spirit of Jehovah impatient, or are these his doings? Do not my words8 do good⁸ to him that walketh uprightly? But lately my people has risen up as an enemy: from off the garment ye strip the mantle, from those that pass by securely, averse from war 9 The women of my people ye drive out of the house of their delight; from their children ye take away my ornament foreMicah Micah 2:10 Arise ye, and depart; for this is not the rest: because of pollution it shall destroy [you], and with a sharp destruction 11 If a man walking in vanity⁹ and falsehood should lie, saying: I will prophesy to thee of wine and of strong drink, he would be a prophet for this people.

12 I will surely gather all of thee, O Jacob,

I will surely collect the remnant of Israel,

I will put them together as sheep in the fold,

As a herd in the midst of his pasture;

It shall be noisy with men.

He that breaketh through has gone up before them:

They have broken through, and passed the gate,

And gone forth by it.

And their king passes on before them,

And Jehovah at their head.

III:1 And I said : Hear now, ye heads of Jacob, and ye magistrates of the house of 2 Israel: is it not for you to know the right? Ye that hate good and love evil, 3and tear their skin from off them, and their flesh from off their bones; and who eat the flesh of my people, and flay their skin from off them, and break their bones, 4and divide them, as in the pot, and as flesh within the kettle. Then will they cry to Jehovah, and he will not answer them; and he will hide his face from them at that time, even as they have made their deeds evil.

5 Thus saith Jehovah concerning the prophets that lead my people astray, who biting with their teeth cry: Peace; and he that giveth nothing for their mouth, against him they sanctify war.

6 Therefore a night shall be for you without a vision,

And darkness for you without divination,

And the sun shall go down over the prophets,

And the day be dark over them.

7 And the seers shall be ashamed,

And the diviners shall blush;

And they shall cover the beard, all of them;

Because there is no answer of God.

8 Nevertheless I am filled with power, through the spirit of Jehovah,¹⁰ and judgment, and boldness, to announce unto Jacob his transgression, and unto Israel his sin.

9 Hear this now, ye heads of the house of Jacob, and ye magistrates of the house10 of Israel, that abhor judgment; yea, they pervert all that is right, building Zion 11 with blood, and Jerusalem with iniquity. Her heads judge for a bribe, and her priests teach for a reward, and her prophets divine for money, and lean upon Jehovah, saying; Is not Jehovah among us? evil shall not come upon us.

12Therefore, for your sakes

Zion shall be ploughed as a field,

And Jerusalem shall become heaps,

And the mountain of the house high places of a forest.

EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL

As the first discourse fell into two parts, by the parallel between Samaria and Jerusalem, so this second one falls into the two nearly equal divisions, chaps, Micah 2 : and Micah 3 :, thus carrying through the principle of parallelism. The ground of division, however, is here not the analogy, but the antithesis of the leading thoughts. Thus Micah 2 : begins with a description of the corruption of the great ( Micah 2:1-5), and then proceeds to depict the current false hood of the sham prophets ( Micah 2:6-13), the essence of which is comprehended at the close, in a deceitful but brilliant prediction of the certain prosperity of Judah in the afflictions which are soon to be experienced ( Micah 2:12-13). Corresponding to this, Micah 3 : also begins with denunciation of the guilty nobles ( Micah 2:1-4), and then turns likewise to the judgment against false prophecy ( Micah 2:5-13), at the conclusion of which, however, Micah communicates the substance of his genuine proclamation, so opposite to their spurious illusions ( Micah 2:12).

This obvious plan, which represents the discourse as a double climax, is of itself a sufficient justification of the compass which we ascribe to the whole. With those interpreters who connect chaps, 1,2outwardly in one discourse (Hitzig, Umbreit, Hengst, Hiivernick, Keil) we, although not denying the interior connection of chaps, 1–5 in general, cannot agree, for this reason, if no other, that chap 1 manifestly bears the character of a pure prophecy, complete in itself, while in the division before us, from beginning to end, rebuke and opposition to the reigning sins of the day are the main characteristic; with those who feel obliged to put a full period to the discourse before Micah 3we differ, because they rend asunder the beautiful symmetry of chaps, n. and m. The reason given for this separation, that a new beginning is marked by the “Hear, I pray, you” ( Micah 3:1), proves nothing, since the same summons is found Micah 3:9, where no critic could suppose a new discourse to begin.

Micah 2 : the thesis, Micah 2:1-5. The Nobility, vers, 1, 2. Their Conduct The discourse runs parallel to the similar denunciation of Isaiah ( Micah 5:8 ff. against the sins of the higher ranks and like that, this takes, from the beginning, the character of a “woe.” Woe to them that devise iniquity, and prepare evil on their beds; in the morning light they practice it, because it is in the power of their hand. Wickedness is more criminal in proportion as it is more deliberate. The gradation from the design to its accomplishment, elsewhere often represented by the steps of conception, pregnancy parturition ( Psalm 7:15 et al), is here described. without figure, by the stages of השׁב “to devise,” form the plan ( Psalm 36:5), פעל, “to prepare ways and means” and עשׂה “to put in execution” ( Isaiah 41:4). The construction proceeds from the piivtie. to the verbum finit, as in 1 Samuel 2:8; Ewald, §350 b. Upon their bed they think it out, at the time when the pious still their heart ( Psalm 4:5; Psalm 1:2); in the light of morning they carry it out;—their first thought, therefore, at the gray dawn, is not of prayer ( Psalm 5:4) but of covetousness: for it is in the power of their hand, i. e., they are able to do it and no one hinders them ( Genesis 31:29; Nehemiah 5:5), cf. the LXX. at Genesis 50:10 : ἰσχύει ἡ χείρ μου. Hitzig and Keil translate: “for their hand is their God” [ist zum Gott], thier power avails to them as a God, none else do they fear. But this would require יֵשׁ יָדָם לֵאלֹהֵיהֶם, Habakkuk 1:11.

Micah 2:2. We are now told wherein these their evil deeds consist; And they covet (against the law, Exodus 20:17, whose expression תמד is not without emphasis repeated here) fields and size them; and oppress a man and his house, even a man and his heritage. The transgression of the laws for the protection of each man’s real estate and inheritance ( Leviticus 25:23 ff.), by destroying the property of the peasants and oppressing them themselves, this is what the prophet, like his contemporary, Isaiah 5:8 ff. most bitterly reproves, as being the surest way to the creation of a helpess proletariate, to the hostile separation of proprietors from those without property, and popular life ruin of the national welfare and the popular life. (The second בית may, for the sake of the parallelism, be referred to the household or family, as in Genesis 7:1). This one breach of the law is sufficient to provoke God’s anger judgment upon this generation.¹¹

Micah 2:3-5 : Therefore, thus saith Jehovah, behold, I devise evil upon this generation, [family]. The phrase תשׁב רע is emphatically repeated from Micah 2:1, to set clearly before our eyes the jus tahonis prevalent in God’s providence ( Exodus 21:23; Isaiah 33:1). “This generation,” is, an in Amos 3:1, the whole people; cf. the γενεά, Matthew 12:41-42. There is the same antithesis to the “oppression” in Micah 2:2, in the following phrase Jehovah devises evil, from which ye shall not withdraw your necks; like a yoke becomes the hard rule of the stranger on the fat cows of shaken off ( Jeremiah 23:12), And ye shall not walk loftily—רוֹמָה, acc. adv. with verbs of going ( Psalm 58:9; Ges, Lehry. §178, 4); the necks that are used to carrying themselves stiffly ( Isaiah 3:16) will have to bend; for an evil time is this, in which depression of spirits and gloomy silence comes over the people ( Amos 5:13). This also is said with an application: your guilt causes the present to be an evil time before God, and so God will bring a time which is evil for you, the πονηρόν, sensu activo and passivo at once; Ephesians 5:6; Matthew 6:13.

Micah 2:4. In that day will one (the verbs are used impresonally, Ewald, §294 b2 γ.) take up a taunt against thee (cf. Habakkuk 2:6; Isaiah 14:4), and utter a lamentation. What in the mind of the adversaries is derision, is, in the mouth of friends and the members of this community, a lamentation: cf. Micah 1:10; and what follows is spoken from the position of the latter; all is over, will one say, נהיה, actum est, all is lost, cf. Daniel 8:27, and also the γεγονε, Revelation 15:1-8 We are utterly destroyed. On the form with u instead of o, cf. Olah, §263 b. “The obsure vowel is adapted to the sound of lamentation,” Hitzig.—The portion of my people he (Jehovah, cf. Micah 1:9) takes back. המיר of taking back of a promised benfit ( Psalm 15:4). Thus God repents of having granted it ( Genesis 6:6). How he withdraws it from me!—Cf. Micah 2:3, against Hitzig’s translation: how he lets me depart! To the apostate—i. e., to the heathen ( Jeremiah 49:4), who is born and grows up in apostasy from God—he divideth our fields!

Micah 2:5. Therefore, the prophecy proceeds, looking back to Micah 2:3. thou (all Israel, transition, as Micah 1:14) shalt have no one to cast a measuring line on a lot of ground ( Judges 1:3) in the assembly of Jehovah. For to the congregation of God belong the lots of ground so long only as they bear in mind that it is God’s land ( Leviticus 25:23); but since they, by the sins named in Micah 2:1-2, appropriate it to themselves, there is no longer a congregation of Jehovah, and the owner, God, gives his land to the apostate, who have been rebellious from their birth, and so with less guilt. The words of the prophet are keen, and provoke to contradiction. Imagining this present to him, he comes to the new turn of the discourse.

Micah 2:6-13. State of the Prophetic Function. Micah 2:6. The people will not listen to any genuine prophecy ( Amos 5:10). This second reproof also runs parallel to one of Isaiah ( Isaiah 23:7 ff.). Indeed, the prophet associates Isaiah with himself in thought, when he makes the people call out to a plurality of prophets: “Drivel not,” they drivel. The expression הִטִּיף (from נטף, therefore prop. “to let drop,” trickle ( Amos 9:13), to pour out copious discourse. to prophesy=נבא, cf. הִבִּיַע, to let bubble, gush forth; Psalm 94:4), appears here, as in Amos 7:15, in the mouth of the malignant opposition. whose it a tone of contempr. (But cf. Ezekiel 21:2; Ezekiel 21:9.) The prophet straightway returns this contempt; their indignation is in reality an unreasonable driveling, as he then ( Micah 2:7 c) further evnices. First, however, he answers their objection by the double sentence, 6 b, c, which, according to the analogy of the following verse, is best understood as an impatient question. Shall they not drivel for that? shall the shame not depart? For such rhetorical questions without the particle of interrogation, cf, Habakkuk 2:19; Jeremiah 25:29; Hosea 23:14.—Ewald, Hitzig, Maurer, Umbreit, Caspari: “Let them not prate of these things; the reviling has no end.” Ch. V. Michaelis, Hengstenberg, Keil: “If they prophesy not to these, the reproach will not depart.”¹³—The proceeding verb stands in the sing. (Gesen, §147, a), and כְּלִמּוֹת signifies not merely revilings but everything, which can serve as reproach and ruin to one ( Isaiah 30:3).

Micah 2:7. The first words of this verse also are an important exclamation: O for what is spoken in the house of Israel! cf. on this acc. indignationis, Ewald, §101, 6; Isaiah 29:16. In like manner, Umvreit.—Caspari, Hitzig: num dicendum? But the gerundive idea is not contained in the part. pass. Rosenmüller and Keil: “O thou so called house of Jacob!” But that in connection with the following gives no sense. בית יעקב is not stat. abs. but acc. loci, while אמור, regarded as a verbal from, is (as Isaiah 26:3 : if he is stayed on thee): “O for the fact that it is said in the house of Jacob,” as follows. cf. 1 Kings 7:48; Ruth 1:9.¹⁴. The prphet up the words of the opposers, in order then to reply to them. They say: is then the spirit of Jehovah become short, i. e. impatient? That would be against the word of God ( Exodus 36:6), to which they appeal like Satan before Christ ( Matthew 4:6). Orare these—the plagues prophesied by the prophets—his deeds? Should he plague Israel whom he is wont to foster as his first—born son ( Exodus 4:23). The prophet replies to this foolish speech, which claims the promise for itself regardless of the condition, by reminding them that God remains indeed the same, but that they ( Micah 2:8 ff.) have changes, so that the promise can no longer avail for them. Do not, in fact, my words deal kindly with him that walks uprightly? “The word ישׁר, as an appositive to the person in דֹולֵךְ ( Job 31:26), could take the place which the emphasis resting on it assigns to it, because as an adjective it draws to itself the article belonging to hwlech.” Hitzig.

Micah 2:8. But lately—properly: yesterday—my people has stood up as—an enemy. My words would have remained kind, as they were, but you have sought hostility. The hostile attitude still continues, as the imperf, indicates. On the use of לְ cf. Ewald, § 217. d. a1.—Others, retaining the causative signification of קו̇מֵם, translate: but my people make me stand up as their enemy/ But the suffix is wanting, an the Polel is not necessarily causative.¹⁵.—And in what does this hostility consist? Off from the garment ye strip the mantle of those who in secure confidence of safety ( Leviticus 25:18) pass by, averse from war, i. e., peaceably ( Psalm 120:7). The part. pass. שׁוּב takes the place of the part. act. שָׁב (Olsh, §245 a, cf. Psalm 112:7).

Micah 2:9. And as they spare not the peaceable, so still less the defenseless: the women of mypeople, the unprotected widows ( Isaiah 10:2), ye drive out of the house of their delight, the house inherited from the husband, to which they are attached by the memory of their wedded love ( Song of Solomon 7:7; Ecclesiastes 2:8); from their children (the stiff, is in the sing, not to denote the children severally as sons of the widows, fatherless (Keil), for that would be a nota mala, but because נָשׁים is taken collectively Micah 1:9), ye take away my ornament forever. To belong to Jehovah is the honor and ornament of every individual Israelite ( Jeremiah 2:11; Psalm 73:28); whoever thrusts out the children in Israel among the heathen takes away this ornament of God ( 1 Samuel 26:19).¹⁶

From this results now ( Micah 2:10), of itself as it were, the threatening, according to the law of the tatio (cf. on Micah 2:3, “those that expel shall be expelled”): Arise ye, and go: for here is not the rest ( Zechariah 9:1) which was promised to the righteous people in Canaan ( Deuteronomy 12:9 f.; Psalm 95:11; cf. Hebrews 3:11 ff.): for uncleanness worketh destruction (cf. Leviticus 18:25; Isaiah 54:16), and that a sharp destruction. So must God’s prophet speak ( Micah 2:3; Micah 2:6), whether the hearers regard it as driveling or not. Were Hebrews, indeed, one of the prophets whom they would fain hear, (cf. Isaiah 30:10), the proclamation would sound very differently; what they announce we are told in Micah 2:11-13.

Micah 2:11. If a man followed vanity, רוּחַ as in Isaiah 26:18, and falsehood (לוּcum part, as Psalm 81:14; 2 Samuel 18:12), he would lie (the apodosis ἀσυνδέτως, as Deuteronomy 32:29): I will prophesy to thee, people of Israel, of wine and strong drink, i. e. either: of these things, that they shall be bestowed on you, or better: so that my predictions shall come to you as sweet as wine and strong drink, or also: prophesy to thee at the banquet (cf. Micah 2:6).¹⁷And would prophesy to this people:¹⁸ namely, what follows in Micah 2:12-13. והח continues the apodosis begun by כּזב, and, with the part, takes the place of the simple הִטִּיף while hinting besides that this prophesying is permanent (Ewald, § 168 c.).¹⁹ Instead of the verbal construction לָעָם, the part, is construed as a noun with stat. abs. as Micah 2:8 ( Habakkuk 2:15; Psalm 30:4).

Micah 2:12. To the part, is adjoined, as Micah 2:7, the direct discourse: I will surely gather all of thee, so would the liars, clothing themselves in the garb of the old prophets, prophesy in the name of Jehovah, O, Jacob, I will surely collect the remnant of Israel. That, indeed, a remnant only can be spoken of, who shall be gathered (according to Obadiah 1:17; Joel 1:5, cf. Amos 5:15), even the false prophets know; but in view of the destruction of Samaria, they might tickle the ears of the men of Judah by pretending that the whole (כּלּד) of Judah, unpurified, was this remnant, and would undoubtedly enter alone into the promise. They might plausibly appeal to the precedent set by Hosea, who ( Hosea 2:2 [ Micah 1:11], cf. Micah 1.) had said that after the punishment of Israel and the bestowment of favor on Judah, both would gather about One Head. They evidently refer to the יהדו in that passage when they go on to say: I will bring them (Israel) together as sheep in the field, as a herd in the midst of its pasture. The appellative signification of בּצרהseptum-ovile, is quite possible according to the erymology, is found in the oldest versions, and is sufficiently supported by the parallelism of “pasture.”—So Hitzig, Umbreit, Caspari; Hengstenberg, on the contrary: the Moabite, Keil: the Edomite Bozrah.—The article with the suffix in הדברו, as Joshua 7:21; Ewald, § 290, d. And not merely Judah and Israel in their present condition, but also all the scattered and sold will return, of whom Obadiah ( Obadiah 2:20) before, and Joel ( Joel 4:6 ff.) had made mention: They, the fold and pasture of Israel, shall swarm (תּהימנה instead of תּהימינה, Olsh, § 244, e.) with men, for the multitude of the men also is a necessary element of the promises of prosperity ( Hosea 2:2 [ Micah 1:11]). הים, is, like הום, a cognate form for המם,המה ( Psalm 55:3). But how do they suppose that this can take place when, after the destruction of Samaria, the northern part of the holy land is inclosed by the Assyrians round about? This question is answered by

Micah 2:13. There will go up before them—a traditional Messianic expression ( Obadiah 2:21)—He that breaks through: the head, the leader whom they will set over them, according to Hosea 2:2. He will place himself at their head in the holy city whither God will gather Israel, will collect them into an army and break the ring of the heathen.²⁰They break through, pass into the gate (cf. oh Micah 1:11), and go out through it. And their king passes on before them, for no other than the king, out of the house of David, can be that “Breaker” ( Amos 9:11), and Jehovah at their head, as in the marches in the desert ( Numbers 10:35; Exodus 13:21).

The foregoing explanation of Micah 2:12-13, which regards these as the quintessence of the golden promises with which the false prophets steal the favor of the people, rests not only on the plan of the whole discourse (chaps, 2, 3) but also especially on the impossibility of establishing otherwise a clear connection between Micah 2:11-12, and on the numerous references of the following chapter. The objections which have been raised against it, particularly that from the term “remnant,” have been met in the exegesis. The passage is similarly explained by J. D. Michaelis, Hartmann, Ewald, Hofmann in the Schriflbeweis, while the majority, however, and among them of recent authors, Hengstenberg, Hitzig, Caspari, Keil [Maurer, Pusey], separate the last two verses from the connection, and explain them as a Messianic promise from Micah’s point of view.

But according to this latter understanding of the subject, it is unintelligible how, immediately after this, the antithesis ( Micah 3.) can begin, as indicated by the manifestly adversative ואמר “but I say” (cf. Isaiah 24:16), and by the diametrically opposite prophecy, which continues, with the express assurance ( Micah 2:8), that it gives the proper sentiment of the prophet, to the end of the chapter and culminates in the last verse.

See Mic 3:1 ff for DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL and HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL.

Footnotes