Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Micah 3:1
And I said, Hear, I pray you, O heads of Jacob, and ye princes of the house of Israel; [Is it] not for you to know judgment?
1 4. Chiefly a description of the savage behaviour of the ruling class
1. O heads of Jacob ] The prophet addresses the official class of all Israel, especially the judges, who appear from Jer 21:11-12 to have been (in Judah at any rate) chiefly members of the royal family (a numerous body in Judah as well as in Egypt).
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
And I said – Gods love for us is the great incitement, constrainer, vivifier of His creatures love. Micah had just spoken of Gods love of Israel; how He would gather them into one fold under One Shepherd, guard them, lead them, remove all difficulties before them, be Himself their Head and enable them to follow Him. He turns then to them. These are Gods doings; this, God has in store for you hereafter. Even when mercy itself shall require chastisement, He doth not cast off forever. The desolation is but the forerunner of future mercy. What then do ye? The prophet appeals to them, class by class. There was one general corruption of every order of men, through whom Judah could be preserved, princes Mic 3:1-4, prophets Mic 3:5-7, priests Mic 3:11. The salt had lost its savor; wherewith could it be seasoned? whereby could the decaying mass of the people be kept from entire corruption?
Hear, I pray you, O heads of Jacob, and ye princes of the house of Israel – He arraigns them by the same name, under which He had first promised mercy. He had first promised mercy to all Jacob and the remnant of Israel. So now he upraids the heads of Jacob, and the princes of the house of Israel, lest they should deceive themselves. At the same time he recalls them to the deeds of their father. Judah had succeeded to the birthright, forfeited by Reuben, Simeon and Levi; and in Judah all the promises of the Messiah were laid up. But he was not like the three great patriarchs, the father of the faithful (Abraham), or the meek Isaac, or the much-tried Jacob. The name then had not the reminiscences, or force of appeal, contained in the titles, seed of Abraham, or Isaac, or Israel.
Is it not for you to know judgment? – It is a great increase of guilt, when persons neglect or pervert what it is their special duty and office to guard; as when teachers corrupt doctrine, or preachers give in to a low standard of morals, or judges pervert judgment. The princes here spoken or are so named from judging, deciding causes. They are the same its the rulers, whom Isaiah at the same time upbraids, as being, from their sins, rulers of Sodom , whose hands were full of blood Isa 1:15. They who do not right, in time cease, in great measure, to know it. As God withdraws His grace, the mind is darkened and can no longer see it. So it is said of Elis sons, they were sons of Belial, they knew not the Lord 1Sa 2:12; and, Into a malicious soul Wisdom shall not enter, nor dwell in a body that is subject unto sin (Wisd. 1:4). Such , attain not to know the judgments of God which are a great deep: and the depth of His justice the evil mind findeth not. But if men will not know judgment by doing it, they shall by suffering it.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Mic 3:1-4
Hear, I pray you, O heads of Jacob, and ye princes of the house of Israel
Civil rulers
I.
What civil rulers ought always to be. They ought always to know judgment, that is, always practically to know the right. What is the standard of right? Not public sentiment, not human law, but the Divine will. Gods being is the foundation of right; Gods will is the standard of right; Gods Christ is the completest revelation of that standard.
II. What civil rulers often are. What were these rulers?
1. Morally corrupt.
2. Socially cruel.
3. Divinely abandoned.
The Monarch of the universe is no respecter of persons. (Homilist.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
CHAPTER III
In this chapter the prophet inveighs with great boldness and
spirit against the princes and prophets of Judah; and foretells
the destruction of Jerusalem as the consequence of their
iniquity, 1-12.
The last verse was fulfilled to a certain extent by
Nebuchadnezzar; but most fully and literally by the Romans
under Titus. See Josephus.
NOTES ON CHAP. III
Verse 1. Hear – O heads of Jacob] The metaphor of the flock is still carried on. The chiefs of Jacob, and the princes of Israel, instead of taking care of the flocks, defending them, and finding them pasture, oppressed them in various ways. They are like wolves, who tear the skin of the sheep, and the flesh off their bones. This applies to all unjust and oppressive rulers.
Suetonius tells us, in his Life of Tiberius, that when the governors of provinces wrote to the emperor, entreating him to increase the tributes, he wrote back: “It is the property of a good shepherd to shear his sheep, not to skin them.” Praesidibus onerandas tributo provincias suadentibus rescripsit: BONI PASTORIS esse TONDERE pecus, non DEGLUBERE. This is a maxim which many rulers of the earth do not seem to understand.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
And I said: in further discharge of his prophetic office, and his direction from the Lord, the prophet proceeds to preach.
Hear; attend diligently, and give good ear. I pray you: being to address to governors, he entreats their attention, as we have the Hebrew particle here rendered, which might have been rendered now, and so the Gallic version doth render it, and the particle signifieth both.
O heads of Jacob, and ye princes of the house of Israel; you that are by birth heads of the families, and by office princes and rulers in Israel and Jacob, i.e. in the kingdom both of the ten tribes, and more particularly the two tribes, as appears from the last verse of this chapter.
Is it not for you? are you not bound by office? do not men expect? doth not God require? doth not the public weal engage you to be well skilled in the laws of God?
To know judgment; understand, approve, conform to and rule by equity, and the just laws of your God. You, princes, magistrates, and ruling officers, ought to know and do judgment and justice; you of all men should know and do right.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
1. princesmagistrates orjudges.
Is it not for you?Isit not your special function (Jer 5:4;Jer 5:5)?
judgmentjustice. Yesit in judgment on others; surely then ye ought to know the judgmentfor injustice which awaits yourselves (Ro2:1).
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
And I said, hear, I pray you, O heads of Jacob, and ye princes of the house of Israel,…. This seems to be a new sermon or discourse, delivered at another time and to another people than the preceding for, as that chiefly concerns the ten tribes, this the two tribes of Judah and Benjamin, and was spoken to them in the times of Hezekiah, as appears from Jer 26:18; for though Jacob and Israel generally design the ten tribes, yet here the other two, as is manifest from the above cited place, and also from Mic 3:9; and not only heads of families, but such as were the highest posts under the government, the sanhedrim of the nation, judges, rulers, and nobles, are here addressed; and who had a great share in national guilt, being ringleaders in sin, who ought to have set good examples to others; and these are not to be spared because of their grandeur and dignity, but to faithfully reproved for their vices, and which they should diligently attend unto; though they are to be addressed in a respectful and honourable manner, and be entreated to hearken to the word of the Lord by his prophet; all which was carefully observed by Micah; and it was with pleasure he could reflect upon his plain, faithful, and affectionate reproof of those great men:
[is it] not for you to know judgment? what is just and right to be done by men, and what sentence is to be passed in courts of judicature, in cases brought before them and not only to know, in a speculative way, what is equitable, but to practise it themselves, and see that it is done by others; and when they duly considered this, they would be able to see and own that what the prophet from the Lord would now charge them with, or denounce upon them, was according to truth and justice.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
First strophe. – Mic 3:1. “And I said, Hear ye, O heads of Jacob, and princes of the house of Israel: Is it not for you to know the right? Mic 3:2. Ye who hate good, and love evil; who draw off their skin from them, and their flesh from their bones. Mic 3:3. And who have eaten the flesh of my people, and stripped off their skin from them; and broken their bones, and cut them in pieces, as if in the pot, and like flesh in the midst of the caldron. Mic 3:4. Then will they cry to Jehovah, and He will not hearken; and let Him hide His face from them at the same time, as they have made their actions evil.” By the expression “And I said” ( va’omar ), the following address is indicated as a continuation of the preceding one. The reproofs of this chapter are also a still further expansion of the woe pronounced in Mic 2:1-2 upon the godless chiefs of the nation. The heads of Jacob are addressed, that is to say, the princes of the tribes and families of Israel, and the q e tsnm , lit., deciders (answering to the Arabic qady , a judge) of the house of Israel, i.e., the heads of families and households, upon whom the administration of justice devolved (cf. Isa 1:10; Isa 22:3). , is it not your duty and your office to know justice? Daath is practical knowledge, which manifests itself in practice; mishpat , the public administration of justice. Instead of this, they do the opposite. The description of this conduct is appended by participles, in the form of apposition to the heads and princes addressed in Mic 3:1. Hating good and loving evil refer to the disposition, and indicate the radical corruption of these men. , generally misfortune, here evil; hence the Masoretes have altered it into ; but the very fact that it deviates from the ordinary rule shows that it is the original word. Instead of administering justice to the people, they take off their skin, and tear the flesh from the bones. The suffixes attached to and point back to in Mic 3:1. The words answer to the German expression, “to pull the skin over the ears.” In Mic 3:3 the expression is still stronger; but the address is continued in the form of a simple description, and instead of the participles, is used with the finite verb. They not only flay the people, i.e., rob them of all their means of subsistence, but even devour them – treat them like cattle, which men first of all flay, then break their bones, but the flesh into pieces, and boil it in the pot. In this figure, which is carried out into the most minute details, we must not give any special meaning to the particular features, such as that “the skin, and boiling portions, which are cut up and put into the pot, are figures signifying the pledged clothing and coveted fields (Mic 2:2, Mic 2:8).” The prophet paints in very glaring colours, to make an impression upon the ungodly. Therefore, in the time of judgment, God will not hear their crying to Him for help, but will hide His face from them, i.e., withdraw His mercy from them. and point back to the evil time announced in Mic 2:3. For Mic 3:4, compare Pro 1:28. V e yaster in Mic 3:4 is an optative. The prophet continues the announcement of the punishment in the form of a desire. , as = according to the way in which, as in 1Sa 28:18; Num 27:14, etc., i.e., answering to their evil doings.
Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament
| The Crimes of the Princes and Prophets. | B. C. 726. |
1 And I said, Hear, I pray you, O heads of Jacob, and ye princes of the house of Israel; Is it not for you to know judgment? 2 Who hate the good, and love the evil; who pluck off their skin from off them, and their flesh from off their bones; 3 Who also eat the flesh of my people, and flay their skin from off them; and they break their bones, and chop them in pieces, as for the pot, and as flesh within the caldron. 4 Then shall they cry unto the LORD, but he will not hear them: he will even hide his face from them at that time, as they have behaved themselves ill in their doings. 5 Thus saith the LORD concerning the prophets that make my people err, that bite with their teeth, and cry, Peace; and he that putteth not into their mouths, they even prepare war against him. 6 Therefore night shall be unto you, that ye shall not have a vision; and it shall be dark unto you, that ye shall not divine; and the sun shall go down over the prophets, and the day shall be dark over them. 7 Then shall the seers be ashamed, and the diviners confounded: yea, they shall all cover their lips; for there is no answer of God.
Princes and prophets, when they faithfully discharge the duty of their office, are to be highly honoured above other men; but when they betray their trust, and act contrary to it, they should hear of their faults as well as others, and shall be made to know that there is a God above them, to whom they are accountable; at his bar the prophet here, in his name, arraigns them.
I. Let the princes hear their charge and their doom. The heads of Jacob, and the princes of the house of Israel, are called upon to hear what the prophet has to say to them, v. 1. The word of God has reproofs for the greatest of men, which the ministers of that word ought to apply as there is occasion. The prophet here has comfort in the reflection upon it, that, whatever the success was, he had faithfully discharged his trust: And I said, Hear, O princes! He had the testimony of his conscience for him that he had not shrunk from his duty for fear of the face of men. He tells them,
1. What was expected from them: Is it not for you to know judgment? He means to do judgment, for otherwise the knowledge of it is of no avail. “Is it not your business to administer justice impartially, and not to know faces” (as the Hebrew phrase for partiality and respect of persons is), “but to know judgment, and the merits of every cause?” Or it may be taken for granted that the heads and rulers are well acquainted with the rules of justice, whatever others are; for they have those means of knowledge, and have not those excuses for ignorance, which some others have, that are poor and foolish (Jer. v. 4); and, if so, their transgression of the laws of justice is the more provoking to God, for they sin against knowledge. “Is it not for you to know judgment? Yes, it is; therefore stand still, and hear your own judgment, and judge if it be not right, whether any thing can be objected against it.”
2. How wretchedly they had transgressed the rules of judgment, though they knew what they were. Their principle and disposition are bad: They hate the good and love the evil; they hate good in others, and hate it should have any influence on themselves; they hate to do good, hate to have any good done, and hate those that are good and do good; and they love the evil, delight in mischief. This being their principle, their practice is according to it; they are very cruel and severe towards those that are under their power, and whoever lies at their mercy will find that they have none. They barbarously devour those whom they should protect, and, as unfaithful shepherds, fleece the flock they should feed; nay, instead of feeding it, they feed upon it, Ezek. xxxiv. 2. It is fit indeed that he who feeds a flock should eat of the milk of the flock (1 Cor. ix. 7), but that will not content them: They eat the flesh of my people. It is fit that they should be clothed with the wool, but that will not serve: They flay the skin from off them, v. 3. By imposing heavier taxes upon them than they can bear, and exacting them with rigour, by mulcts, and fines, and corporal punishments, for pretended crimes, they ruined the estates and families of their subjects, took away from some their lives, from others their livelihoods, and were to their subjects as beasts of prey, rather than shepherds. “They break their bones to come at the marrow, and chop the flesh in pieces as for the pot.” This intimates that they were, (1.) Very ravenous and greedy for themselves, indulging themselves in luxury and sensuality. (2.) Very barbarous and cruel to those that were under them, not caring whom they beggared, so they could but enrich themselves; such evil is the love of money the root of.
3. How they might expect that God should deal with them, since they had been thus cruel to his subjects. The rule is fixed, Those shall have judgment without mercy that have shown no mercy (v. 4): “They shall cry to the Lord, but he will not hear them, in the day of their distress, as the poor cried to them in the day of their prosperity and they would not hear them.” There will come a time when the most proud and scornful sinners will cry to the Lord, and sue for that mercy which they once neither valued nor copied out. But it will then be in vain; God will even hide his face from them at that time, that time when they need his favour, and see themselves undone without it. At another time they would have turned their back upon him; but at that time he will turn his back upon them, as they have behaved themselves ill in their doings. Note, Men cannot expect to do ill and fare well, but may expect to find, as Adoni-bezek did, that done to them which they did to others; for he is righteous who takes vengeance. With the froward God will show himself froward, and he often gives up cruel and unmerciful men into the hands of those who are cruel and unmerciful to them, as they themselves have formerly been to others. This agrees with Prov. xxi. 13, Whoso stoppeth his ears at the cry of the poor, he shall cry himself and shall not be heard; but the merciful have reason to hope that they shall obtain mercy.
II. Let the prophets hear their charge too, and their doom; they were such as prophesied falsely, and the princes bore rule by their means. Observe,
1. What was their sin. (1.) They made it their business to flatter and deceive the people: They make my people err, lead them into mistakes, both concerning what they should do and concerning what God would do with them. It is ill with a people when their leaders cause them to err, and those draw them out of the way that should guide them and go before them in it. “They make them to err by crying peace, by telling them that they do well, and that all shall be well with them; whereas they are in the paths of sin, and within a step of ruin. They cry peace, but they bite with their teeth,” which perhaps is meant of their biting their own lips, as we are apt to do when we would suppress something which we are ready to speak. When they cried peace their own hearts gave them the lie, and they were just ready to eat their own words and to contradict themselves, but they bit with their teeth, and kept it in. They were not blind leaders of the blind, for they saw the ditch before them, and yet led their followers into it. (2.) They made it all their aim to glut themselves, and serve their own belly, as the seducers in St. Paul’s time (Rom. xvi. 18), for their god is their belly, Phil. iii. 19. They bite with their teeth, and cry peace; that is, they will flatter and compliment those that will feed them with good bits, will give them something to eat; but as for those that put not into their mouths, that are not continually cramming them, they look upon them as their enemies; to them they do not cry peace, as they do to those whom they look upon as their benefactors, but they even prepare war against them; against them they denounce the judgments of God, but as they are to them, as the crafty priests of the church of Rome, in some places, make their image either to smile or frown upon the offerer according as his offering is. Justly is it insisted on as a necessary qualification of a minister (1Ti 3:3; Tit 1:7) that he be not greedy of filthy lucre.
2. What is the sentence passed upon them for this sin, Mic 3:6; Mic 3:7. It is threatened, (1.) That they shall be involved in troubles and miseries with those to whom they had cried peace: Night shall be upon them, a dark cold night of calamity, such as they, in their flattery, led the people to hope would never come. It shall be dark unto you, darker to you than to others; the sun shall go down over the prophets, shall go down at noon; all comfort shall depart from them, and they shall be deprived of all hope of it. The day shall be dark over them, in which they promised themselves light. Nor shall they be surrounded with outward troubles only, but their mind shall be full of confusion, and they shall be brought to their wits’ end; their heads shall be clouded, and their own thoughts shall trouble them; and that is trouble enough. They kept others in the dark, and now God will bring them into the dark. (2.) That thereby they shall be silenced, and all their pretensions to prophecy for ever shamed. They never had any true vision; and now, the event disproving their predictions of peace, it shall be made to appear that they never had any, that there never was an answer of God to them, but it was all a sham, and they were cheats and impostors. Their reputation being thus quite sunk, their confidence would of course fail them. And, their spirits being ruffled and confused, their invention would fail them too; and by reason of this darkness, both without and within too, they shall not divine, they shall not have so much as a counterfeit vision to produce, they shall be ashamed, and confounded, and cover their lips, as men that are quite baffled and have nothing to say for themselves. Note, Those who deceive others are but preparing confusion for their own faces.
Fuente: Matthew Henry’s Whole Bible Commentary
MICAH – CHAPTER 3
Verses 1-12:
Continued Ruler Brutality
Verse 1 begins with an abrupt, second “hear ye,” as in Mic 1:2; and Mic 6:1. Micah turns from a description of Israel’s far-off-future glory to the present cruelty of her civil and priestly and religious rulers who are addressed as: 1) heads of Jacob, 2) princes of the house of Israel, and 3) inquires if they are not to know, expected to know, judgment? They were administrators of justice and supposed to regard just judgment, Isa 42:25. It was their official function, as prescribed by law, Deu 1:13; Deu 1:17; Deu 16:18; 2Ch 19:5; 2Ch 19:10; Psa 82:1; Jer 5:4-5; 1Co 6:5; Rom 2:1.
Verse 2 charges them with “hating the good and loving the evil,” perverting or distorting righteousness. They “skinned” the people to the bone, in making unjust decisions in moral and properly matters, to impoverish and enslave their own people, while lining *heir own pockets, Eze 22:27; Zep 3:3; Eze 34:2-4. See also Psa 14:4; Pro 30:14.
Verse 3 describes these greedy leaders as eating the flesh, flaying the skin, and breaking the bones of God’s common people in Israel; With barbarous cruelty they destroyed the human dignity of their own people. They are further described as chopping or hacking their flesh in pieces, as if to boil them in a pot or cauldron, like the flesh of beasts of field or forest, a gruesome, inhumane form of behavior for any human, let alone rulers of Israel, See? Eze 24:3.
Verse 4 declares that at their cry, when their judgment falls, because of their perverted justice, God will not hear, will withdraw His mercy, as also declared Jer 7:11; Jer 11:14; Jer 35:15; Jer 35:17; Pro 1:24-33; Pro 29:1. Men can reject God’s call, willfully turn away from doing right, until it is too late. Sodom and Gomorrah did, the rich man in hell did. his five brothers bordered on it, Heb 3:7-8; Heb 4:7; 2Co 6:2.
Verse 5 describes false prophets who make His people to err; See 2Co 11:13-15. Those in Israel were prophesying with flattery, and promising security from judgment, to the people. As long as they were fed, they ate and preached what the people wanted to hear, promising peace and prosperity, giving God and Micah His true prophet the lie. They made war and oppression against those who didn’t feed them first, put into their greedy, gluttonous, and lying mouths first, like an hireling who only stands- by for what he can get out of it, then flees when danger approaches, Mat 7:15-17; Joh 10:10; Joh 10:12-13.
Verse 6 warns that a dark night shall be upon these rulers who shall have no wisdom, so that they, being spiritually blind, can have no vision from God, see no escape from judgment, Eze 13:23. The sun would go down upon them, as leaders, and they would not be able to see or guide themselves or others any longer. This darkness alludes to coming calamities that should accompany the invading and destroying Assyrian armed forces, Isa 8:22; Amo 5:18; Amo 8:9. They would be caused to cease to even pretend to foretell future events. Zec 13:4-5.
Verse 7 describes the humiliation of false prophets when earthly judgment falls, when the invading armies swoop down upon Israel from Assyria, a modest foretaste of final, Divine judgment on all false prophets, Mat 7:22-23; Rev 20:10. With lips, tongue, and mouth they had preached lies, flattery, and now they cover their lips and faces, as a token of utter shame and disgrace as described Lev 13:45; Eze 24:17. They now dare not open their mouths.
Verse 8 then contrasts Micah’s assertion of his call to speak a message from God tot hem. He calls upon them all to hear and give heed. He spoke by the power of the spirit, as all true prophets did, in contrast with the false prophets of v. 5, 7; 2Pe 1:21; Luk 2:17; Luk 24:49; Act 1:8. He spoke with the spirit of judgment, not one of false peace to all, as the false prophets had done. At all cost, the true prophet speaks the truth, 2Ti 1:7. He was to expose transgressions of the people, not tranquilize or mesmerize them with flattery and false promises of peace, 2Ti 4:1-4.
Verse 9 resumes the cry of verse one for heads of Jacob, the rulers who abhorred or loathed just judgment and perverted equity, to listen and respect God’s message to them. This demonstrates that he was “full of power by the spirit of the Lord,” v. 8; 1Co 2:1; 1Co 2:4.
Verse 10 bluntly charges that the wicked decisions of the civil and religious rulers in the nation of Israel built up Zion by means of innocent blood and Jerusalem by devious, sinful deeds, by bribes, murder contracts, extortion, fraud, usury, reduced wages of the innocent and poor, etc., Jer 22:13; Eze 22:27; Hab 2:12; Jas 5:1-6.
Verse 11 explains that the head rulers judged for rewards, as judges, Mic 7:3. And the priests taught for hire, just for money, for no other motive but greed and gain. He was directed to do so with grace, gratuitously, but he ignored his charge or ordination, Lev 10:11; Deu 17:9; Deu 17:11; Mal 2:7; Jer 6:13; Jud 1:11. Then Micah directly charges them with covetousness, prophesying or divining for money, against the law, Lev 10:11; Deu 17:11. He, by the spirit, had their ID (identification), yet, they leaned upon, used the name of the Lord, even as they shall do in the last days: But their claims did not harmonize with their deeds and the word of the Lord, Isa 48:2; Jer 7:4; Jer 7:8-11; 2Ki 16:15.
Verse 12 then predicts that because of their sins Zion would be so destroyed, that it would come to be plowed as a field. as it did under both Nebuchadnezzar and Titus’ destruction: It came to grow up like forests following the two destructions, Jer 26:18-19; Isa 32:13-14; The latter was in A.D. 70.
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
The Prophet in this chapter assails and severely reproves the chief men as well as the teachers; for both were given to avarice and cruelty, to plunder, and, in short, to all other vices. And he begins with the magistrates, who exercised authority among the people; and briefly relates the words in which he inveighed against them. We have said elsewhere, that the Prophets did not record all that they had spoken, but only touched shortly on the heads or chief points: and this was done by Micah, that we might know what he did for forty or more years, in which he executed his office. He could have related, no doubt, in half-an-hour, all that exists of his writings: but from this small book, however small it is, we may learn what was the Prophet’s manner of teaching, and on what things he chiefly dwelt. I will now return to his words.
He says that the chief men of the kingdom had been reproved by him. It is probable, that these words were addressed to the Jews; for though at the beginning he includes the Israelites, we yet know that he was given as a teacher to the Jews, and not to the kingdom of Israel. It was as it were accidental, that he sometimes introduces the ten tribes together with the Jews. This address then was made, as I think, to the king as well as to his counselors and other judges, who then ruled over the people of Judah.
Hear this, I pray, he says. Such a preface betokens carelessness in the judges; for why does he demand a hearing from them, except that they had become so torpid in their vices, that they would attend to nothing? Inasmuch then as so brutal a stupor had seized on them, he says, Hear now ye chiefs, or heads, of Jacob, and ye rulers (92) of the house of Israel But why does he still speak of the house of Israel? Because that name was especially known and celebrated, whenever a mention was made of the posterity of Abraham: and the other Prophets, even while speaking of the kingdom of Judah, often make use of this title, “ye who are called by the name of Israel;” and they did this, on account of the dignity of the holy Patriarch; and the meaning of the word itself was no ordinary testimonial of excellency as to his whole race. And this is what is frequently done by Isaiah. But the name of Israel is not put here, as elsewhere, as a title of distinction: on the contrary, the Prophet here amplifies their sin, because they were so corrupt, though they were the chief men among the chosen race, being those whom God had honored with so much dignity, as to set them over his Church and elect people. It was then an ingratitude, not to be endured to abuse that high and sacred authority, which had been conferred on them by God.
Does it not belong to you, he says, to know judgment? Here he intimates that rectitude ought to have a place among the chief men, in a manner more especial than among the common people; for it behaves them to excel others in the knowledge of what is just and right: for though the difference between good and evil be engraven on the hearts of all, yet they, who hold supremacy among the people, and excel in power, are as it were the eyes of the community; as the eyes direct the whole body, so also they, who are placed in any situation of honor, are thus made eminent, that they may show the right way to others. Hence by the word, to know, the Prophet intimates that they wickedly subverted the whole order of nature, for they were blind, while they ought to have been the luminaries of the whole people. Is it not for you, he says, to know judgment and equity? But why was this said, especially to the chief men? Because they, though they of themselves knew what was right, having the law engraven within ought yet as leaders to have possessed superior knowledge, so as to outshine others. It is therefore your duty to know judgment. We hence learn that it is not enough for princes and magistrates to be well disposed and upright; but it is required of them to know judgment and wisdom that they may discern matters above the common people. But if they are not thus endued with the gift of understanding and wisdom let them ask of the Lord. We indeed know, that without the Spirit of God, the acutest men are wholly unfit to rule; nor is it in vain, that the free Spirit of God is set forth, as holding the supreme power in the world; for we are thus reminded, that even they who are endued with the chief gifts are wholly incapable of governing except the Spirit of God be with them. This passage then shows that an upright mind is not a sufficient qualification in princes; they must also excel in wisdom, that they may be, as we have already said, as the eyes are to the body. In this sense it is that Micah now says that it belonged to the leaders of the people to know judgment and justice. (93)
(92) קצינים, from קצה, to cut off to sever, to separate: they were those who were separated from others, as leaders of an army, rendered in our version, captains, rulers, Jos 10:24; Isa 22:3. — Ed.
(93) Some, such as Marckius, and also Grotius, take another view of this sentence: Is it not for you, who judge and punish others, to know the judgment of God, which awaits you? But most agree in the view given here. — Ed.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
MICAH: THE FAITHFUL AND FAR-SEEING MINISTER OF GOD.
Mic 1:1 to Mic 7:20
THERE is every reason to believe that this Book wears its authors name. Micah was a native of Morasthi, near Gath, and probably belonged to the time of Hosea, Amos, and Isaiah. His message is all the more marvelous when one remembers that he was a villager. Born doubtless in a humble house, brought up in a despised burg, bred in no college, he would have been unequal to the modern denominational Editors demands for the ministry. But he does illustrate a Divine custom expressed in Sacred Scripture viz. that, Not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called.
God has never seen fit to limit Himself to the great financial or intellectual minds of the world. He is dependent upon no mans money; and just as independent of conceited minds. He can take Peter, the unlettered fisherman, and by instructing him in the Scripture and sending upon him His Holy Spirit, make of him a minister in whose presence the Pope himself would seem a pigmy by comparison.
It is related that when the Emperor Domitian was persecuting believers he heard of two men reputed to be akin to Jesus, and he sent for them, intending to put them to death. But when they came, and he saw their horny hands and realized that they were evidently day-laborers, he dismissed them saying, From such slaves we have nothing to fear.
And yet, those men belonged to the very class who rocked Domitians empire to its foundation, and spread the knowledge of the Gospel to the ends of the known earth; and, their humble station notwithstanding, have had few worthy successors in the ministry of the Truth. Let us not object to Micah because he is from a village and does not carry a graduates diploma. If he is Divinely appointed, and Divinely endued, his work will be well done.
The exact date of this Book, as that of other Minor Prophets, is in dispute, and it would in no wise help you to review the opinions of Hitzig, Wellhausen, Stade, Vatke, Kuenen, Driver, Von Ryssel, and the rest.
We are more interested in his message, or messages; and to those I invite your attention.
HE UNCOVERS THE CHURCH OF HIS TIMES
When I speak of the Church of his times I do not mean to say that there was any organized body of baptized believers in Micahs day; but I do mean to say that there was an ecclesia, not in the New Testament use of the term, but in the natural interpretation of that word, namely, a called out body.
In the opening part of this prophecy he deals with that body:
Hear, all ye people; hearken, O earth, and all that therein is: and let the Lord God be witness against you, the Lord from His holy Temple.
For, behold, the Lord cometh forth out of His place, and will come down, and tread upon the high places of the earth.
And the mountains shall be molten under Him, and the valleys shall be cleft, as wax before the fire, and as the waters that are poured down a steep place (Mic 1:2-4).
He indicts the churchman; not the worldling.
For the transgression of Jacob is all this, and for the sins of the House of Israel.
It is a good place for the minister to begin. Gods people must be set right before the minister can make any headway with the world. There is many a true prophet of God who is preaching his heart out in a church where the professed followers of the Lord Jesus Christ are, by their wickedness, bringing his every word to naught. It is not an exceptional experience for preachers to be requested to resign because the church is receiving no accessions, when the very men who make the request have rendered it impossible for any kind of preaching to bring converts into the church of which they are members. Rev. E. A. Whittier, in an old issue of The Watchman once remarked When Rev. Frank Remington came to the First Baptist Church in Lawrence many years ago the spiritual tide ebbed low. For six months he preached searching sermons to Gods people. It was like the voice of one of the old Prophets. The dry bones lived again. In about six months he turned to the unsaved, and the flood gates of Heaven were opened. In about three years he baptized nearly 500 converts in Lawrence and Andover, and organized the Second Baptist Church. Remington began at the right place. And Micah was Gods faithful minister, dealing first of all with Gods professed followers. Given a clean, consecrated membership, and accessions to the church of new converts is comparatively easy.
He arraigned the prospered; not the poor. After having spoken against the graven images, the idols, and the awful social sins, he tells Judah and Jerusalem what will be the result. He turns to the leaders of the land and says,
Woe to them that devise iniquity, and work evil upon their beds! when the morning is light, they practise it, because it is in the power of their hand.
And they covet fields, and take them by violence; and houses, and take them away: so they oppress a man and his house, even a man and his heritage.
Therefore thus saith the Lord; Behold, against this family do I devise an evil, from which ye shall not remove your necks; neither shall ye go haughtily: for this time is evil.
In that day shall one take up a parable against you, and lament with a doleful lamentation, and say, We be utterly spoiled: he hath changed the portion of my people: how hath he removed it from me! turning away he hath divided our fields (Mic 2:1-4).
It is a fact to which the prospered of earth do not take kindly, but none the less true on that account, and Micahs arraignment of the prospered was in perfect accord with the words of His Saviour. No man can read the New Testament without noting that Jesus Christ never uttered a sentence against the poor, and never let the prospered escape His strictures. This, not because poverty is always righteous, and riches always wicked, but on the great law which He Himself laid down, To whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required. Joseph Parker says, We have nourished ourselves into the pedantry of supposing that if a man has a bad coat he has of necessity a bad character. The Bible never proceeds along these lines. * * Christ did not gather around Him the halt, the lame, the blind, the poor, the neglected, the homeless, and say, You are the curse of society; you are the criminal classes. * * But Jesus Christ never let the respectability of His age alone; He never gave it one moments rest. I often wonder if our socialists have considered this subject? I wonder if the men who walk the streets berating the rich because they have more than their share of material wealth, and demanding, if not an equal, an equitable division of all property, have forgotten that prosperity does not necessarily make for righteousness, that all men of competence are not men of prayer; that all persons of good bank account are not necessarily persons of good character? That the rich are accomplishing more evil than they ever could with their riches taken away; that they are tempted ten thousand times more often than they ever would have been had their riches never come? And that these awful sins, against which Micah here hurled his anathemas, sins of covetousness, violent appropriation and corporate oppression, can never be committed by the poor; and the penalty of them can never be escaped by the rich who practise them?
I wonder also if these same socialists have not noticed that a freighted table, broadcloth, silks, jewels, and all the rest, consume so much of thought that the soul seldom receives any attention. I have just been preaching in another Western state. I found a man there who has made a considerable fortune already, and who is still accumulating, A number of times he came to the services. On some occasions he was so deeply convicted that he shot out of the house the moment the service concluded, apparently not being able to endure the invitation. Once back at his home there was only one theme on which he would converse with youthat was the subject of the crops. The rain rejoiced his heart; it did not matter to him whether our audiences had reduced. He said, That will make great crops. Concerning the scorching heat of the day, of which others complained, he said, This will make good crops. And if the present outlook for crops realizes it means riches for this vicinity. And for sixty straight years he has been absorbed in one subject; and for sixty straight years his soul has been in neglect. The history of Dives he is writing over again. The accumulation of riches is his one concern; and while about it he is forgetting the Lazarus at his gate, and in that very act neglecting the Lord of Life. His mistake was less grievous than that of the people of whom Micah speaks, for they made their money by oppression. But they have their successors also. As a writer has said, Many men among us are able to live in fashionable streets, and keep their families comfortable only by paying their employees a wage upon which it is impossible for men to be strong or women to be virtuous. Truly, as Micah put it, such feed upon their fellows.
He reprimands alike prince, prophet and people.
Hear, I pray you, O heads of Jacob, and ye princes of the House of Israel; Is it not for you to know judgment?
Who hate the good, and love the evil; who pluck off their skin from off them, and their flesh from off their bones;
Who also eat the flesh of my people, and flay their skin from off them; and they break their bones, and chop them in pieces, as for the pot, and as flesh within the caldron.
Then shall they cry unto the Lord, but He will not hear them: He will even hide His face from them at that time, as they have behaved themselves ill in their doings.
Thus saith the Lord concerning the prophets that make my people err, that bite with their teeth, and cry, Peace; and he that putteth not into their mouths, they even prepare war against him.
Therefore night shall be unto you, that ye shall not have a vision; and it shall be dark unto you, that ye shall not divine; and the sun shall go down over the prophets, and the day shall be dark over them.
Then shall the seers be ashamed, and the diviners confounded: yea, they shall all cover their lips; for there is no answer of God (Mic 3:1-7).
It is a serious thing when the princes of the land abhor judgment, and pervert equity; it is vastly more serious when the priests thereof teach for hire, and the prophets thereof divine for money.
It is a question whether Micah is not needed in modern times. There are not a few preachers who charge the princes with their sins, and call the attention of the people to their iniquities. But who will uncover the prophets and expose their serving methods, and show how their concern is, to be as popular as politicians, and to make their ministry a source of much money for selfish employment. Is not the multitude of timeservers now to be found in the ministry one secret of failure in soul-winning and church building? Was not that unhappy man George Herron warranted in the words in his volume The New Redemption, when he said, The philanthropy of selfishness and covetousness is the social antichrist. The adulation which the religious press lavishes upon the benevolence of mammon, the adoration which it receives from the pulpit, converts the church into an apostle of atheism to the people. The priests who accompanied the pirate ships of the sixteenth century, to say mass and pray for the souls of the dead pirates, for a share of the spoil, were not a whit more superstitious or guilty of human blood, according to the light of their teaching, than Protestant leaders who flatter the ghastly philanthropy of men who have heaped their colossal fortunes upon the bodies of their brothers. Their fortunes are the proudest temples of the most defiant idolatry that has ever corrupted the worship of the Living God. Their philanthropy is the greatest peril that confronts and deceives and endangers the life of the Church, and thinks to bribe the judgments of God and deceive the Holy Ghost.
If there is any class of people who are in special need of the Evangel it is the prospered class. The Moody Institute did wisely when once it started two attractive young women up the North shore drive to call at palaces and remind the people of the need of repentance. If there is any profession upon whom a solemn responsibility rests more heavily than upon any other it is the profession of the prophet. It is within his power to lead the people into the paths of the just; and it is also within his power to make the people err, by seeking selfish ends, destroying the vision, bringing darkness upon himself, and deep night upon the deceived multitude. Oh, you who are accumulating fortunes; and you who are graduates of colleges, and you who have come with honors from theological seminaries, remember that to whomsoever much is givent of him shall be much required, and when the true prophet of God rises to uncover the church of his times, see to it that he uncovers not your shame.
HE DISCOVERS THE CHURCH OF OUR TIMES
It is a marvelous fact that Micah is as true as a seer as he was faithful as a preacher.
He beheld the beginning of the New Testament Church.
But in the last days it shall come to pass, that the mountain of the House of the Lord shall be established in the top of the mountains, and it shall be exalted above the hills; and people shall flow unto it.
And many nations shall come, and say, Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, and to the House of the God of Jacob; and He will teach us of His ways, and we will walk in His paths: for the Law shall go forth of Zion, and the Word of the Lord from Jerusalem (Mic 4:1-2).
That prophecy found the beginning of its fulfillment at Pentecost, and will find its consummation in the Kingdom. Joel had already said,
It shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out My Spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions * * .
And it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the Name of the Lord shall be delivered: for in mount Zion and in Jerusalem shall be deliverance (Joe 2:28; Joe 2:32).
And Jesus remembering these prophecies reminds the people to whom He addresses Himself that It behoved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day, and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His Name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem (Luk 24:46-47).
Six and a half centuries before Jesus uttered these words, Micah, the Seer, had a vision of their beginning fulfillment in the coming and end of the New Testament Church. The ancient people hearing them, or reading them, were stirred with the prospect of this new movement which should make for righteousness, and be the real earnest of Gods conquest in the earth.
He pictured it also when its conquest should be perfected, and the Kingdom should come.
And He shall judge among many people, and rebuke strong nations afar off; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up a sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.
But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid: for the mouth of the Lord of Hosts hath spoken it (Mic 4:3-4).
As I have read the commentaries upon this passage and listened to the attempt of George Adam Smith and other students to make this reference merely a local one, and limit it to the time in which the Prophet lived, it has seemed to me not only a vain endeavor, but a foolish one! Centuries are in the sweep of the Prophets vision. The cause of God has many conquests to its credit, but, as yet, the major portion of this prophecy remains to be fulfilled, and will be in the coming of the Lord in the end of this age!
A few years since, not having studied the Scriptures wisely, or well, I joined in the common opinion that wars were probably at an end; and, that with an ever-increasing mutual admiration, the nations of the earth would arbitrate their difficulties and dwell together as loving princes of one house! But, alas for the thought! Recent years have shown how easy it is to strike a match at the powder houses of armies and navies; how easy it is to set rulers at one anothers throats; how hard it is for even the religious people of the earth to maintain peace when the unspeakable Turk long continued his slaughters of the Christian Armenian who happened to dwell within his borders; and Russian Soviet is red-handed by the outright murder of millions of Gods own.
When the most peace-loving of earth look on these things, or, standing afar off, read the red reports of them, he is tempted to join with the famed interpreter of these prophecies in saying, We are told by those who know best, and have most responsibility in the matter, that an ancient Church and people of Christ are being left a prey to the wrath of an infidel tyrant, not because Christendom is without strength to compel him to deliver, but because to use the strength, would be to imperil the peace of Christendom. It is an ignoble peace which cannot use the forces of redemption, and with the cry of Armenia in our ears the Unity of Europe is but a mockery. That cry has been lost in the wail from Russia. And one might add, With the cry of the murdered in our ears, the relations between Russia and the great English-speaking nations of Britain and America are kept undisturbed at the cost of character, and some think war were better.
That hour then to which this text refers must still be in the future, since as you come more and more into the last days you shall hear of wars and rumours of wars, such as the world has never known since time began, and yet, Beloved, Gods Word will not fail.
As sure as Jehovah lives and sits upon the throne so surely the last sentence of it shall see fulfillment, and one day the last reverberations and the thunderings of war shall be heard in the earth, and He who shall be chief among many people, will bring in such a reign of righteousness, as shall convert swords to plowshares and spears to pruninghooks, and many shall see it. But we will treat this text in a later chapter.
The Prophet assigns such power to the rise of the proper person.
Thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou he little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall He come forth unto Me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting.
Therefore will He give them up, until the time that she which travaileth hath brought forth; then the remnant of His brethren shall return unto the Children of Israel.
And He shall stand and feed in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the Name of the Lord His God; and they shall abide: for now shall He be great unto the ends of the earth (Mic 5:2-4).
George Adam Smith, says, Micah stands among the first, if he is not the very first, who thus focussed the hopes of Israel upon a great Redeemer. And beloved, more and more it is occurring to thoughtful men that power associates itself with personality. John Watson, in his Mind of the Master has called attention to this truth in his chapter entitled Devotion to a Person the Dynamic of Religion. And in that discussion he says one thing which ought never to be forgotten. Do you wish a cause to endure hardness, to rejoice in sacrifice, to accomplish mighty works, to retain forever the dew of its youth? Give it the best chance, the sanction of Love. Do not state it in books; do not defend it with argument. These are aids of the second order; if they succeed, it is a barren victorythe reason has now been exasperated. Identify your cause with a person. Even a bad cause will succeed for a space, associated with an attractive man. The later Stewards were hard kings both to England and Scotland, and yet women sent their husbands and sons to die for Bonnie Prince Charlie and the ashes of that Romantic devotion are not yet cold. When a good cause finds a befitting leader, it will be victorious before set of sun.
Ah, He is the secret of success for the New Testament Church. In spite of all its shortcomings, and, confessing as we must, all of its many and egregious failures, the destiny of that Church is gloriously determinedshe shall one day rule the world, for the solitary reason that Christ is her Head and God has already given Him the heathen for [His] inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for [His] possession. In spite of all adverse circumstances, all legions of enemies; in spite of Satan and the hosts of hell, He rises to victory. To Him The kings of Tarshish and of the isles shall bring presents: the kings of Sheba and Seba shall offer gifts. Yea, all kings shall fall down before Him: all nations shall serve Him. Blessed be His glorious Name forever; and let the whole earth be filled with His glory; Amen and Amen.
But the Prophet continues:
HE DEFENDS BOTH THE DIVINE CHARACTER AND REQUIREMENTS
He rehearses the history of Gods past graces.
Hear ye now what the Lord saith * *
O My people, what have I done unto thee? and wherein have I wearied thee? testify against Me.
For I brought thee up out of the land of Egypt, and redeemed thee out of the house of servants; and I sent before thee Moses, Aaron, and Miriam.
O My people, remember now what Balak king of Moab consulted, and what Balaam the son of Beor answered him from Shittim unto Gilgal; that ye may know the righteousness of the Lord (Mic 6:1; Mic 6:3-5).
It is a custom of the inspired writer to refer often to Israels early history. It was out of Egypt that God redeemed them; it was through the wilderness that God led them; it was in Canaan that God gave them conquest. This concern for the nations youth can never be forgotten. The older a man grows the more he appreciates what his parents did for him between the natal day and his twenty-first anniversary. The older a Christian grows the more highly he esteems his redemption from sin and the marvelous grace of God in keeping him in the early days of his spiritual life, when temptations were most strong; when in the wilderness Satan set before him the gifts of the world and the glories of them, an offer for an act of obeisance to him, their former master.
The older the Church grows the more highly it appreciates its early history, the pastors who did pioneer work, the people who sacrificed sorely to build the sanctuary, the men and women who bore the heat and burden of the day when they were so few in numbers; when their best efforts seemed so feeble. It ought to be so. It is a great thing to be brought to birth; it is a great thing to be kept through youth, and the nation for which God has accomplished this is no more able to discharge its obligation to Him than the child is to pay back all he owes to his parents. Right well did Israel inquire, Wherewith shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before the High God? That is the proper position for the people whose past is replete with such exhibitions of the keeping grace of great Jehovah.
He shows also the reasonableness of the Divine requirements.
He hath shewed 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? (Mic 6:8).
Even the believing world commonly discredits Gods character by their thought as to His requirements. There are not a few people who imagine that God will not be pleased with them unless they are ready to take their first-born and lay him upon the altar; part with their child, perhaps giving him to the grave for the sin of their soul, and God has never hinted that He demands any such thing. People begin at the wrong place to get right with God. He may want your child for Africa, but you could give him and still not feel approved. The Apostle Paul says, Though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing. And it is true; that is the one thing that God requires, for it covers all the rest. It leads one to do justly, and to love mercy and to walk humbly with God. And in that walk instead of finding the path to be one in which God is constantly calling for sacrifice, it will be discovered that there God is often bestowing blessing, and guiding into privilege, and making ones whole life a delight. Henry Van Dyke says, To please God. * * Simply to live our life, whatever it may be, so that He, the good and glorious God, shall approve and bless it, and say of it, Well done, and welcome it into the sense of His own joy,that is a Divine ambition. What vaster dream could hit the mood of love on earth? It has sustained martyrs at the stake, and comforted prisoners in the dungeon, and cheered warriors in the heat of perilous conflict, and inspired laborers in every noble cause, and made thousands of obscure and nameless heroes in every hidden place of earth. It is the pillar of light which shines before the journeying host. It is the secret watchword of the army, given not to the leaders alone, but flashing like fire through all the ranks. When that thought descends upon us, it kindles our hearts and makes them live. What though we miss the applause of men; what though friends misunderstand and foes defame, and the great world pass us by? There is One that seeth in secret and followeth the soul in its toils and struggles, the great King, whose approval is honor, whose love is happiness; to please Him is success, and victory, and peace.
Finally, He rests in the surety of the Divine justice, power, and grace. In the seventh chapter he speaks of the untoward circumstances in which he is situated. But after rehearsing the whole of it, he says, I will wait for the God of my salvation: my God will hear me (Mic 7:7). And in the seventeenth verse of the same chapter, speaking of the enemies of his soul, and of his Lord, he says, They shall lick the dust like a serpent, they shall move out of their holes like worms of the earth: they shall be afraid of the Lord our God, and shall fear because of thee.
And in the nineteenth, and twentieth verses he says, He will turn again, He will have compassion upon us; He will subdue our iniquities; and Thou wilt cast all their sins into the depths of the sea. Thou wilt perform the truth to Jacob, and the mercy to Abraham, which Thou hast sworn unto our fathers from the days of old.
The whole of this seventh chapter is given to the personal sense of the Divine justice, Divine power, and Divine grace, and one must appreciate all of these or perish with fear. Divine justice is approved by all good men; and Divine power is conceded by those who study the universe about them, or the earth beneath them. But this all necessitates only fear, except you see also the Divine grace.
There is none other name under Heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved. One who has felt the justice of God and power of God feels the need of the grace of God, and is only filled with delight and joy unspeakable when he can say with the Apostle, For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.
Fuente: The Bible of the Expositor and the Evangelist by Riley
CRITICAL NOTES.] Punishment is threatened against the heads and leaders of Israel.
Mic. 3:1. Princes] Administrators of justice. You] Above every one. To know] To regard justice (Isa. 42:25).
Mic. 3:2. Pluck] Proverbial for the greatest injustice and inhumanity (Eze. 22:27; Zep. 3:3).
Mic. 3:3. Flay] Sets forth still more their barbarity and cruelty.
Mic. 3:4. Then] Time of punishment certain, seen and expressed. Ill] Lit. have made their deeds evil, reversing the call of the prophets (Jer. 35:15).
HOMILETICS
THE PUNISHMENT OF UNGODLY MAGISTRATES.Mic. 3:1-4
The prophet had denounced the sins of the people, now he threatens the civil rulers and religious teachers of the nation. The Judges of the law should have been exemplary in knowledge and virtue, but they were corrupt in thought, and ungodly in conduct.
I. The sins of which they were guilty. They are specially challenged by the prophet, and accused of no ordinary guilt. Hear, I pray you.
1. Sins against superior light. They were expected to know and love the right. From the law of God, and the customs of the country, they knew the rules of equity. They had means of ascertaining the right, to administer impartial justice, and could not plead excuses for ignorance (Jer. 5:4). Affected ignorance and wilful neglect only aggravate God. Civil rulers sin against superior privileges, public sentiment, and moral law, when they pervert justice. Is it not for you to know judgment?
2. Sins against responsible office. They were the heads, the rulers of the people, but abused their authority and dishonoured their position. Instead of doing good, they loved evil. When teachers corrupt doctrine, and preachers withhold the gospel; when rulers and princes pervert equity, and neglect special duties for the defence of which they are put in office; they poison the stream of life and turn it into deadly fountains.
3. Sins against the claims of humanity. They robbed the innocent, and devoured the helpless. Their furious rapacity surmounted every tie of humanity. Instead of feeding they fleeced the sheep, and sucked out the very blood of the people. The words indicate (a) Their intense greed; and (b) Their inhuman cruelty in satisfying it. But great men who oppress the poor, and hold themselves above law, will be accountable for their deeds and condemned for their cruelty. Woe to the shepherds of Israel that do feed themselves; should not the shepherd feed the flock, &c. (Eze. 34:2-4).
II. The punishment with which they are threatened. Men cannot fare well if they do ill. A just God rules over all things, whom they wickedly forget.
1. Punishment is certain. Then, predicts the prophet, with solemn certainty. A day of retribution was before his mind. He warns them of it. Though unseen, it is fixed in the purpose of God, and will surely come upon them.
2. Punishment is proportioned to their guilt. As they behaved themselves ill in their doings. Gods law is unchangeable; those who show no mercy shall have judgment without mercy. (a) They will cry and not be heard in their distress. If the cries of the poor are disregarded by us, they will be heard against us (Exo. 22:23). Men should have a feeling heart and a helping hand; should count it not charity, but a duty and a privilege, to defend the poor. But covetousness hardens the heart and makes the ear deaf. A time is coming when the scorner and the oppressor will cry to God in vain. Whoso stoppeth his ears at the cry of the poor, he also shall cry himself, but shall not be heard (Pro. 21:13; Pro. 21:18; Pro. 21:31). (b) They will be forsaken of God in their distress. He will even hide his face from them at that time. They cared not for others; God will, therefore, withhold his kindness and presence from them. Forsaken in heart and office, bereft of power and protection, they will be undone for ever. Before God, kings and paupers, priests and people, are treated according to their character and deserts. He is above all principalities and powers, and impartial in his rule. Usurped power shall be dethroned, and with the froward God will show himself froward. Lo, this is the portion of a wicked man with God, and the heritage of oppressors which they shall receive of the Almighty.
HOMILETIC HINTS AND SUGGESTIONS
Mic. 3:2. Hate God and love evil. This is an awful transformation of moral character. Man at first loves good, though he pursues evil. There is constant strife in the soul, to end which many quieten conscience and blind judgment. Then they hate the truth or good with a bitter hatred, because it disturbs the darkness of the false peace with which they would envelop themselves. Love of evil is always connected with hatred toward the good, although men commonly in practising evil keep up a semblance of love for the good [Lange].
Mic. 3:3. He heaps up their guilt act by act. First they flay, i.e. take away their outer goods; then they break their bones in pieces, the most solid parts, on which the whole frame of their body depends, to get at the very marrow of their life, and so feed themselves upon them [Pusey]. Alas that kings and ecclesiastics should do the same things now! Men are robbed of the means of subsistence, cut to pieces, and treated like cattle
And he that stands upon a slippery place,
Makes nice of no vile hold to stay him up. [Shakespeare.]
Mic. 3:4. As they behaved. Measure for measure will ever be meted out to the evil-doer. As I have done, so God hath requited me (Jdg. 1:7).
Mic. 3:1-4. A warning to Judges 1. Their responsibility as possessors of knowledge.
2. Their sin: violation of duty and self-seeking.
3. Their punishment [Lange].
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 3
Mic. 3:1-4. Judgment. It is neither the great mans power, nor the poor mans meanness, that a judge is to mind in judgment. A judge, a justice, must never cry out, Oh, he is a poor man! nor yet out of base fear cry out, Oh, he is a great man! The judges in Egypt were portrayed without hands and without eyes, to signify that they were not to take bribes, nor to accept mens persons [Brooks].
Mic. 3:3. Eat flesh.
Diseased nature oftentimes breaks forth
In strange eruptions [Shakespeare].
Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell
CHAPTER VIII
THIRD CYCLE
OUTRAGES OF CIVIL OFFICIALS . . . Mic. 3:1-4
RV . . . And I said, Hear, I pray you, ye heads of Jacob, and rulers of the house of Israel: is it not for you to know justice? ye who hate the good, and love the evil; who pluck off their skin from off them, and their flesh from off their bones; who also eat the flesh of my people, and flay their skin from off them, and break their bones, and chop them in pieces, as for the pot, and as flesh within the caldron. Then shall they cry unto Jehovah, but he will not answer them; yea, he will hide his face from them at that time, according as they have wrought evil in their doings.
LXX . . . And he shall say, Hear now these words, ye heads of the house of Jacob, and ye remnant of the house of Israel; is it not for you to know judgement? who hate good, and seek evil; who tear their skins off them, and their flesh off their bones: even as they devoured the flesh of my people, and stripped their skins off them, and broke their bones, and divided them as flesh for the caldron, and as meat for the pot, thus they shall cry to the Lord, but he shall not hearken to them; and he shall turn away his face from them at that time, because they have done wickedly in their practices against themselves.
COMMENTS
(Mic. 3:1) Micahs concern for the return of the people to the covenant reaches its highest pitch in chapter three, as he pleads with the official leaders of the people. He has dealt in chapters one and two with the economic and social leaders of the northern and southern kingdoms. Now he turns his attention to the official leaders. He is acutely aware that no nation can rise any higher than the moral standards of its officials, especially of its courts.
Repeatedly Micah couches his appeal to people in high places in terms calculated to remind them that they are the temporal rulers of Gods people. He addresses them as the heads of Jacob and the rulers of the house of Israel. To these he addresses a warning of imminent doom, but with the underlying hope that they will repent.
The King James version has princes of the house of Israel in this verse. This is unfortunate, since it is generally agreed that this passage is intended for the magistrates and judges rather than for the royal family.
These are obviously not included in the remnant mentioned in the closing verses of chapter two. The prophets warning to them follows immediately the glowing hope expressed for the deliverance of the remnant so that they will make no mistake about their own predicament. They must not mistake themselves for inclusion in the real Israel of God just because they sit in the seats of temporal judgement over the people,
IS IT NOT FOR YOU . . .
In Mic. 2:1 -ff, we saw Micahs denunciation of the wealthy and influential for their merciless mistreatment of the poor, The prophet now challenges the judges that they have the responsibility of preventing and dealing with such injustice. The wealthy could not do what they do were it not for corrupt courts. (See above on Mic. 1:5) Magistrates and judges above all others should be aware of the penalties of wrong doing and injustice. Micahs warning is that the laws apply equally well to the lawyers.
YOU WHO HATE GOOD AND LOVE EVIL. . . Mic. 3:2
These corrupt judges not only hate good men and love evil men, worse than that, they hate good as a principle and love evil as a principle.
Modern existential philosophy and situation ethics notwithstanding, there is such a thing as absolute good and absolute evil . . . as abstract reality as well as in tangible experience.
That the early church fathers believed this to be true is seen in such ancient writings as that attributed to Jerome, the translater of the Latin Vulgate, It is sin not to love good; what guilt to hate it. It is faulty not to flee from evil, what ungodliness to love it.
PLUCK OFF THEIR SKIN AND FLESH FROM THEIR
BONES . . . Mic. 3:2(b) – Mic. 3:3
Such alluusions as this to describe the cheating advantage taken by one man over another are to be found in every culture. Examples of it in the historic writings of Israel are to be seen in such passages as Psa. 14:4 and Pro. 30:14. We still speak of such practices as skinning someone.
A proverb attributed to the American Indian says, The Indian scalps his enemies, the white man skins his friends. It seems the white man cannot claim to be original in this maltreatment of his fellowman. The judges of Israel are warned here of the consequences of it.
This particular passage in Micah, denouncing the loving of evil and the hating of good brings to mind a very significant change in civilized mans evaluation of right and wrong. In 1867, Robert Milligan wrote, It will, I presume, be generally conceded that the will of God is the natural and only proper standard of all that is right. If God is our Sovereign King and Lawgiver, it is His right to command, and it is our duty to obey.
To this the Christian will readily say amen! To this also the ancient pagans would agree, although their confusion of deities could furnish no uniformly acceptable standard of right and wrong. To this even the evil doers addressed by Micah gave lip service, else the prophet could not have appealed to them on the ground of a clear cut distinction between good and evil.
We are something more than naive if we believe we can approach modern man, and especially the members of the intellectual and academic communities or young people on this basis today. Beginning with Hegel (1770-1831) through Kierkegaard (1813-1855) to the existential thinking of Karl Jaspers Sarte, Camus, Julian and Aldous Huxley, et al, to the ultramodern (now pass) God-is-dead cult, twentieth century man has reached the rationale which says there not only is not but that there cannot be any absolute good or evil. Everything is relative. Absolutism is dead and man must decide in the context of a given set of circumstances the situation ethics of the moment.
To try to cut through such layers of ignorance by quoting the dictums of God from the Bible is to try to sweep back the tide with a broom. To give up in despair of being able to reach those who think like this is to abandon an entire generation, and possibly an entire civilization to spiritual darkness forever.
Somehow modern Christians must learn, as it is said the early Christians did, to out-think, outlove and outdie those whose spiritual eyes have been blinded by the self-acclaimed wisdom of men. The warnings of the prophets concerning the consequences of loving evil and hating good must be gotten through to modern man, but our task is twice as difficult as that of Micah and the others. They at least shared with those whom they sought to warn the common presupposition that there is a Sovereign God and His word determines the difference between objective good and objective evil. It is no longer so in our day. We share no such common ground with those whom we seek to turn from the error of their ways.
Chapter VIIIQuestions
Third Cycle
1.
Discuss Micahs concern for the covenant in light of his plea in Mic. 3:1-4.
2.
Discuss the concept of absolute good and evil in contrast with modern situation ethics (new morality). Mic. 2:1 -ff
3.
What is meant by pluch off their skin and flesh from their bones (Mic. 2:2(b)-3)?
4.
Discuss the will of God as the only natural and proper standard of all that is right.
5.
Discuss ways to penetrate the layers of ignorance in modern philosophies with the truth of Gods sovereignty.
6.
Are the prophetic warnings of the consequences of loving evil and hating good relevant to our current moral revolution?
7.
What three classes of people does Micah denounce? (Mic. 2:1-3; Mic. 3:1-5)
8.
What specific class of leaders are accused of making the people to err?
9.
What seems to have been the chief concern of the false prophets?
10.
What is Gods warning to mercenary prophets?
11.
Comment on the idea that God is a tolerant benevolent benefactor.
12.
What is to be the fate of the false prophets in the day of the judgement against the wicked nations as pronounced by Micah?
13.
What three things characterize Micah as a true prophet as opposed to the false prophets?
14.
Compare the false prophet syndrome of Micahs day with our present religious climate in America.
15.
What is the relationship between false religious teaching and the cultural collapse of a civilization?
16.
What are the specific sins with which Micah charges the wealthy, the false prophet, the magistrates, the political officials?
17.
False teaching is always recognizable by its emphasis on the ____________ of God accompanied by a denial of His ____________.
18.
The term head of Jacob calls attention to ____________.
19.
Rulers of the house of Israel refers to ____________.
Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series
III.
(1) Hear, I pray you.In the second division of his prophecy Micah protests against the evil influences exercised upon the people in high places. The princes, the prophets, and the priests, to whom their interests were confided, were guilty of wrong, oppression, and robbery.
Ye princes.Rather, judges, magistrates; but a different word is used from that which was given to the chiefs in the old days when the judges ruled.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
Outrages committed by civil rulers, Mic 3:1-4.
The denunciation in Mic 3:1-4, is addressed to the nobles, called “heads” and “princes” or “magistrates” (compare Isa 1:10). They are reminded, by means of a rhetorical question, that it is their duty to know the principles of righteousness and equity; ignorance of these does not excuse their unrighteous conduct.
Jacob, Israel These are synonymous expressions, which, in the light of Mic 3:10, must refer to Judah (Mic 3:9; but compare Mic 2:12). Samaria may have fallen before these words were uttered, so that Judah had become the sole representative of Israel.
Know judgment R.V., “justice,” or equity. In view of the special privileges enjoyed by Israel (Amo 2:11; Hos 11:1-4; Isa 1:2) there was no reasonable excuse for ignorance concerning the principles of righteousness on the part of anyone, certainly not on the part of the leaders of the people.
Their conduct is so different from what one might expect.
Hate the good Wrongdoing has become their second nature (Amo 3:10); their disposition has become utterly perverted, so that they hate that which they should love, and love that which they should hate (compare Isa 1:16-17). This corruption expresses itself in appalling cruelties. 2b, 3 describe in the strongest language possible the cruelties of the nobles. They flay the poor people alive, tear the flesh from their bones; they break their bones (others, “they lay bare their bones”), chop them in pieces, boil them in the caldron, and devour them. It is hardly necessary to state that the expressions are not to be understood literally as implying cannibalism; they are vivid pictures of heartless cruelty and oppression. Similar expressions are found in Isa 3:15, “What mean ye that ye crush my people and grind the faces of the poor?” and Amo 2:7 (Jerome), “Who crush the heads of the poor upon the dust of the earth.” For the simple “as for the pot” LXX. reads “as flesh for the pot,” which furnishes a suitable parallel to the next clause.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Micah’s Indictment of Judah ( Mic 3:1-8 ).
Micah inveighs first against the leadership of Judah, and then against the prophets who make people err for the sake of money, and the priests who teach for hire. We can compare Isaiah’s similar indictment in e.g. Isa 1:23; Isa 3:1-4.
Mic 3:1
‘And I said, “Hear, I pray you, you heads of Jacob, and rulers of the house of Israel: is it not for you to know justice?” ’
‘And I said.’ A loose opening phrase simply declaring ‘and this is another thing that I prophesied, although at another time’.
He calls on them to remember who they are. Are they not the heads of Jacob and the rulers of Israel, the very people of God? Should they not then be models of justice? Is that not why they have been put in their positions by God?
Largely in mind here are those who have been put in authority to maintain the justice and wellbeing of God’s people. Such a system of justice had originally been set up by Moses (Exo 18:25-26) and applied to the situation in the land by Jehoshaphat (2Ch 19:4-7). And there would be numerous local leaders who would be responsible for local justice, family heads who would act as the magistrates of the day.
Mic 3:2
“You who hate the good, and love the evil; who pluck off their skin from off them, and their flesh from off their bones;”
But instead of being a friend of justice they loved the evil and hated the good. (Compare Isa 5:19-20; Amo 5:14-15). They took advantage of the system for their own benefit. It is as though because of their greedy ways they skinned people alive, and took the flesh from their bones. For they seek to strip them of everything. In modern parlance they bled them dry.
This is always the way in an affluent society. People become more and more greedy for possessions and for status and for ‘fun’. Instead of being full of gratitude to God, they indulge in sin and pleasure, and reject godliness. It is indeed strange how prosperity leads to sin. It is because men are no longer then driven to God in their need, and want rather to enjoy to the full what they have got. And of course because they are driven by the desires of the flesh.
Mic 3:3
“Who also eat the flesh of my people, and flay their skin from off them, and break their bones, and chop them in pieces, as for the pot, and as flesh within the cauldron.”
This is certainly not intended to be taken literally, although at times it may have occurred during sieges. It is continuing the hyperbole of the previous verse. To ‘eat the flesh’ and similar phrases regularly mean to harm or kill (Psa 27:2 compare Psa 14:4; Psa 53:4). No doubt regular savage beatings did take place, but the picture here goes a little beyond that.. The remainder would have been the actions of cannibals, which they would certainly not actually have been. It is all rather a vivid description of viciousness and of a total lack of concern for people, and an instance of great wickedness. It is a revelation of man’s inhumanity to man.
Mic 3:4
‘Then will they cry to YHWH, but he will not answer them; yes, he will hide his face from them at that time, according as they have wrought evil in their doings.’
And then having behaved in this way they turn to YHWH and expect Him to hear their prayer. Well, here is His answer. they will cry to Him but He will not answer them, He will instead at that time of need hide His face from them, in accordance with their evil behaviour, because in their actions they have wrought evil. He will treat them as they have treated others.
Mic 3:5-6
‘Thus says YHWH concerning the prophets who make my people to err; who bite with their teeth, and cry, “Peace”, and whoever does not put (food) into their mouths, they even prepare war against him. Therefore it will be night to you, that you shall have no vision; and it will be dark to you, that you shall not divine; and the sun will go down on the prophets, and the day will be black over them.’
YHWH then turns to the cultic prophets who are leading the people astray with their teaching and their prophecies. If they are properly provided for they prophesy ‘peace’ for their benefactors, but if anyone does not provision them then they become belligerent and act as though they were at war with them.
But because of this instead of prophetic vision they will have night time. Instead of being able to discern the future they will be in darkness. There will be no more sunny days for them. Instead all their days will be black ones. Illumination will be no more.
These cult prophets, who when they were godly men could be of such help to the people, had unfortunately often run counter to the true prophets. On the good side were those who had supported Samuel (1Sa 10:5; 1Sa 10:10-11 and Elisha ( 2Ki 2:2 ; 2Ki 5:7; 2Ki 5:15 ; 2Ki 4:38-41; see also 1Ki 18:4), but on the other side were those who constantly prophesied peace and wellbeing regardless of behaviour (2Ki 22:6-13; Jer 28:1-17; Eze 13:1-23). They were not necessarily dishonest, simply over optimistic and unaware of the truth about YHWH, and in some cases mercenary. They prophesied ‘peace, peace, where there was no peace. They believed God’s promises about the Davidic house, and that He would watch over His people. What they failed to see was that sin changed the whole situation. And the further problem was that they had learned to recognise the kind of prophecies that would bring them financial benefit.
One of the differences between Micah and these peace prophets was Micah’s personal concern for the people. He constantly speaks of them as ‘my people’ either on his own behalf or on God’s (Mic 1:9; Mic 2:4; Mic 2:8-9; Mic 3:3; Mic 3:5; Mic 6:3; Mic 6:5; Mic 6:16), and he was concerned to speak by the Spirit of YHWH. These other prophets were more interested in their stomachs. They were also influenced by political pressure (2Ki 22:13); immorality (Isa 28:7), and greed (Eze 13:19), or were simply in a state of confusion because events had overtaken them and they did not know what to say (Jer 14:14).
Mic 3:7
‘And the seers will be put to shame, and the diviners confounded; yes, they will all cover their lips; for there is no answer from God.’
When people come to the seers and the diviners they will have nothing to say. They will rather have to cover their lips, because there will be no answer for them from God. The words envisage circumstances taking place (such as invasion) where people are desperately looking for answers which wee not simply platitudes. It is at that time that they will learn the true value of these prophets.
Mic 3:8
‘But as for me, I am full of power by the Spirit of YHWH, and of judgment, and of might, to declare to Jacob his transgression, and to Israel his sin.’
In contrast Micah will have answers for them. For he is not in darkness. He is full of power by the Spirit of YHWH, he is full of right judgment and of might, which is why he can declare to Jacob his transgression and to Israel his sin.
Micah has no doubt that YHWH is with him. He knows that YHWH’s Spirit is empowering him. And he knows that the teaching that he brings is from YHWH. It is true spiritual judgment. Furthermore he knows that he brings it in the power of YHWH. And unlike the other prophets he does not utter platitudes and what people want to hear, he speaks of transgression and sin, precisely what they do not want to hear, and he does it because that is the burden of the Spirit Who is within him..
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
Mic 3:1-3 Comments – Our minds have a difficult time imagining how human beings can commit such atrocities against one another, but these events described in Mic 3:1-3 have happened repeatedly throughout history. During the first few centuries of the early Church, a number of Roman Emperors committed such atrocities against Christians in an attempt to stop this “new religion” from spreading throughout their empire. These horrible acts did not stop until Emperor Constantine was converted to Christianity. The Muslims have used their religion of Islam to do similar atrocities against many nations and innocent people in the name of their religion since this religion was created in the seventh century A.D. Adolf Hitler also committed such atrocities against the Jews in Europe before and during World War II by killing six million Jews. [7] Many historians believe he was steeped in occult. [8] Most recently the “Lord’s Resistance Army,” led by Joseph Kony, has committed similar atrocities since 1987, mixing witchcraft with cannibalism and the torture of human lives. [9]
[7] Peter Hoffmann, “Adolf Hitler,” in The Word Book Encyclopedia, vol. 9 (Chicago: World Book, Inc., 1994), 264-268.
[8] “Adolf Hitler,” Wikipedia The Free Encyclopedia (San Francisco, California: Wikipedia Foundation, Inc.) [on-line]; accessed 29 September 2009; available from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler’s_religious_beliefs; Internet.
[9] “Lord’s Resistance Army,” Wikipedia The Free Encyclopedia (San Francisco, California: Wikipedia Foundation, Inc.) [on-line]; accessed 29 September 2009; available from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord’s_Resistance_Army; Internet.
Mic 3:4 Then shall they cry unto the LORD, but he will not hear them: he will even hide his face from them at that time, as they have behaved themselves ill in their doings.
Mic 3:5-7
Heb 1:1-2, “God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds;”
Mic 3:12 Therefore shall Zion for your sake be plowed as a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high places of the forest.
Mic 3:12
Jer 26:18-19, “Micah the Morasthite prophesied in the days of Hezekiah king of Judah, and spake to all the people of Judah, saying, Thus saith the LORD of hosts; Zion shall be plowed like a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high places of a forest. Did Hezekiah king of Judah and all Judah put him at all to death? did he not fear the LORD, and besought the LORD, and the LORD repented him of the evil which he had pronounced against them? Thus might we procure great evil against our souls.”
Jon 3:10, “And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil, that he had said that he would do unto them; and he did it not.”
Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures
The Sins of the Rulers and the Desolation of Zion.
v. 1. And I said, Hear, I pray you, O heads of Jacob, v. 2. Who hate the good and love the evil, v. 3. who also eat the flesh of My people, v. 4. Then shall they, v. 5. Thus saith the Lord concerning the prophets, v. 6. Therefore night shall be unto you that ye shall not have a vision, v. 7. Then shall the seers be ashamed, v. 8. But, truly, I am full of power by the Spirit of the Lord, v. 9. Hear this, I pray you, ye heads of the house of Jacob and princes of the house of Israel, v. 10. They build up Zion with blood, v. 11. The heads thereof judge for reward, v. 12. Therefore shall Zion for your sake,
Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann
EXPOSITION
Verse 3:1-5:15
Part II. DENUNCIATION OF THE CRIMES OF THE GRANDEES, FOLLOWED BY A PROMISE OF THE GLORIFICATION OF ZION, THE BIRTH OF MESSIAH, AND THE HIGHEST EXALTATION OF THE PEOPLE.
Mic 3:1-4
1. Sins of the rulers, and their punishment.
Mic 3:1
The prophet denounces the sins of the rulers, false prophets, and priests; and begins with the injustice and oppression practised by the great men. And I said. The new address is thus introduced as being analogous to the denunciations in the preceding chapter, which were interrupted by the promise of deliverance, to which there is no reference here. O heads of Jacob; synonymous with princes of the house of Israel (comp. Mic 3:8; Mic 1:5). Micah addresses the heads of families and the officials to whom the administration of justice appertained. These magistrates and judges seem to have been chiefly members of the royal family, at any rate in Judah; see Jer 21:11, Jer 21:12 (Cheyne). Septuagint, , “ye remnant of the house of Israel.” Is it not for you to know judgment? Ye, of all men, ought to know what is just and fair, and to practise it (compare the opening of the Book of Wisdom).
Mic 3:2
The good the evil; i.e. goodness and wickedness. Septuagint, (Amo 5:14, etc.; Joh 3:20; Rom 1:32). Who pluck off their skin from off them. They are not shepherds, but butchers. We have the same figurative expression for merciless extortion and pillage. Ezekiel makes a similar complaint (Eze 34:2-4). Cheyne sees in this and the following verse a possible allusion to cannibalism as at least known to the Israelites by hearsay or tradition. There is a passage in Wisdom (Eze 12:5) which somewhat countenances the idea that the Canaanites were guilty of this enormity, but it is probably only a rhetorical exaggeration of the writer. In the present passage the terms seem to be simply metaphors taken from the preparation of meat for human food. Such an allusion is natural in the mouth of one who had just been speaking of Israel as a flock (Mic 2:12).
Mic 3:3
The idea of the last verse is repeated here with more emphasis. The people are treated by their rulers as cattle made to be eaten, flayed, broken up, chopped into pieces, boiled in the pot (comp Psa 14:4). (For an analogous figure, see Eze 34:3-5.)
Mic 3:4
The merciless shall not obtain mercy. Then, when the day of chastisement has come, “the day of the Lord,” of which, perhaps, the prophet spoke more fully when he originally delivered this address. He will not hear them. A just retribution on those who refused to hearken to the cry of the poor and needy (comp. Psa 18:41; Pro 1:28; Jer 11:11; Jas 2:13). As they have behaved themselves ill in their doings; according as they have made their actions evil, or because they have, etc.; .
Mic 3:5-8
2. Sins of the false prophets who led the people astray.
Mic 3:5
Concerning the prophets (Mic 2:11). These are the lying prophets of whom Jeremiah complains (Lam 2:14). That bite with their teeth, and cry, Peace. Very many commentators take the phrase, “bite with the teeth,” to mean “eat,” so that the clause signifies that the prophets when bribed with food predict peace and happiness to people. The antithesis of the following clause seems to require this explanation, which is further supported by the Chaldee. But it is quite unprecedented to find the word translated “bite” (nashakh) in the sense of “eat,” or as it is taken here, “to have something to eat;” wherever it occurs it means “to bite like a serpent,” to wound (see Gen 49:17; Num 21:8, Num 21:9; Amo 5:19; Amo 9:3). The parallelism of the succeeding member does not compel us to put a forced interpretation upon the word. These venal seers do vital harm, inflict gravest injury, when they proclaim peace where there is no peace; by such false comfort they are really infusing poison and death. He that putteth not into their mouths. If any one does not bribe them, and so stop their evil mouths. They even prepare war against him. The Hebrew expression is, “they consecrate” or “sanctify war.” There may be allusion to the religious rites accompanying a declaration of war (Jer 6:4; Joe 3:9); but Micah seems to mean that, if the customary bribes are withheld, these prophets announce war and calamity as inevitable; they proclaim them in God’s name, as speaking with his sanction and under his Inspiration (comp. Jer 23:16, etc.; Eze 13:19; see note on Zep 1:7).
Mic 3:6
Night shall be unto you, that ye shall not have a vision. The Hebrew is, “from,” or “without a vision.” Septuagint, , “out of vision;” Vulgate, pro visione. Hence some interpret this as spoken to the false prophets, who, to punish their lying prophecies and pretended revelations, shall be overwhelmed with calamity. But it is best taken as still addressed to the rulers, and Micah tells how that in the time of their distress there shall be no prophecy to direct them. “Night shall be unto them without a vision.” “Night” and “darkness” are metaphors for calamity, as in all languages. That ye shall not divine; without divination. Septuagint, , “out of prophecy.” Parallel and identical in meaning with the preceding clause. The sun shall go down over the prophets; i.e. over the false prophets. The sun of their prosperity shall set. Micah seems to derive his imagery from the phenomena of an eclipse (comp. Jer 15:9; Amo 8:9). The day. The time of their punishment (Mic 2:4; Amo 5:18).
Mic 3:7
Shall the seers be ashamed. The false prophets shall be ashamed because their oracles are proved to be delusive. They shall all cover their lips; the upper lip; i.e. the face up to the nose, in sign of mourning and shame (see Le 13:45; Eze 24:17, Eze 24:22). It is equivalent to covering the head for the same reason, as Est 6:12; Jer 14:4. Septuagint, , taking the verb to mean “shall open” (not “cover”) their lips against them. For there is no answer of God. There was no revelation (Psa 74:9; Eze 7:26). Septuagint, , “Because there shall be none that hearkeneth unto them.”
Mic 3:8
Micah contrasts his own powers and acts with those of the false prophets. I am full of power by the Spirit of the Lord. Micah asserts that he speaks and sots by the direct inspiration of God; he claims three gifts bestowed upon him by the Holy Spirit to enable him to effect his purpose. The first of these is “power,”such might imparted to him that his words fall with force and proclaim their Divine origin (comp. Luk 1:17; Act 1:8). The second gift is judgmentthe righteous judgment of God; this fills his mind and comprises all his message. The third gift is might, i.e. a holy courage that enables him to face any danger in delivering his testimony. In these points he is in strong contrast to the false prophets, who were not inspired by the Spirit of God. spoke not with power, called good evil, and evil good, were timid and time-serving. Jacob Israel. The two are identical as in verse 1, and the clauses in which they occur contain the same thought repeated for emphasis’ sake.
Mic 3:9-12
3. Recapitulation of the sins of the three classesrulers, priests, and prophets, with an announcement of the destruction of Zion and the temple.
Mic 3:9
The prophet exemplifies his courage by delivering in full the denunciation with which he commenced (Mic 3:1 : see note there). Hear this. What follows. Pervert all equity. Ye, who by your position ought to be models and guardians of justice and equity, violate all laws, human and Divine, make the straight crooked, distort every notion of right (comp. Isa 59:8).
Mic 3:10
They build up Zion with blood. Blood is, as it were, the cement that binds the building together. They raise palaces with money gained by extortion, rapine, and judicial murders like that of Naboth (1Ki 21:1-29.; comp. Jer 22:13, etc.; Eze 22:27; Hab 2:12). Cheyne thinks this to be a too dark view of the state of public morals, and would therefore consider “blood” to be used for violent conduct leading to ruin of others, comparing Isa 1:15; Isa 59:3; Pro 1:11. In these passages, however, actual bloodshed may be meant; and we know too little of the moral condition of Judaea at this time to be able to decide against the darker view.
Mic 3:11
Judge for reward. The very judges take bribes (Isa 1:23; Eze 22:12), which the Law so stringently forbade (see Exo 23:8; Deu 16:19, etc.). The priests thereof teach for hire. The priests were bound to teach and explain the Law, and decide questions of religion and ritual (Le 10:11; Deu 17:11; Deu 33:10; comp. Hag 2:11, etc.). This they ought to have done gratuitously, but they corruptly made it a source of gain. Divine for money. The accusation in Mic 3:5 is repeated. These false prophets sold their oracles, pretending to have a suitable revelation when paid for it (Eze 22:28; Zep 3:3, Zep 3:4). Yet will they lean upon the Lord. These priests and prophets were worshippers of Jehovah and trusted in him, as though he could not fosake his people. They had faith without love, divorced religion from morality, made a certain outward conformity serve for righteousness and truth. Is not the Lord among us? (Exo 17:7). As though the very fact that they had in their midst the temple, wherein Jehovah’s presence was assured, would protect them from all harm, whatever their conduct might he. Such presumptuous confidence is reproved by Jeremiah (Jer 7:4, Jer 7:8, etc.; comp. Amo 5:14, and note there).
Mic 3:12
This is the prophecy quoted by the elders to King Jehoiakim (Jer 26:17, etc.). It may have been delivered before Hezekiah’s time originally, and repeated in his reign, when it was productive of a reformation. The denunciation is a mourn-fill contrast to the announcement in Mic 2:12; but it was never completely fulfilled, being, like all such judgments, conditioned by circumstances. Therefore for your sake. For the crimes of rulers, priests, and prophets. Shall Zion be ploughed as a field. Three localities are specified which destruction shall overtake Zion, Jerusalem, and the temple. Zion means that part of the city where stood the royal palace. The prophecy relates primarily to the destruction of the city by the Chaldeans, when, as Jeremiah testifies (Lam 5:18), Zion was desolate and foxes walked upon it. The expression in the text may be hyperbolical, but we know that the ploughing up of the foundations of captured cities is often alluded to. Thus Horace, ‘Carm.,’ 1.16, 20
“… imprimeretque muris
Hostile aratrum exercitus insolens.”
(Comp. ‘Propert.,’ 3.7, 41; and for the whole passage, Isa 32:13, Isa 32:14.) “The general surface of Mount Zion descends steeply eastwards into the Tyropoeon and Kidron, and southwards into the Valley of Hinnom. The whole of the hill here is under cultivation, and presents a most literal fulfilment of Micah’s prophecy”. “From the spot on which I stood,” says Dr. Porter, “I saw the plough at work in the little fields that now cover the site of Zion”. Jerusalem shall become heaps. The city proper shall become heaps of ruins (Jer 9:11; Neh 2:17; Neh 4:2) Septuagint, , “as a storehouse for fruits,“ as in Psa 78:1-72. (79) 1. The mountain of the house. The mountain on which the temple was built, Mount Moriah, and therefore the temple itself, no longer mentioned as the Lord’s dwelling place. As the high places of the forest; or, as wooded heights, returning, as it were, to the wild condition in which it lay when Abraham offered his sacrifice thereon. In the time of the Maccabees, after its profanation by tile heathen, the account speaks of shrubs growing in the courts as in a forest or in one of the mountains (1 Macc. 4:38). Such was to be the fate of the temple in which they put their trust and made their boast.
HOMILETICS
Mic 3:1-12
The abuse of influence.
God has imparted to all men the power of influencing others. We daily exert an influence either for good or for evil. They who know us, and who come into contact with us, are the better or the worse as the result of such knowledge and association. The nature of our influence depends upon our own character. Whether this subtle power we all possess is to result in good or ill depends altogether upon what we are ourselves. Let the life be pure and holy, fed and sustained by those hidden springs which take their rise in the throne of God, and then a healthy and helpful influence will assuredly follow, as effect follows cause. The extent of the range of a man’s influence depends very much upon the social position he occupies. The more prominent a man is among his fellows, the wider will be the circle of his influence. In every community there will be, of necessity, positions of special prominence to be occupied. To desire to occupy these for the sake of being prominent, and accounted great, is indeed a very poor ambition; but to desire to reach these in the hope of gaining and using for good the additional influence thus acquired; whilst “rising in the world,” to be also ascending the heights of holiness an,t goodness, and in ascending thus to reach out the hand of help to others and to assist them to climb above the mists of error and sin, is an aspiration that is truly noble; and happy is it for communities when such men rise. When good men are exalted “the city rejoiceth.” These verses present to us a painful example of the opposite of all this. Note we have here
I. GREAT INFLUENCE GROSSLY ABUSED. Three influential classes in the kingdom of Judah are specially referred to.
1. The princes; i.e. the ruling class, the judges and magistrates, these functions being exercised by members of the royal family (Jer 21:11, Jer 21:12).
2. The priests; i.e. members of the Jewish priesthood, taking part in the services of the temple, and also in teaching the people.
3. The prophets; i.e. not the men who were specially inspired of God, like Micah, but men who claimed to possess a desire to work for God, who were trained in “the schools of the prophets,” and who became a very numerous class in the land, and took an important part in the education of the community. In these three classes we have comprehended the most influential men in the land; men who, by virtue of their position, ought to have exerted the wisest and most salutary influence upon the people. But instead of this the very opposite was actually the case. They who should have been “the salt of the earth” were “as salt which had lost its savour.” The princes, instead of righteously administering the Law, sought their own enrichment. They accepted bribes (“The heads thereof judge for reward,” verse 11), and they utterly sacrificed the rights and interests of the people. “They built up Zion with blood” (verse 10), i.e. they reared their luxurious palaces and increased their own store of wealth by perverting equity, and by unrighteous decisions. Their unjust judgments, their extortions and oppressions, so pressed upon the people that the very life blood of the nation was drained. Under the expressive figure of cannibalism, the seer describes the effect of their rapacity (verses 2, 3). The prophets also were utterly mercenary. If the bribe was only given, they prophesied as desired. “They caused the people to err, biting with their teeth [i.e. feeding upon the bribe] and crying, Peace” (verse 5); but only let the bribe be withheld, and they altered their tone and became the heralds of evil tidings (verse 5). Nor were the priests behind in cherishing the same spirit. “The priests teach for hire” (verse 11). The support of the Jewish priesthood was provided for by special Divine arrangement. The tenth in Israel was apportioned to the sons of Levi as their inheritance (Num 18:20; Deu 18:2). But though thus provided for, such was their greed that, “producing the answer of God upon the receipt of money, they sold the grace of the Lord for a covetous price” (Jerome). And so did these prominent and distinguished classes in the kingdom of Judah abuse the great influence which had been bestowed upon them. History repeats itself; and there have been times in the development of other nations which have presented the counterpart to that which is here recorded respecting the kingdom of Judah (see, for example, the state of Europe during the age preceding “the Reformation,” as described by D’Aubigne, ‘History of the Reformation,’ bk. 1. Mic 3:1-12.).
II. THE ABUSE OF INFLUENCE RESULTING IN CALAMITY.
1. To the abusers themselves. The prophet declared that the day of retribution would duly come, and that in that day of Divine manifestation in judgment
(1) the rulers should be requited for their evil deeds “measure for measure” (verse 4), and in the time of trial should find no help in God, for he would hide his face from them (verse 4);
(2) the false priests and prophets should be overtaken by judicial blindness (verse 6), shame and confusion should be theirs, as the coming events brought to light the falsity of their declarations (verse 7), and the Divine oracles would be silent in that day (verse 7).
2. To the nation. The land they were seeking to “build up” by unrighteous deeds should be brought to nought, and the responsibility of its overthrow would rest upon them. “Therefore shall Zion for your sake be ploughed as a field,” etc. (verse 12).
Learn:
1. The blessing of influence well directed.
2. The boon those who in high places exert such an influence confer upon a community.
3. The need of constant intercession with God on behalf of the leaders of a nation, in order that peace and prosperity may rein. “I exhort,” etc. (1Ti 2:1, 1Ti 2:2).
Mic 3:1-12
Avarice.
There is nothing wrong in a man’s seeking to acquire fiches. Money is good. Its possession is to be desired, since it carries with it the means of surrounding its possessor with the comforts of life, and at the same time gives him the ability to impart good to those who are less favoured and in circumstances of need. The very endeavour also to secure this calls into exercise such qualities as industry and thrift, which are truly commendable. It is rather the love of money, and the inordinate desire for it for its own sake, that merits condemnation. Worldly treasure becomes the greatest possible curse when it is accounted by men the chief good. It will buy up everything else. Time, intellect, justice, truth, conscience, the most sacred rights of humanity, will be bartered for this; and every true well wisher of the race will endeavour to stem the ever-swelling torrent, and to present motives to turn the energies and enterprises of the world into another and higher direction. This chapter may be viewed as illustrative of the deplorable evils and the fatal results of this spirit of avarice.
I. THE DEPLORABLE EVILS CONNECTED WITH AVARICE.
1. It saps the foundations of equity. (Mic 3:1.) These rulers understood the Law, but being so thoroughly possessed by the mercenary spirit, they failed to administer it righteouslywere partial in their decisions, favouring those who offered the most tempting bribe, and thus caused the legal administration in the land to become rotten and corrupt.
2. It leads to oppression and cruelty. (Mic 3:2, Mic 3:3, Mic 3:10.) The one concern of the princes was to enrich themselves and to find themselves surrounded with all luxuries and splendours; and hence they cared not to what lengths of extortion and fraud and oppression they went, or what suffering might be involved, if only they could compass this end.
3. It renders its subject unfaithful in the discharge of the most sacred trusts. No trust can be more sacred than that committed to the man who is constituted a teacher of spiritual truth, and upon whom it devolves to direct men in the ways of righteousness and God; but here (Mic 3:5) we have such catching the spirit of covetousness, and, as the result, proving altogether faithless to God and to the consciences of men, prophesying, “peace” to those who bribed them, and “war” to those who withheld the mercenary gift.
4. It excites the spirit of self-confidence and self-sufficiency. These leaders of the people, whilst acting thus at variance with the true and the right, yet finding their ill-gotten gains increasing in their hands, boasted that evil could not reach them (Mic 3:11).
II. THE FATAL RESULTS OF AVARICE.
1. Loss of the Divine favour. For “covetousness is idolatry,” and God will not give his glory to another (Mic 3:4).
2. Non-apprehension of spiritual realities. (Mic 3:7.)
3. Complete frustration of their designs. The palaces they had built up with blood, and the city they had defiled by their iniquity, should come to nought, and in its overthrow all that they had unrighteously sought to secure for themselves should perish (Mic 3:12). They who boast that they are “full and increased in riches, and have need of nothing,” are in reality the most needy and desolate. Spenser, in ‘The Faery Queene,’ has described their true condition –
“Most wretched wight whom nothing might suffice,
Whose greedy lust did lack in greatest store,
Whose need had end, but no end covetize,
Whose wealth was want, whose plenty made him poor,
Who had enough, yet wished evermore.”
Mic 3:8
Worldly and spiritual power: a contrast.
In this verse the prophet seems to place himself in contrast with the false prophets to whom he had referred. They, and the priests and rulers with whom they were in association, may be taken as representing the worldly power of that age, whilst he represented that spiritual power which is inspired in the true servants of God by the working of his own Spirit. It is instructive, in reading this chapter, to contrast these worldly and spiritual forces.
I. THE FORMER IS POWER OFTEN EMPLOYED TO CRUSH; THE LATTER IS POWER EVER EXERTED TO SAVE.
II. THE FORMER IS POWER BRINGING BLIGHT UPON THOSE WHO COME UNDER INFLUENCE; THE LATTER IS POWER THE EXERCISE OF WHICH EVER RESULTS IN BLESSING.
III. THE FORMER IS POWER THE PUTTING FORTH OF WHICH IS PROMPTED BY SELFISHNESS; THE LATTER IS THE OUTCOME OF LOVE.
IV. THE FORMER BRINGS SHAME AND DISHONOUR UPON THOSE WHO EMPLOY IT; THE LATTER YIELDS TO ITS POSSESSORS PRESENT DISTINCTION, AND SHALL SECURE TO THEM IMPERISHABLE RENOWN.
Mic 3:8-12
Gifts for Divine service.
I. THEIR NATURE. (Mic 3:8.)
1. “Power.” (Mic 3:8.) Weak as the prophet felt himself to be, he was conscious of a Divine influence resting upon him and inspiring him, clothing him with holy energy and irresistible might. His mind and heart had been brought into an enjoyment of the highest and holiest fellowship with the Invisible and Eternal. His soul was animated by the inward witness of the Father’s love. His whole nature was quickened so that the spirit, instead of being ruled by the body, had the body as its willing instrument, and all acting in concert with the will of God. God dwelt in him and he in God. His spiritual life was healthy and vigorous. His was the strength of a man who felt that he had been called to engage in a work demanding peculiar gifts and endowments in order to its successful discharge, but that all he thus wanted God would bestow, so as to render him efficient; and hence he was ready for servicefull of inward strength, “full of power.“
2. “Judgment.” (Mic 3:8.) The reference is not to judgment in the sense of being able to discriminate character (although this is very desirable), but judgment in the sense of enlightenment to understand the message to be delivered. Here was a messenger who knew what to say; who did not go forth with a sense of uncertainty, but as one who had received his message and was prepared without hesitation to deliver it.
3. “Might.” The idea is that of courage. He not only knew what to say, but was ready to say it fearlessly. Humble in origin, born and trained up in obscurity, he cowered not even before princes and nobles, but rather caused them to tremble by the holy boldness with which he declared unto them “all the counsel of God.”
II. THEIR SOURCE. (Mic 3:8.) “But truly I am full of power by the Spirit of the Lord.“ These words betray no egotism on the part of the prophet. Had he simply affirmed himself to be a man of power, he had doubtless laid himself open to the charge of manifesting that “self-praise” which is “no recommendation;” but the qualifying sentence entirely frees him from the charge”by the Spirit of the Lord.“ He was inwardly strong; he was enlightened to know what he ought to utter in God’s name, and he was prepared to go forth and to say it with unflinching courage, because there rested upon him “an unction from the Holy One,” and he was inspired by God’s own Spirit.
III. THEIR EXERCISE. “He declared unto Jacob his transgression,” etc. (Mic 3:8). With an inspiring consciousness of the presence with him el the Lord he served; with a clear perception of the character of the age and of the announcements he was to make in God’s name, and with a boldness no adverse force could intimidate, because divinely sustained, he went forth to his appointed service, reproved the rulers for their unrighteous judgments and their acceptance of bribes, and their acts of cruelty and oppression (Mic 3:9, Mic 3:10), chastised the priests and prophets for degrading, by their mercenary conduct, the high functions they were called upon to discharge (Mic 3:11), and predicted the coming overthrow of the nation, fastening upon these guilty leaders the responsibility of occasioning the impending doom (Mic 3:12). The history of the Church of God through all ages tells of men thus inspired by God’s Spirit with “power” and “judgment” and “might;” and hence who nobly fulfilled their commission. Peter on the Day of Pentecost, Paul before kings and governors, Luther before the Diet of Worms, Knox carrying on the work of Reformation in Scotland, Whitefield and the Wesleys in the work of revivalthere rested upon the heads of these true servants of the living God the tongues of heavenly fire; their arms were nerved by the might of omnipotence, and there dwelt in them the wondrous spiritual force that shall yet regenerate the world. There are difficulties connected with service to God in the present as in all past times; yet these should not dishearten or daunt us, but in the Divine strength we should courageously meet these and contend against them until they are all overcome. It betrays the possession of a weak faith, and seems to indicate that he does not realize what Divine resources are available to him, if a man in his work for God sits down before the difficulties of his position as a worker, dispirited and fretful shall we manifest less courage in reference to spiritual service than men exhibit in the ordinary pursuits of life? Shall we acknowledge ourselves baffled and beaten when the mighty energy of God’s own Spirit is available, and may be ours if we will? There was exhibited on one occasion at the Royal Academy a striking picture of a gallant knight mounted on his charger and approaching a dark cavern. His steed was represented as drawing back through fear, and the dogs following as shrinking through terror; but lo! the knight wears a countenance untouched by alarm. There may be perils ahead, but he recks not, for his hand grasps the cross and his trust is in the living, loving Lord. Let our trust be thus centred, and no difficulty lying before us, or no antagonism against which we may have to contend in holy service, shall be able to daunt us, but we shall say,” Who art thou, O great mountain? before Zerubbabel thou shall become a plain.” We should “covet earnestly the best gifts,” and above all seek to be “endued with power from on high.”
Mic 3:10
National stability.
I. THE ENDEAVOUR TO SECURE NATIONAL STABILITY IS LAUDABLE AND TO BE COMMENDED. Princes, nobles, leaders of the people of all classes, ought to seek to build up Zion and Jerusalem; and earnest, enthusiastic effort directed to this end is honourable and worthy of all praise.
II. THIS RESULT CAN ALONE BE GAINED BY RIGHTEOUS MEANS. National strength and stability has its very foundations in truth, rectitude, justice, and goodness.
III. THE ADOPTION OF ANY OTHER METHODS MUST INEVITABLY RESULT IN DISGRACE AND DECAY. These rulers built up Zion with “blood,” i.e. oppression, wrong, cruelty; and Jerusalem with “iniquity,” perverting all that was true and right; and hence, despite the semblance of outward prosperity, the process of decay and dissolution was going on, and became at length completed in the ruin of the nation (Mic 3:12).
IV. THEY ARE THE TRUE PATRIOTS WHO LIFT UP THE VOICE OF WARNING, AND WHO EXPOUND AND ENFORCE THE PRINCIPLES OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. To adopt this course specially in a worldly, self-indulgent age is sure
(1) to render the teacher unpopular with many;
(2) hence it requires holy courage and daring;
(3) which will be possessed in proportion as the man is “moved by the Holy Ghost.“
Mic 3:11
The ministry viewed in relation to hire.
The Jewish priests and prophets were the teachers of the people in matters of religion and morals. They exercised “the teaching faculty;” and this must form a prominent feature in those who devote themselves to the work of the ministry in every age (1Ti 3:2; Col 1:28; 2Ti 2:15; 2Co 4:2). The power of the pulpit in these modern times depends very largely upon the maintenance of its teaching efficiency. The men the Church requires as its ministers are such as will come forth week by week not to utter a number of weary platitudes, but to enforce living truths, and to present these in forms fresh and new. Note
I. SUCH “LABOURERS” ARE “WORTHY OF THEIR HIRE.” The support of the Jewish priesthood was arranged under the Law (Deu 18:2); the prophets also received temporal gifts in recognition of their services (1Sa 9:7, 1Sa 9:8). In the New Testament this principle of pecuniary acknowledgment being made for spiritual service is distinctly enunciated (Luk 10:7; 1Co 9:7, 1Co 9:14).
II. TO RENDER THIS SERVICE FOR THE SAKE OF THE “HIRE” IS SELF–DEGRADING, AND IS AN OFFENCE TO GOD AND THE GOOD.
1. It leads to mere officialism.
2. It results in the perversion of truth, the character of the message being made to depend upon the nature of the bribe and the desire to gratify those who offer it.
3. It gives rise to sheer hypocrisy. “Yet will they” (i.e. hypocritically) “lean upon the Lord and say, Is not the Lord among us?” (Mic 3:11).
4. It awakens vain self-confidence. “None evil can come upon us” (Mic 3:11).
5. It incurs fearful responsibility. “The blood of souls” will be required of such. The ruin of Zion and Jerusalem was here fastened upon such, “Therefore shall Zion for your sake,” etc. (Mic 3:12). How honourable is the work of the faithful minister of truth! How essential it is that they who engage in it should experience the Divine call, and should guard well their hearts so that they may be true to themselves and may render acceptable service to others! Whatever their “hire” here may be, how glorious is the reward awaiting all who are found true in this calling; for “when the chief Shepherd appears they shall receive the crown of life” (1Pe 5:4).
Mic 3:12
The desolating effects of sin. The Book of Micah may popularly be considered as consisting of three sectionsthe first setting forth national guilt and corruption (ch. 1-3); the second (Mic 4:1-13; Mic 5:1-15.) as presenting glimpses of a brighter and better age; and the third (Mic 6:1-16; Mic 7:1-20.) as unfolding the nature and importance of sincere and practical religion, and the Divine mercy to all who thus turn to God and serve him with all their hearts. The verse before us closes the first part of the prophecy, and presents to us the culmination of a course of impiety and iniquity. We have described here that “death” which “sin when it is finished” ever “bringeth forth” (Jas 1:15). Notice
I. THE HISTORICAL FACT OF THE MATERIAL DESOLATION WHICH WAS TO RESULT FROM THE PREVAILING NATIONAL TRANSGRESSION. (Verse 12.) Observe:
1. This prophecy was doubtless oft repeated by the prophet. That it was uttered by him during the reign of Hezekiah is clear from Jeremiah (Jer 26:17, Jer 26:19). But it had probably been uttered by him previously, for the words which follow (Mic 4:1-3), and which are closely connected with them, were quoted by Isaiah from Micah during the earlier reign of Jotham (Isa 2:2 4). The prophets enforced their teaching by constant reiteration. “To write the same things,” etc. (Php 3:1).
2. The faithful utterance of this “dark saying“ was the means of working a temporary reformation. (See Jer 26:17, Jer 26:19.) It might have exposed the seer to the greatest peril. To declare such evil omens at a time when the prosperity of the land was reviving under the wise rule of Hezekiah might have involved the prophet in suffering, and even death. But, happily, it had its desired effect; it caused the king and the people to bow before God in humiliation, and “judgment” against the evil works which had been wrought “was not executed speedily” (Jer 26:19).
3. Though thus delayed, the destruction of the land was ultimately effected. Dean Stanley observed in reference to this prediction by Micah, “The destruction which was then threatened has never been completely fulfilled. Part of the southeastern portion of the city has for several centuries been arable land, but the rest has always been within the walls. In the Maccabean wars (1 Macc. 4:38) the temple courts were overgrown with shrubs, but this has never been the case since” (‘Jewish Church,’ 2:464). It is possible to be too literal in our interpretations, and the facts of history are simply sufficient to indicate how entirely that which Micah predicted (verse 12) has come to pass.
II. CONSIDER THIS AS SYMBOLICAL OF THAT SPIRITUAL DESOLATION WHICH IS EVER THE OUTCOME OF EVIL. It is the natural tendency of sin to render the transgressor desolate in heart; indeed, a man cannot indulge in a course of evil without his inner self, his spiritual being, becoming waste. A man yields to the sin of avarice, and perhaps as the result of its indulgence he gains his hundreds and thousands, gets the best of many a bargain, and at length amasses a fortune; but then he loses peace of mind, kindliness of heart, the joy resulting from cherishing all generous impulses, and probably also his soul; so that whilst in the worldly sense he has succeeded, he has prospered at a terrible sacrifice, even the withering of his highest and noblest powers; he has “got on,” has “risen in the world,” but his heart is left void and desolate. So also is it with unholy ambition. We think of Sennacherib saying to Hezekiah, “Where are the gods of Hamath?” etc. (Isa 36:19, Isa 36:20), thus proclaiming defiantly his victories; or of Herod sitting upon his throne, arrayed in gorgeous apparel, making his oration to the people, and priding himself in their flattery as he heard their cry, “It is the voice of a god, and not of a man” (Act 12:21, Act 12:22); and whilst on the one hand we see in them representatives of the lovers of power, of outward show, of flattery and applause, we see on the other hand men who, amidst all these outward pretences, were inwardly empty, waste, desolate. And there may be this spiritual desolation amidst much of apparent good. It does not follow that because a man is becoming thus spiritually desolate, his heart is necessarily closed against all that is good, or that because a man is susceptible of some good he is not spiritually becoming waste. There may be love of kindred with all those praiseworthy acts to which this may prompt. There may be large and generous sympathies. Attention, too, may even be paid to religious observances; and yet with all this the heart may be closed to the heavenly influences of the Spirit of God, and may be found at length a moral waste (Pro 4:23). Think of the inestimable value of that Sacrifice, the design of which was the putting away of sin and the raising to honour and dignity those whom sin had covered with ignominy and had plunged into ruin. Our very desolation has rendered us the objects of the special concern of the Most High (Joh 3:16). Trusting to Christ, we become delivered from sin with all its thraldom and misery. And the happy era shall at length dawn, to which we look forward with longing, expectant hearts, when the entire moral aspect of the uuiverse shall be changed, and “the desert rejoice and blossom as the rose.”
HOMILIES BY E.S. PROUT
Mic 3:8
God’s gift of a faithful ministry.
The expression, “But truly (),” implies a contrast to what precedes. The false prophets were in alliance with the tyrannical princes, and were destined to humiliation and to the utter loss of whatever power they once possessed. But Micah, conscious of a Divine calling and of fidelity to it, can point to himself as an illustration of God’s precious gift of a faithful ministry. Note
I. ITS QUALIFICATIONS. The fundamental one is:
1. The indwelling of the Spirit of God. The true prophet or minister magnifies his office, but does not exalt himself. He traces all he has to God, as does St. Paul (1Co 15:10; 1Ti 1:12-16). Pretenders to the prophetic or pastoral office were “sensual (), not having the Spirit,” inspired only by the spirit of t h e world, or of self; but true ministers can use St. Paul’s words (1Co 2:12), for they are relying on their Divine Master’s promise of the Holy Spirit.
2. Hence spiritual power. It may be special and superhuman, such as prophets and apostles enjoyed. But the more valuable power is that which enables us to witness for Christ (Act 1:8), to exert a holy influence (2Co 3:2, 2Co 3:3), and to preach “in demonstration of the Spirit and of power.” Power is a general term; the Divine Spirit manifests his presence by a diversity of gifts appropriate to special necessities. Two of these are mentioned here as needed by the prophet and, in truth, by every faithful minister.
3. Judgment, including such thoughts as thesea clear sense of God’s equity in his dealings (Eze 18:1-32.), an impartial utterance of God’s sentences (Jer 1:16-19), and therefore discrimination in all his messages and in his treatment of his hearers, “doing nothing by partiality,” “rightly dividing the Word of truth,” “warning every man and teaching every man.” Such a ministry will emit light as well as heat, will show discretion as well as zeal.
4. Moral courage. “Might,” such as the apostles sought and received (Act 4:29-31; cf. Eph 6:19, Eph 6:20; Col 4:4; 2Ti 1:7). All these gifts are needed in a high degree”full,” etc. “However the Lord may bless the meanest gifts of such as be honest, yet neither are ministers to be empty vessels nor swelled with ostentation, but a large measure of real furniture is to be sought after.” All these qualifications were more or less fully manifested in the true prophets of God; e.g. Elijah (Ecclus. 48:1), Isaiah (Isa 58:1), Jeremiah (Jer 6:11, Jer 6:27), Ezekiel (Eze 3:8-11), and many others.
II. ITS DIFFICULTIES. The main difficulty here suggested arises from its relation to the sins of men.
1. The burden of the Lord laid on ministers requires them to be willing to be used in the disagreeable task of convicting communities and individuals of sin. This may be traced in the long prophetical and apostolical succession of God’s true ministers, including such illustrious names as Moses, Samuel, Nathan, Elijah, Daniel, John the Baptist, Peter, and Paul. We too must be prepared to show to the Church and to individuals their sins in trade, their transgressions of the royal law in their conduct, whether towards servants or masters. Thus we may seem to many “men of strife,” or even enemies (Gal 4:16).
2. But we do not successfully “show” to men their transgressions unless they are induced to abandon their sin and accept God’s method of deliverance. We seek to take men alive out of the snare of the devil (see 2Ti 2:24 26, Revised Version). It is a terrible thing to convict a man of sin, and yet fail to save him, thus increasing his condemnation.
III. ITS ENCOURAGEMENTS.
1. Frequent successes. We learn from Jer 26:17-19 that Micah’s message on this occasion led to the conversion of Hezekiah, or to the reawakening of his zeal as a reformer. The Christian minister’s song of victory is often heard (2Co 2:14).
2. Constant Divine approval. Sometimes a sense of failure causes a feeling of isolation and of heart sickness, such as Jeremiah often felt. But even then we can fall back on the sense of the abiding presence of God (Joh 16:32), and of his approving smile (Isa 49:4, Isa 49:5).E.S.P.
Mic 3:9-11
Spurious faith.
The prophet at once vindicates the claim he has just made (Mic 3:8). We have here
I. AS UNSPARING EXPOSURE OF SINS IN HIGH QUARTERS. All classes are involved, and to each class the most scandalous characteristic offences are imputed.
1. Civil rulers. They are open to bribes, in direct violation of Exo 23:8, and therefore pervert judgment. These sophists on the judgment seat make “the worse appear the better reason;” and at length reach such a stage of iniquity that they “abhor judgment,” and “call evil good” etc. (Isa 5:20; cf. 2Pe 2:14). In the striking figure of Isaiah (Isa 59:14), “truth is fallen in the street, and equity cannot enter.” Their crimes are set out in detail in verses 14. Meanwhile they are building fine mansions or laying out estates, but at the price of blood, like Ahab (1Ki 19:1-21.) or Jehoiakim (Jer 22:13-19); or they are wronging the poor, though the consequences may be fatal; as in modern society some of the “heads thereof” connive at social systems in government or in business, by which the poor are defrauded of their claim to a livelihood. “The bread of the needy is their life; he that defraudeth him thereof is a man of blood. He that taketh away his neighbour’s living slayeth him: and he that defraudeth the labourer of his hire is a bloodshedder” (Ecclus. 35:21, 22).
2. Ecclesiastical leaders. The priests’ duty was to teach the Law (Le Isa 10:11; Deu 17:11; Deu 33:10), but they too needed douceurs, or fees or bribes. They probably misinterpreted the Law from the same motive as did Eli’s sons (1Sa 2:12-17). “So Arian bishops, themselves hirelings, by false expositions of Scripture countenanced Arian emperors in their persecution of the faithful” (Pusey). So, too, persecuting priests and prelates in more recent days.
3. Prophets. These religious teachers were raised up to promote a reformation; but they too had been dragged down to the level of other teachers. Divine prophecy had been corrupted into divination, as in the case of Balaam, and covetousness was universal (verse 5; and cf. Eze 13:1-6). An instructive parallel may be found in the case of the regular clergy of the medieval Church, who were gradually degraded to the low moral level of the secular clergy. We are reminded of the odiousness of a mercenary ministry. Thus all classes were combined in a conspiracy of unrighteousness (as in Eze 22:23-31), and the love of money was the root of all this evil.
II. AN INDIGNANT PROTEST AGAINST UNWARRANTED FAITH IN GOD. They flatter themselves:
1. That they may lean upon the lord. Deaf to all past teachings, blind to the danger signals which history has erected, they insult God by leaning upon him, and expecting him to support their vile souls and pampered bodies (cf. Deu 29:19, Deu 29:20). They further take for granted:
2. That the lord is among them. Though invisible to sense, and sending repeated protests, they assume his favourable presence. They trust in lying words, saying. “The temple of the Lord are these,” as though the temple of the Lord and the Lord of the temple were identical. In a church at Innsbruck, on the tabernacle containing the consecrated wafer are the words, “Ecce tabernaculum Dei.” If this daring perversion of Scripture had proclaimed a truth, what a false confidence for an unworthy communicant; as though “Corpus Christi” and “Christ in you” were the same! “There standeth One among you whom ye know not” may be true, but in a new sense; if not to sanctify, to condemn.
3. That no evil will be fall them. As though God’s protests and a guilty conscience were not in themselves evils and the forecast shadows of coming doom. So deceitful and desperately wicked is the heart of man. These truths may be applied to many “nominal Christians.”
(1) Ambitious monarchs or statesmen, “building up” their country by huge standing armies, or navies, or palaces, at the cost of grinding taxation, leading to semi-starvation and loathsome disease as among the Italian peasantry, or of tyrannical extortions from Egyptian felaheen, or of a merciless conscription as in Germany, driving some of her best sons from her shores.
(2) Landlords amassing fortunes from rack renting the fever slums of London, or confiscating the fruits of the tenants’ industry in Ireland.
(3) Drink sellers fattening on the pauperism of their wretched customers, or carrying liquid poisons to tribes just emerging from barbarism.
(4) Hireling preachers or priests, prophesying smooth things to unrighteous aristocrats or plutocrats, or lulling guilty consciences by the opiate of the sacrament. Such men of expediency crucified even the Son of God that Zion might be “built up” (Joh 11:48; see Jer 5:1-31 :80, 31). To that final question an answer is found in verse 12.E.S.P.
HOMILIES BY D. THOMAS
Mic 3:1-6
Civil rulers.
“And I said, Hear, I pray you, O heads of Jacob, and ye princes of the house of Israel; Is it not for you to know judgment? Who hate the good and love the evil; who pluck off their skin from off them, and their flesh from off their bones,” etc. The punishment threatened in this chapter is against the authorities of Israel, against the princes who turn right into wrong and slay the people, against false prophets who lead the people astray and confirm them in their sin, and against the priests in connection with both princes and prophets. The passage before us is directed to the princes and the rulers. These are represented as radically corrupt, hating good and loving evil, and cruelly oppressive: “Who pluck off their skin from off them, and their flesh from off their bones.” And more than this, “they eat the flesh of my people, and flay their skin from off them.” They are represented not only as slaying the people, robbing them of the means of existence, but devouring them, treating them like cattle, which are first killed and then boiled in the pot for food. All this, of course, is strong figure used to make a strong impression. We have two things worthy of notice concerning civil rulers.
I. WHAT CIVIL RULERS OUGHT ALWAYS TO BE, They ought always to “know judgment,” that is, always practically to know the right. The ruler who has not a practical knowledge and love of the right is out of his place; he is a usurper. There is such a thing as right in the universe. What is the standard of right? Not public sentiment, not human law, but the Divine will. God’s being is the foundation of right; God’s will is the standard of right; God’s Christ is the completest revelation of that standard. The man who is not Christly in character is more or less despicable everywhere, but nowhere so much as on a throne. Are we not commanded to honour the king? Yes, but the command implies that the king is honourworthy. Reason, conscience, and the Bible call upon us to loathe and despise moral corruption on a throne.
“He, a king,
A true right king, that dare do aught save wrong,
Fears nothing mortal but to be unjust;
Who is not blown up with the flattering puffs
Of spongy sycophants; who stands unmoved
Despite the jostling of opinion.”
(Marston.)
II. WHAT CIVIL RULERS OFTEN ARE. What were these rulers?
1. They were morally corrupt. These rulers were of those who “hate the good and love the evil.” They were in heart radically wrong, corrupt to the very core, hating good.
2. They were socially cruel. They treated the people as the butchers and the cooks treat beastskill them, boil them for their own use. How often, even in the history of England, have rulers treated the people as mere cattle for food!
3. They were divinely abandoned. “Then shall they cry unto the Lord, but he will not hear them: he wilt even hide his face from them at that time.” The Monarch of the universe is no “respecter of persons.” Princes are no more in his eyes than paupers; and he will treat both according to their character, their responsibility, and their merits. He has often roused nations to send their rulers howling into infamy and ruin. After all, the existence of corrupt kings is to be ascribed to the ignorance, the cowardice, and servility of the people. Let the peoples of the earth advance in intelligence, moral discernment, and independency, and such rulers will disappear. Corrupt rulers are like glowworms, that in the night seem brilliant, but in the day contemptible grubs. Weak, ignorant, and tyrannic kings appear glorious in the night of popular ignorance, but abhorrent as the day of mental intelligence advances.D.T.
Mic 3:5-7
False prophets.
“Thus saith the Lord concerning the prophets that make my people err, that bite with their teeth, and cry, Peace; and he that putteth not into their mouths, they even prepare war against him. Therefore night shall be unto you, that ye shall not have a vision,” etc. The following is the version of Delitzsch: “Thus saith Jehovah concerning the prophets who lead my people astray, who bite with their teeth and preach peace. And whoever should put nothing into their mouths, against him they sanctify war. Therefore night to you because of the vision, and darkness to you because of the soothsaying; and the sun will set over the prophets, and the day blacken itself over them. And the seers will be ashamed and the soothsayers blush, and all cover their head, because there is no answer of God.”
“Here he attacks the false prophets, as before he had attacked the ‘princes.’ ‘That make my people err’knowingly mislead my people, by not denouncing their sins as incurring judgments. ‘That Bite with their teeth, and cry, Peace;’ i.e. who, so long as they are supplied with food, promise peace and prosperity in their prophecies. ‘And he that putteth not into their mouths, they even prepare war against him.’ Whenever they are not supplied with food, they foretell war and calamity: they sanctify war, i.e. proclaim it as a holy judgment of God, because they are not fed. ‘Therefore night shall be unto you, that ye shall not have a vision; and it shall be dark.’ Calamities press on you so overwhelmingly as to compel you to cease pretending to divine (Zec 13:4). Darkness is often the image of calamity (Isa 8:22; Amo 5:18; Amo 8:9). ‘Then shall the seers be ashamed, and the diviners confounded: yea, they shall all cover their lips.’ The Orientals prided themselves on the moustache and beard. To cover the upper lip, therefore, was a token of shame, mourning, and sorrow (Le 13:45; Eze 24:17). ‘Cover not thy lips,’ i.e. assume not the usual token of one mourning (Eze 24:22). They shall be so ashamed of themselves as not to dare to open their mouths, or boast of the name of prophet. ‘For there is no answer of God.’ They shall no more profess to have responses from God, being struck dumb with calamities” (Fausset). False prophets are here brought under our attention again, and three things are suggested concerning them.
I. THEY ARE DECEIVING. God says, they “make my people err.” Preachers often make their hearers err.
1. In theology. They propound ideas, crude and ill digested, concerning God, Christ, moral conditions and relations, utterly inconsistent with truth.
2. In worship. The forms they propose to use in worship, the rules they enjoin for it, are often such as to give the people wrong ideas as to what worship really is.
3. In morality. Their standard of duty is often wrong; hence wars are sanctioned, priestly exactions and assumptions encouraged and maintained. Ah me! how the preachers make men err on these great subjects!
II. THEY ARE AVARICIOUS. They “bite with their teeth, and cry, Peace.” Greed governs them in all their ministries. They are ever hungering after gain; pelf with them is a passion. Their eyes are ever on pew rents, offerings, tithes, etc. If their greed is offended, they “prepare war against” the offender; they raise an opposition strong and deadly against him. They are “greedy of filthy lucre.”
III. THEY ARE CONFOUNDED. Confounded in darkness. “Night shall be unto you, that ye shall not have a vision; and it shall be dark unto you, that ye shall not divine; and the sun shall go down over the prophets, and the day shall be dark over them.” They were blind leaders of the blind, and they themselves fall into the ditch. Confounded in shame. “Then shall the seers be ashamed, and the diviners be confounded.” Jehovah ignores them. “There is no answer of God.” “Those,” says Matthew Henry, “who deceive others are but preparing confusion for their own faces.”D.T.
Mic 3:8-12
The true prophet.
“But truly I am full of power by the Spirit of the Lord, and of judgment, and of might, to declare unto Jacob his transgression, and to Israel his sin. Hear this, I pray you,” etc. It is supposed that this chapter belongs to the reign of Hezekiah; if so, the mournful state of matters which it depicts belongs to the time preceding the reformation. These words lead us to consider the true prophet.
I. THE WORK OF A TRUE PROPHET. “To declare unto Jacob his transgression, and to Israel his sin.” It is a characteristic of all true prophets, that they have a keen moral sense to discern wrong, to loathe it, and to burn at it. No man is a true prophet who is not roused to thunder by the wrong. It has been charged against the preachers of England that it is not wrong that rouses them, but little dogmas that agree not with their theology, sects that unite not with their Church, policies that interfere with their income and position. We fear this is too true. The crimes of the people of England are not denounced by the pulpit as they should bethe vice in high places, the injustices perpetrated under the name and sanction of law, the cupidity of traders, the swindlings of joint stock company men, by which they become millionaires and win a seat in the Parhament of the nation. These things are not held up as they should be for public execration, in the broad sunlight of eternal truth,
Where have we men now to “declare unto Jacob his transgression, and unto Israel his sin”?
1. This is a painful work. It will incur the disfavour of some, and rouse the antagonism of the delinquents. Still, it must be donedone as John the Baptist did it, who denounced his countrymen as a “generation of vipers;” done as Christ did it, who levelled his terrible “woes” at the heads of the great criminals of his age.
2. This is an urgent work. No work is more needed in England today. To expose wrong goes a great way towards its extinction. Honeyed words in the pulpit we have enough, tawdry disquisitions, and sensational inanities. God multiply men of the stamp of John the Baptist and of the Apostle Peter, who on the Day of Pentecost charged home the terrible crime of the crucifixion to the men he addressed!
II. THE POWER OF A TRUE PROPHET. “Truly I am full of power by the Spirit of the Lord, and of judgment, and of might.” There is no egotism in this. A powerful man knows his power, and will ascribe it to the right Sourcethe “Spirit of the Lord.” Micah’s power was moral; it was the might of conscience, moral conviction, of invincible sympathy with eternal right and truth. This is a very different power to that of mere intellect, imagination, or what is called genius. It is higher, more creditable, more influential, more God-like. What does the man who has it care for the smiles or frowns of his audiences? He sets his face like a flint. The praises of his fellow men affect him no more than the twitterings of a sparrow would an eagle; their frowns, no more than the yelpings of a cur affect the monarch of the forest.
III. THE FIDELITY OF A TRUE PROPHET. This is seen here in three things.
1. In the class he denounces. “Hear this, I pray you, ye heads of the house of Jacob, and princes of the house of Israel.” He struck at the higher classes of life. “Heads of the house of Jacob, and princes of the house of Israel.” Ah me! how little we pulpiteering cowards here in England address ourselves to the crimes of the upper classes! The low, the helpless, the destitute, we are always lecturing. Do your ecclesiastical lords lecture royalty, think you? I read their fulsome flatteries often, but their denunciations never. The prophet’s fidelity is seen:
2. In the charges he makes. “They build up Zion with blood, and Jerusalem with iniquity.”
(1) He charges them with extortionate cruelty. “The civic rulers only are addressed in verse 9, viz. those who were charged with the administration of justice and of the affairs of the state, but who did the very oppositewho abhorred justice and made the straight crooked because they passed sentence for bribes. They thereby build Zion with blood, etc; i.e. obtain the means of erecting splendid buildings by cruel extortions, partly also by actual judicial murder, as Ahab, and after him Jehoiakim, had done” (Delitzsch). Building up Jerusalem by blood is something like building up churches by beer. It is not uncommon now for large brewers, from the enormous profits of their pernicious craft, to build up magnificent temples for God. What an outrage on decency! What an insult to omniscient Purity!
(2) He charges them with base mercenariness. “The heads thereof judge for reward, and the priests thereof teach for hire, and the prophets thereof divine for money.” He saw mercenariness on the bench, inspiring the judge; mercenariness at the altar, inspiring the priests; mercenariness in the pulpit, inspiring the preachers. Money was the motive power of all. With all this mercenariness, still they “leaned upon the Lord,” that is, professed to worship the one true and living God, and ignorantly and presumptuously concluded that he would be ever amongst them, and that consequently no great evil would overtake them. The prophet’s faithfulness is seen:
3. In the doom he proclaims. “Therefore shall Zion for your sake Be ploughed as a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high places of the forest.” The prophecy was never literally fulfilled till the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, when the ground on which the city stood was ploughed up, in token of its utter demolition, and no city was to be built there without the emperor’s leave. “It is,” says an old writer, “the wickedness of those who preside in them that brings the ruin. It is for your sake that Zion shall be ploughed as a field; you pretend to build up Zion, but, doing it by blood and iniquity, you pull it down. The sin of priests and princes is often the ruin of states and Churches. Delirant reges, plectuntur Achivi the kings act foolishly, and the people suffer by it.”
CONCLUSION. Such is the true prophet.D.T.
Fuente: The Complete Pulpit Commentary
See Mic 2:1 ff for the passage comments with footnotes.
Micah 3
Here also the discourse applies directly (Mic 3:1-4) to the nobility, and particularly here to those in high official station, as called guardians of the administration of justice. Hear, now, ye heads of Jacob, and ye judges (=Arab. Kdi) of the house of Israel, Is it not for you (2Ch 13:5), for you above all, to know the right. To know = to regard, give heed to (Isa 42:25).
Mic 3:2. Ye that hate good, and love evil, that steal away their skin from off them, from the house of Israel (Mic 3:1), and their flesh from off their bones. They may well be pleased with the prophesying concerning the flock of Israel (Mic 2:12), for meanwhile they have the privilege of shearing and flaying the flock.
Mic 3:3. Yea, those who eat (the discourse turns to the third person, for in vision the prophet sees how those addressed have already stopped their ears, and turned away from him, and he makes his complaint before God and the congregation) the flesh of my people, etc.
Mic 3:4. Thenat the time of the revelation of the wrath of God (cf. Psa 2:5; Pro 1:18), at the very time for which their lying prophets hold out to them the prospect of nothing but golden hills,will they rather cry to Jehovah, and he will not answer them, for they are not worthy of the gracious promise (Hos 2:22 ff.), since they have let their day of grace pass by; and will hide his face from them (impf. Hiphil with e instead of Micah 1 : as Psa 25:9) at that time even as they have made their deeds evil. Jehovahs countenance is the fountain of life (Psa 104:29); when it is turned away it is death; He will not break through before them, but will let them perish in misery, as their deeds deserve; cf. the last words, with Mic 2:3; Mic 2:7.
Mic 3:5 ff. Transition to the false prophets, parallel to Mic 2:6 if. Thus saith Jehovah against ( as Jon 1:2) the prophets who lead my people astray, Gods people are Israel, and he who hurts them, hurts God (Zec 2:8). The prophets should be eyes for the people (Isa 29:10), and without prophets the people are blind; but whoever leads the blind astray is accursed (Deu 27:18). They lead astray because they are bribed by the great (Mic 3:1 ff.). Who, when they have anything to bite in tlieir teeth (cf. Mic 2:11-12), i. e. who when they receive any good to eat, cry, Peaceprophesy as desired; and whoever gives them nothing for their mouth, against him they sanctify war [Kleinert: declare a sabred war]. By the antithesis of the two sentences, the meaning, to bite, to chew, is demanded for : the construction of the first [Hebrew] sentence is parataxis pro syntaxi, and the first finite verb as following what precedes has been changed into a participle: they sit with the rich at their tables, eat their bread, and sing their song. The description answers completely to that which the Greek tragic poets, from a like moral indignation, give of the venal soothsayers of their time (cf. e. g. Soph., Antig., 1036; sch., Agam., 1168)., To sanctify a war is the solemn formula for the declaration of a war which should be undertaken for the honor of God against enemies (Joel 4:9, cf. Isa 13:3); for by the destruction of his foes God is proved a Holy One (Isa 5:16). The false prophets abuse this formula, as they do all the others of true prophecy (cf. on Mic 2:12 f.).
Mic 3:6. Therefore, because you darken Gods light in the daytime, there shall be to you a night without vision, yea, a darkness shall be for you without divination. The punctuators read the 3d prset. fern, impers.: and it shall be dark for you. But, according to the parallelism the substantive (choshkah), with dagesh lene is to be preferred. The word chasn, vision, which is elsewhere used of the genuine visions of true prophets (Isa 1:1), is here defined by the parallel kesom, the comprehensive designation of all the heathen arts of augury (Deu 18:10; Deu 18:14; Eze 21:26). In the use of the word chasn, however, there lies the idea that the night will so break upon the people that all prophecy, even the genuine, will cease, all answer from Jehovah (cf. Mic 3:4; Lam 2:9). Indeed, the latter half of the verse says the same: And the sun shall go down over the prophets,all of themand the day be dark over them. The words are designed to complete the picture of the visionless night in the first member of the verse (cf. Amo 8:9), and thus can hardly have the reference, which Hitzig supposes, to the eclipse of the sun on the 5th of June 716 b. c, the day in which Romulus died (Dion. Halic. 2:56).
Mic 3:7. And the seers will be ashamed, and the diviners blush (cf. 1Ki 18:29). Their lying being punished in its results, they become, since God by no word of revelation helps them out of their necessity, entirely disgraced. Hitzig. And cover the beard, all of them, they will hide the face up to the nostrils, a sign of sorrow (Lev 13:45), here of shame (cf. Eze 24:17), as elsewhere the covering of the head (Jer 14:4), Because there is no answer from God, , subst. as Pro 15:1; Pro 15:23; some Mss. give the better sounding part, with seghol in ult.: for God answers not.
Mic 3:8. To the liars Micah sets himself and his prophesying in contrast. But I am filled with power (cf. Jer 1:18). This first accus. (cf. Gesen., 138, 3, b), is explained epexegetically by what follows; with power, i. e. with the spirit of Jehovah,1 in whom alone is power (Isa 31:3), while those speak out of their own spirit (Eze 13:3; Jer 5:13); and with judgment (judicial sentence), by metonymy for: with an impartial (opposed to Mic 3:5) utterance of Gods righteous judgment (Jer 1:16), which the adversaries should indeed know, but did not wish to know: and with courage, which is not to be bought off by a dainty meal, like the slavish soul of the false prophets (Mic 3:5); to declare to Jacob his transgression, not the lies of false peace (Mic 3:5; Mic 2:11), and to Israel his sin.
Mic 3:9, follows with a summary view of the final consequences of this sin and its punishment. Hear this, now, ye heads of the house of Jacob, and judges of the house of Israel who abhor judgment, and make crooked that which is straight, through the desperate arts of a sophistry which perverts right because it has the power (Mic 7:3; Isa 5:20).
Mic 3:10. Building Zion with blood-guiltiness (Psa 26:9, cf. Mic 6:16, with 1 Kings 21.), and Jerusalem with iniquity. They care not that the city in which they build their palaces (Hab 3:6; Jer 22:13) with the gain of sin and bloodshed, is Gods own holy city (Isa 1:21).2 When the prophet remembers Jerusalem, his angry and complaining word passes over to her.
Mic 3:11. Her heads judge for a bribe, therefore to the injury of the innocent poor (Psa 15:5; Eze 22:12), and her priests teach for a reward; while it was their duty to give (Lev 10:11; Deu 17:11; Deu 33:10) information concerning the decisions of the law
(cf. e. g. Hag 2:16 ff.), they receive a fee for every consultation, so that the poor have, in fact, no part in the rights established by God (Isa 5:23), nay, can attain to no knowledge at all thereof. And their prophets divine for money, according to direction, like the heathen prophets (Num 22:6 f.), and appeal to [lean upon] Jehovah, saying: Is not Jehovah among us? or, as the adversaries of Jeremiah; here is Jehovahs temple (Jer 7:4): Therefore, no evil can come upon us.
Mic 3:12. Therefore, so culminates in the closing verse, the threatening begun in Mic 3:8, now in the sharpest contrast to the conclusion of the preceding chapter; therefore, for your sakes, because you make the Lords temple a den of murderers (Jer 7:11), Zion shall be ploughed as [Kleincrt: into, ace. of result, Ges., 139, 2] a field, and Jerusalem not less than the previously destroyed Samaria, become heapsthe stones built up with blood will be torn asunder, because Jehovah makes inquisition for the blood; and the mountain of the house, , the temple, as 1 Kings 6-8, high places of a forest! On the Aram. plural , cf. Gesen., 87, 1, a. On the threatening of Isa 32:13-14; on the incidental meaning of on Mic 1:5.
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
The people of Israel are formed, as a holy seed, to inherit the blessing. To this end they have a holy land (Mic 2:4), a holy place, and the Holy God in their midst (Mic 3:11), who answers them by the i mouth of the prophets (Mic 3:7).
But the straightforward development of the mission of Israel has been interrupted. The whole substance of the popular life in these holy arrangements has been thoroughly poisoned with the sin of seeking their own, and proudly trusting in their own power, instead of meditating on Gods law (Psa 1:1), and trusting alone in his power (Psa 2:12). But as a people stands toward God so He toward the people; with the froward He will show himself froward. When the people devise iniquity He devises it against them; when brother prepares destruction for brother, destruction is prepared for all from on high. He has given to Israel the portion of goods that fell to him, but in his hands it has been squandered, and falls to those to whom it does not belong.
The people is a body made up of members duly organized. But no community, even that which is best and most divinely organized, has any guarantee of continuance (to say nothing of the eternal promise), unless its individual members, with a full comprehension of their calling, stand and labor therein (Mic 3:1-8). And radical corruptisn exists whore that rank which ought to serve as the conduit for the stream of life from the heart of God to the whole life of the people has become putrid, and sends forth, instead of the juices of life, deadly fountains; where between the natural opposition of the arrogant and desponding thoughts of men, for which the Word of God, under all circumstances, has a somewhat unwelcome sound, and between the cowardice and self-indulgence of the servants of God, the compromise of false prophecy has been agreed upon. We recognize the preaching of lies by its one-sided emphasis on the promises of Gods Word, agreeably to the natural desire of men, while it forgets the conditions of those promises; by its sealing the crowd of hearers that may present itself for the congregation of God, and assuring them all, without exception, and without the purification resulting from divine judgment, of a share in his salvation. The Gospel has come for sinners, it is true, but not for drunkards and debauchees; that is, sinners as the object of the Gospel are those who heartily confess, and desire to forsake, their sins. By such preaching of lies the judgment is simply hastened. It brings out the contradiction of Gods Word with double energy, and prepares for corruption a rushing progress among the other classes.
The result of this course is that not merely the land becomes foreign, but prophecy disappears altogether, the presence of God becomes a dead shadow and his holy abode a stone-heap.
Hengstenberg: The particular vices which the prophet names are to be regarded at the same time, and principally, as indices of the whole diseased condition of the people. The severity of his speech, says the prophet to the false prophets, was rather true mildness, since it alone could avert the approaching judgment. Not from want of patience, not from unmercifulness does his God punish, but the fault lay with the sinners who violently drew his judgments upon themselves. The false prophets are to be looked upon as the accomplices of the corrupt nobility, as the bulwark, that is, which they oppose to the true prophecy and to its influence on the people, and their own conscience; as the material power always looks about for such spiritual allies.
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
On chap. 2. Several signs that the state of a people is hastening toward judgment and needs amendment.
I. The reign of selfishness.
1. Each one strives and plans for himself alone. Mic 2:1 a, b, c.
2. Each one trusts in his own strength. Mic 2:1, d.
3. Regard for the restraints of law and morality is done away (Mic 2:2). Consequent judgment threatened. Mic 2:3-5.
II. Unbelief in the judgment and the consequent impenitence.
1. The sting is taken from the preaching of the judgment, while they find fault with the form instead of attending to the matter of the message. Mic 2:6.
2. They lull the conscience with half truths. Mic 2:7.
3. They suppress the consciousness of manifest sins and abuses (Mic 2:8-9). Consequent judgment threatened. Mic 2:10.
III. The corruption of the prophetic office.
1. There are those who sing the slumbering consciences completely into a dream. Mic 2:11.
2. These people mislead even honest consciences by clothing their false doctrine in the style of Gods Word (Mat 7:15). Mic 2:12-13.
Mic 2:1 f. No man can serve two masters. He that seeks his own is the slave of self-seeking, and cannot escape from it day or night. Where your treasure is there is your heart also. Covetingis the original sin, and to fulfill the last commandment is a duty as fundamental as to fulfill the first.
Mic 2:3 f. As the wicked fastens his thought on wickedness so will God fasten him to the consequences of the wickedness. Not to be able to free ones self from what is once begun, that is the curse of evil.
Mic 2:4 f. He who acts as if he had nothing, and is not satisfied with gathering and scraping together, from him shall be taken even that which he hath.
Mic 2:6. Many a one doubtless drivels because he loves to drivel; such should take heed lest by their ungentle words they give excuse to the adversaries. He is rightly zealous who cherishes a burning desire that the reproach may cease.
Mic 2:7. The Lord is long-suffering; but so much the more shameful is it to abuse his patience.
Mic 2:8. If God would enter into judgment with us, He needs not to go back to long past sins; yesterday, the hour just past, convicts thee of thy sin.
Mic 2:9. The corruption which thou workest in thy children is an everlasting corruption.
Mic 2:10. When man makes this lower world his rest, God will trouble him out of it.
Mic 2:11. The inner mission in a social way has many dark sides, and is seldom accomplished without a certain sacrifice of the truth, or neglect of it and casting pearls before swine. Avoid even the appearance of evil!
Mic 2:12. He who would once give out a perverse sentiment as Gods Word, will have little difficulty in finding Biblical expressions; and every one to whom theology is merely a thing of the memory stands in this danger. The test of all preaching is, whether it increases thy earnestness for improvement, let it give thee pain or not. If it lulls thee to sleep, it is false even though made up of Scripture phrases.
Ch. B. Michaelis: On Mic 2:1. When one takes his stand on the fact that he has the power, there is abuse of the power.
Luther: Mic 2:2. The Papists may boast of the donation and beneficences of the Emperor Constantino, and otherscharitable foundations, cathedrals, cloisters, rents, and tollsbut when we look at the truth, we must think of all such donation, as the prophet speaks of it, that they have coveted such goods, and have then snatched them for themselves. Not with open violence, but by plainly deceiving men with a false pretense, as if they could by such donation gain access to eternal life.
Schliek: On Mic 2:5. While they think they have become rich through violence, they have rather thereby lost their whole land.
Luther: Mic 2:7. As to the grand boasts of the Papists, that God has given great promises to his church, I do not deny that the promises may be near at hand. But I do deny that they (the Papists) are the true Christian Church.
Mic 2:9. The Greeks said well, ones own hearth is better than gold. For that is the best house in which thou wouldst fain be and reside. To widows and orphans, accordingly, their own houses, however small and humble, are true houses of delight. For there they are at home. This affection the prophet desired to magnify, that he might the more strikingly portray the tyranny of the covetous people.
Burck: On Mic 2:7. Injustice against the wives is soon followed by injustice against the children. And this is a reason why dissension between the married couple is to be abominated, because it must occasion inexpressible harm to the education of the children.
Starke: Mic 2:1. The proverb, Thoughts are duty free, holds good in human courts, it is true, but not before Gods judgment. Covetousness is a hard thing, and leaves a man no rest day or night.
Mic 2:2. We should earnestly resist the first attacks of the old Adam, that he may not acquire power.
Mic 2:3. That there is a law of retribution, is attested not only by Holy Scripture, again and again, but also by sound human reason.
Mic 2:4. Those who boldly deride divine admonitions, and make of them a mock, shall in turn become a mock to their enemies.
Mic 2:7. The nearer their punishment the, more secure, generally, the ungodly become.
Mic 2:8. Where manifest hostility, where robbing and stealing prevail, and go unpunished, there the ungodly are near to judgment. It does not follow that all who are called Gods people are on this account in favor with Him.
Mic 2:9. Whether to remain single or to marry, is optional; by no means is it optional to break up marriage, and drive away ones tpouse. As all Gods works are glorious and good, so also is matrimony, which God has in many ways adorned and blessed.
Mic 2:10. He that will not hear must feel.
Mic 2:11, Upright teachers must preach nothing but what God commands them.
Pfaff: Take heed, O soul, to thy thoughts! If thou wakest in the night, on thy bed, let the place serve to engage, thee in holy thoughts.
Mic 2:4. What avails to lament, when Gods judgments are actually receiving accomplishment! Repent in time!
Mic 2:5. Woe to those who have no part in the congregation of Gods people! They have also no part in God and in the heavenly inheritance.
Mic 2:7. It is an idle fancy, that God cannot punish the sinner because He is merciful; would they become subjects of his mercy, why then let them be converted.
Mic 2:9. Ye judges, do the widows and orphans no hurt! They should be written on your heart.
Mic 2:11. A preacher should with full freedom, but with a mind and spirit like that of God, reprove vice.
Rieger: Here also, as in Micah 1 :the presentation of the sin and announcement of the penalty are connected together, but with the difference that there corruption of Gods service is rebuked, here, rather, violence and injustice in the civil relations of the people. One draws the other after it.
Mic 2:1 f. What a temptation it is, to have the power to do what evil spite suggests! What would many a one do if the power of the hand were as great as the boldness of the heart! As it is, however, God judges according to the counsel of the heart, and brings to light what a man has been occupied with even on his bed.
Mic 2:7. That is the old and still practiced way of avoiding Gods threatenings, namely, that men so readily form conceptions of God, and imagine that it is not to be supposed that God can be angry. Let one learn first of all to understand God from His own sayings. He who hates the light may for a while resort to imaginary comfort, but it cannot help him.
Mic 2:8. Public outrages resulting from corruption in the civil order, draw after them many private outrages in unhappy marriages, improper divorces, by which the children especially are permanently corrupted, and the ground is laid for all corruption in all classes. Give us peace on every account and in every way.
Quandt: Mic 2:1 ff. Where such is the state of things in a country, there the glory of the people has departed, and there breathes a savor of death unto death, which attracts the eagles.
Mic 2:3.The evil which the Lord devises is so named only because to the evil it appears evil, while in truth it is holy and good.
Mic 2:5. Since the ungodly men of power have inwardly separated themselves from the congregation of the Lord, neither can they outwardly share in its advantages (Psa 37:9).
Mic 2:6. At the present day also the office of the preacher of righteousness is made specially difficult by the hypocrites who give forth their own carnality, and cry, Peace, peace, when there is no peace.
Mic 2:8. O, that all who do violence to poverty would consider that, while they abuse the poor brethren, they set themselves against the great God in heaven.
Mic 2:9. True religion is, to visit the widows and the fatherless in their affliction; the devils worship, to rob widows and orphans.
On chap. 3. To whom much is given in the kingdom of God, of him Gods judgment will require much.
I. The more is given him the greater is his guilt.
1. He cannot excuse himself from want of knowledge.
Mic 3:1.
2. Rather is his sin a contradiction to the known commandment. Mic 3:2; Mic 3:9.
3. And as such, aggravated by the design to, deafen the conscience, it comes to view practically in a very abominable light, and that
(a.) in externis as want of natural affection, and as bare egotism. Mic 3:3 c, 10, 11.
(b.) In internis as desecration of what is holy. Mic 3:5.
II. The greater the guilt the greater also the punishment.
1. The abused word and office loses power with respect, and is as if it were not. Mic 3:4 b, 6.
2. It loses also its power with God; He no longer hears, and remains dumb. Mic 3:4 a, 7.
3. And all which God does further is to announce and bring on trouble. Mic 3:8-12.
Mic 3:1 f. When once reverence for Gods com mand is destroyed, with the men in power, sin goes irresistibly toward its final end, like a flame which rests not till all is consumed. But against even the fury of the elements God has set his barrier (Job 38:11). How a right magistracy should be constituted we learn from Isa 32:2.The Word of God is not partial, but the Most High is above the heights. Neither should his servants be partial. God values the magistracy not according to its legitimacy, but according to its works. But it may well be that the horrid works of a usurped power should first and most speedily come to an issue (Mic 6:16). To hold men like beasts for fattening and slaughter, is an abomination in the eyes of God. What held good in the O. T. within the nation of Israel, holds good of mankind in the N. T., and with a N. T. application the word of the prophet is true of slavery. Yet not even the prophet preaches revolution, but delivers his testimony, and sets home Gods judgment.
Mic 3:5. A servant of God, in his judgment on men, and his conduct towards them, should be influenced by no possible tokens of love toward himself personally.
Mic 3:6. In hours of drought we ought to prove ourselves, whether we are not ourselves to blame through deficient joyfulness and devotion in the service of God.
Mic 3:8. The human virtues also grow only out of the fullness of the Spirit of God, which a servant of God in his office needs
Mic 3:9. To make the straight crooked and to brand right as wrongwho does not shudder at the sin And yet this is the bosom sin of these our highly cultivated times; scarcely one has not a part in it: it is the necessary result of all partisanship (Ecc 7:29).
Mic 3:10. Whoever builds with gold from extortion and usury builds with blood (1Jn 4:15).
Mic 3:11. What profits all the knocking at the outward form of the church, when the fact proves that God by his Spirit is not there but has left it? In such a case the breaking up of the form also is only a question of time. The church is only a result of labor spent on the kingdom of God; labor spent on the church is in itseif of no profit, as a schoolmaster is not the carpenter who builds the school-house, nor the public officer who brings up the children, but he who forms their souls.
Mic 3:12. Better for a land to be quite uncultivated than cultivated in the service of sin.
Luther: On Mic 3:1. As the person of the magistracy, because they are in office, is public and common, so their sins and transgressions also are public, and much more offensive than those of ordinary citizens, not only on account of the scandal, from the fact tnat the common herd are any how inclined to imitate the sins of the great lords, but also because the magistracy thus become more slack to blame and punish in the lower orders those iniquities which they find and feel in themselves.
Ch. B. Michaelis: Mic 3:2. When the prefect advised Tiberius to lay heavy burdens on the provinces, he wrote, A good shepherd shears the sheep, but does not flay them.
Tarnov: Mic 3:3. David would not drink the water which his attendants had procured for him at the hazard of their lives (2Sa 23:16); ought there to be then, among Christian men, any so bad that by them the blood of their dependents is drunk, and in a moment what those have contributed drop by drop?
Ch. B. Michaelis: Mic 3:4. By this the promise is not broken that God will hear all that call upon Him. Here such are meant as wickedly call upon Him (Jam 4:3), not in truth (Psa 145:18) but hypocritically, and merely in the anguish of punishment (Pro 1:28), without repentance and faith (Isa 1:15); as Esau wept (Gen 27:34), and as the lost lament (Wis 5:3).
Tarnov: On Mic 3:8. He speaks of the gift which God has given him, not to boast of it, but compelled, as Paul (2Co 10:11 ff.).
Luther: On Mic 3:10. He condemns not priests and prophets because they take reward and money, for the pious and God-fearing preachers of the Word are worthy of their hire, but because they abuse their office to their own gratification, and for the sake of gain, and see through the finger when the people sin, whom they should justly have punished.
Hengstenberg: On Mic 3:12. Righteousness builds up because it brings Gods protection and blessing; unrighteousness tears down because it brings Gods curse.
Starke: On Mic 3:1. Those are dangerous preachers who reprove only the crowd, that they may flatter the lords. Magistrates should of necessity know justice, because only thus can they speak what is just.
Mic 3:2. Love of evil is always connected with hatred toward the good, although men commonly, in practicing the evil, keep up a semblance of love for the good.
Mic 3:5. It is indeed a great hardship to live under a tyrannical government, but still more dangerous is it to be supplied with false and ungodly teachers, for they preach the people not only out of the land but into hell. That is a certain sign of an anti-christian disposition, which has always manifested itself as soon as the truth has arisen here or there in the world: the devil has at once roused up re-vilers, who attacked the witnesses for the truth, and accused them of horrible crimes. So it is still, and so it will remain to the last day.
Mic 3:6. He who loves the light of divine truth walks also in the light of blessedness (Job 22:28); but he who chooses darkness rather than light walks also in the darkness of error and falsehood, and does the deeds of darkness.
Mic 3:7. When the day of divine vengeance comes, the teachers of error will not be overlooked.
Mic 3:8. Here we perceive the distinction between a false and a true prophet, between a converted and an unconverted teacher, and the different ground, nature, and object of their office. There is with the true man, spirit, power, light, self-denial, wise temperance, pure, uncorrupted delivery of Gods plan of salvation; and with the false, envy, imagination, self love which puffs up, personal gain, respect of persons, deception of the fancy, etc., etc.
Mic 3:10. By tyranny and injustice neither the church of God is built nor the kingdom of a prince established.
Pfaff: Mic 3:1. We have here the condition of the magistracy. God has established this to dispense right and justice, to further the public good, to be an example of virtue to the peopla, and surely it should not take this away from the people by injustice and tyranny.
Mic 3:4. Repentance which comes to us from an experience of the punistfment deceives not before God.
Mic 3:5. Behold the criterion of a false and ungodly teacher. He is one who for his own enjoyment comforts the ungodly in their sins, who looks only for a goodj revenue and reward, who preaches to please men, who calumniates the real servants of God that speak the truth, who rebukes only when his gains are disturbed.
Mic 3:12. The more secure men are, the heavier are the judgments of God which come upon them.
Rieger: Mic 3:1. God has given to every class in the world both its external advantages and its tendency and adaptation to usefulness. Thus even the great ones in the world should find in their more complete culture, understanding and discernment, an impulse to become acquainted with the rights which God has established. If then in the world they hate good, it is not only for themselves a sorry proof that they are children of the devil, but also opens the way for the eternal destruction of others, because much good is nipped in its blossom by the hate, or at least suspicion, which the great direct against it. The more enjoyment and advantage one can procure from his unrighteousness, the less readily does one give it up.
Mic 3:4. As little as the violent are generally disposed to cry to the Lord, there still come occasions even to them, as war, etc., when their cries are awakened. As the promise that his prayer shall be heard is the most consoling to wretched man, so is the threat of having to hear the judge the most dreadful. Let him who thus turns away the sufferer, who should have had the benefit of bis office, hides his face from him, refuses him an interview,let such an one be careful what he does.
Mic 3:5 f. The times when, in the earthly rule things go sadly and in disorder, commonly bring also great danger of temptation upon the church.
Mic 3:2 f. Misbelief often does as much mischief in the land as unbelief. Amid increasing corruption of life, to trust to purity of doctrine alone, and think ones self on this account far from the evil day, is misbelief. True, the kingdom of God cannot come to a stand, but meanwhile it may be. taken from us and given to others.
Quandt: Mic 3:1. Those are the right court preachers who are not restrained by the star on the breast from inquiring whether the heavenly morning star shines also in the breast (Urlsperger).
Mic 3:3. There are people who spend money enough on a single meal to support a teacher or a missionary for a considerable time.
Mic 3:6. Only a sudden thought of the dark eternity can now fill with anguish the soul which rejoices in sin.
Ver 7. When once the world perceive that they are deceived, they turn with scorn from their own prophets.
Mic 3:8. Inward certainty, and having the soul established in God, is the best call for a Stillness must be filled with thought, good or bad; preacher,
Mic 3:12. The times are become still worse before the judgment came (Isa 26:18).
Bremer: Sermon on Mic 3:1-4. Warning to the judges. (1.) Their responsibility as possessors of knowledge. (2.) Their sin: violation of duty, and self-seeking. (3.) Their punishment.Synodal sermon on Mic 3:5-8. Warning to the heralds of Gods Word. (1.) Their ideal character (Mic 3:8). (2.) Their danger of darkening Gods Word through self-seeking, in that either they for personal advantage preach what the ears of people lust after, or brand their personal enemies as Gods enemies. (3.) The aggravation of their sin; desecration of the Word; confusion of Gods congregation. (4.) Their punishment; they lose the capacity to discern Gods Word, and speak to the disgust of others and of themselves. Sermon on Mic 3:11-12. False confidence in God. (1) Its ground, an outward templesacraments. (2.) Its danger, disregard of the distant future, indifference, indulgence given to the natural man. (3.) Its end. Fate of the Jewish state; the holy city becomes as the world, and shares the fate of the world. So likewise we. If we forsake God He will forsake us.
[Pusey: Mic 2:1. Upon their beds, which ought to be the place of holy thought, and of communing with their own hearts and with God. Stillness must be tilled with thought, good or bad; if not with good, then with hail. The chamber, if not the sanctuary of holy thoughts, is filled with unholy purposes find imaginations.
Mic 3:6. Shall not depart. It hath not now first to come. It is not sonnew thing to be avoided, turned aside. The sinner has but to remain as he is; the shame encotapnsoeth him already, and only departeth not. The, wrath of God is already upon him, and abideth on him.
Mic 3:12. So then, Christians, following Him. iho captain of their salvation, strengthened by his grace, must hurst the bars of the flesh and of the world, the bonds and chains of passions and habits, force, themselves through the narrow way and narrow gate, do violence to ihetnselves. endure hardness, as good soldiers of Jems Christ. The title of our Lord, the breaker-throuyh, and the saying, they break through, together express the same as the New Testament doth, in regard to our being partakers of the sufferings of Christ.Mic 3:6 The prayer is never too late, until judgment conies; the day of grace is over when the time of judgment has arrived. They shall cry unt the Loid, anil shall not he heard, because they too did not hear those who asked them, and the Lord shall turn his face from them, because they too turned their face from those who prayed to them. O, what, will that turning away of the face he, on which hangs eternity!Tr.]
Footnotes:
[1][Cf. Gram, and Text. note.The power is rather the ability to exert a holy influence given from God.Tr.].
[2][Or, by blood be may mean that they indirectly took away life, in that through wroog judgments, extortion, usury, fraud, oppression, reducing wages, or detaining them, they took away what was necessary to support life. Or it may be that these men thought to promote the temporal prosperity of Jerusalem, by doings which were unjust, oppressive, crushing to their inferiors. So Solomon, in his degenerate days, made the yoke upon his people and his service griecous, so ambitious monarchs by large standing armies, or filling their exchequers, drain the life-blood of their people. The physical condition and stature of the poorer population in much of France was lowered permanently by the conscriptions under the first emperor. In our wealthy nation the term poverty describes a condition of other days. We have had to coin a new name to designate the misery, offspring of our material prosperity. From our wealthy towns (as from those of Flanders,) ascends to heaven against us, the cry of pauperism, i. e., the cry of distress, arrived at a condition of system and of power, and, by an unexpected curse, issuing from the very development of wealth. The political economy of unbelief has been crushed by facts on all the theatres of human activity and industry (Laeordaire). Truly we build up Zion with blood, when we cheapen luxuries and comforts at the price of souls, use Christian toil like brute strength, tempt men to dishonesty and women to other sin, to eke out the scanty wages which alone our selfish thirst for cheapness allows, heedless of everything save of our individvial gratification, or of the commercial prosperity which we have made our God. Pusey, in loc.Tr.]
Fuente: A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures, Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical by Lange
CONTENTS
This Chapter is much in the strain of the general tenor of the Prophets, full of reproof mingled with gracious promises. Through the whole of the Chapter we find much of the love of God, even in the midst of threatened judgment.
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
It must have been a sad day with the Church, and indeed the history of those times proves it was, when it was as with the priest, so with the people. A state of general corruption prevailed. Isaiah the contemporary of Micah, hath described it. Isa 24:1-12 .
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Divine Accusations
Mic 2
“O thou that art named the house of Jacob, is the spirit of the Lord straitened? are these his doings? do not my words do good to him that walketh uprightly?” ( Mic 2:7 ).
This is a yearning expostulation. The Lord is disappointed; his heart is heavy and sore; the prophecy is not according to his own spirit and purpose, and all things are enfeebled, and he himself is humiliated in the presence of the people and of the nations. We should bethink ourselves that it is God we are representing. When the Church is doing nothing God is misrepresented. It is not the Church that takes and terminates all the origin and effect of this miserable failure; the matter does not rest within the four corners of the Church. The Church has undertaken to represent the supernatural, the eternal, the infinite, the very throne and majesty of God; by right therefore of that assumption God has a right to inquire into the spirit and the action of his Church. We have seen how in the ancient time one man said the sanctuary was the king’s chapel. The false prophet made the temple of God into private property; he said, “It is the king’s chapel,” you have no business with it, you ought not to criticise it; you have nothing to do with it, it is private property. And man, in his best moods, with all his purest, noblest instincts, says, No: the temple of God is never private property, the truth of God is never an individual possession; the kingdom of God is God’s kingdom, and what is God’s kingdom is meant to be the house and the home, the refuge and the sanctuary of the world. So the Lord takes up our reports, and says, You are misrepresenting me; whenever you are reluctant, indifferent, inefficient, self-indulgent, the matter does not begin and end with yourselves. Are these my doings? A thought of this kind gives a new aspect to all Christian endeavour, prayer, enterprise, and sacrifice. The men who are leading the Church have a right to expect great things. The great things are not in the programme of all men; they are content to begin, continue, and close with some measure of propriety; they have lost the thunder because they have lost the lightning. Our business now is to get quietly done, and to assure ourselves that we can get quietly home. The roar of strength, the flash of glory, the curse of righteous denunciation, the fury of a divine enthusiasm, we have labelled sensational, and put away. Let a man examine his ministry by this test, and he will soon conclude his criticism; his face will burn with shame because his soul will be filled with a multitude of reproaches.
The Lord proceeds to inquire: “Do not my words do good to him that walketh uprightly?” You are trying to do the right thing in the wrong way; you are wasting the bread of the kingdom of heaven; you have mistaken the right beginning and the right continuance of all this ministry of revelation. My sun will never do good to a dead creed; every beam of that sun is a sword striking at that poor outcast dead thing. “Do not my words do good?” to whom? To the man who wants them, longs for them, represents their purpose, walks uprightly. Literally, Do not my words do good to him that is upright? You must not only have right food, you must have the right appetite and the right digestion. God’s revelation is lost upon the man who cares nothing for it. It is within the power of the eyelid to shut out the midday. If we had been upright we had been fat of soul, strong of mind, chivalrous and noble of heart, because we should have advanced according to our own quality; being godlike we should have become godlier, we should have been perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect. The Bible has nothing to say to the froward soul. The revelation of God never talks to the critic. Intellect, unless a servant, has no business with things spiritual, supernatural, ineffable. Let every man then test himself by this one standard. The word of the Lord is meant to do good to the upright. Not necessarily to the personally perfect. There are no such people, except in their own estimation, and therefore there are none perfect at all. What is it to be upright then? To be sincere, to mean to be right. There is a middle line in every man’s thought and life and purpose. Do not judge him by the higher line or by the lower level; you will find the average thought and tendency and pressure judge by that. When a man says, I want to be right, though I am falling seven times a day, he is right. Take heart; you are looking at your sins, and saying you are a bad man; possibly not: there may be a thousand sins in your hand, and yet you may be a good man. Not if you love them, delight in them, give them hearty welcome day by day; but if you accept them as for the time being incidental to the bold, noble, strenuous struggle after the right, you are right, and your prayers shall win their way through all that black cloud of iniquity, and strike the eternal throne, prevalently, triumphantly. The Lord loves prayers that are battle-worn. There must be something pathetic to that great gentle Priest of ours, eternal Intercessor, when he takes up our prayers like bruised birds that have struck their wings against a thousand obstacles, but still have gone on and up, and are seeking rest in his intercession. Your bruised prayers are better than your cold ones, without scratch or flaw upon their finery of eloquence. God be merciful to me a sinner! is a prayer that will work its way right up, though the whole firmament be darkened with diabolic spirits and ministration. “Do not my words do good to him that walketh uprightly?” and to walk uprightly is not to walk pedantically, ostentatiously, and perfectly in the estimation of the world; but to walk uprightly is to have the stress of the soul in the right direction. O poor soul, thou art punctured and speared and bayoneted and bruised, but thou art still soul, fire, a flash eternal, unquenchable! Cheer thee; thy Saviour waits for thy latest prayer; it may be thy poorest in words, but thy strongest and best in intent and unction.
The entreaty proceeds to take upon itself the form of an accusation,
“Even of late my people is risen up as an enemy” ( Mic 2:8 ).
We might pass by that word as vague. In reality it is most definite. “Even of late”: literally, Even yesterday, so late as yesterday, we fought the Lord. Do not let us suppose that the Lord is charging upon us some sin done in some withered Eden. The account is written with ink that is not yet dry. It is a new charge, it is the most recent of accusations; there need be no falling back upon failing memory, saying, Forty years ago, fifty years since, I am charged with having done a deed that is even now ripening into retribution; my memory fails me: half a century is a long time to hold in one’s mind. Do not talk so: never mind the deeds of half a century; last night you struck at the eternal throne like a rebel Even yesterday my people is risen up as an enemy. The Lord is not talking about some billows that rose a hundred years ago and foamed and swelled and roared and died; he is speaking about a great black wave that threw its iniquity on the shore yesternight. We cannot escape God. It is the last thought that was against him. We can dispute any charge that is half a century old, but when the accusation is new as yesterday, yea, recent as the morning, who can answer it? Nor let us think that God finds all his rebels somewhere else than within our own hearts, and souls, and houses, and businesses. What an interesting question this would be, though not to some minds, Is one man any better than another? We can imagine with what redundance of self-congratulation some men would answer an inquiry almost impertinent; but when the smile of such dying radiance has gone, we simply repeat the inquiry, Is one man better than another? Is John any better than Iscariot? We are better in so many different ways, and it as the peculiarity of the way that often determines our estimate. The drunkard has no friends, yet he may be a better man than the Pharisee. The thief caught by the constabulary hand is driven off into prison, and properly; but the bigger thief that puts his felonious hand into the souls of men goes to the sanctuary and repeats his worthless prayer. Who is it, then, that is really the upright man, the true man, and the good man? The man who earnestly wants to be good even if he were found helplessly drunk in the public thoroughfare, he must not be condemned on that account alone; examine into the case, discover how it came to be, and, O thou dainty Pharisee, he may be a better man than thou art. What does his soul say? what does his heart want? what is the average line in the man’s thought and purpose? Blessed be God, we are not to judge, but we cannot keep our clever ingenuity from the throne of judgment, and we delight to add some increment to our virtue by condemning the vice of better men. Jesus Christ never found any respectable people who were really good. He distrusted them. If he dined with them it was that he might have a larger opportunity for rebuking them. Yet there must be no licence given. When we are seeking to institute a proper standard and measure of consolation and encouragement, there must be no sanction given to wantonness in the interpretation of the divine law, or the uses of the divine liberty.
Now the Lord passes to retribution, and he utters words which have often been misquoted, and which have been turned into a proverb for the signification of anything but the original truth,
“Arise ye, and depart: for this is not your rest” ( Mic 2:10 ).
We have been taught that this world is not our resting-place, but rather a place of momentary halting, a place of probation, a school for the acquisition of elementary knowledge, the beginning of things, and that he is wrong who settles down here as if he had obtained a permanent refuge and an abiding home. All that is quite true; it is a lovely and a rational sentiment; that, however, is not the truth of this text. The Lord is punishing his people; he says, You have given no rest to others, you shall have no rest yourselves. We have seen that whilst men were lying in their beds devising iniquity, the Lord says, “I devise” ( Mic 2:3 ). Bring that thought to bear upon the passage immediately before us, and the paraphrase would be this: You have given no rest to men, women, or children; what you have sown you shall reap. You have been unkind to others, and now you shall experience unkindness yourselves; you have been too pleased to drive men out into the wilderness, now you shall find your dwelling in sandy and stony places: “Be not deceived, God is not mocked; for whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap.” “Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.” A man must reap the harvest of his own seedtime. You cannot pray yourselves out of it. Do not pray to Nature. She has no answers, she has a great deaf ear; she will listen to you as long as you care to talk with appearance of being deeply interested in your speech, but in reality she does not hear a word of it; she is ruthless, relentless, a Shylock that cannot be shaken off by subtlety or casuistry of interpretation of law. You killed, you shall be slain; you were pitiless, you shall be unpitied; you played the tyrant when you could, a foot shall be set on your own neck. Now talk to Nature; soothe her, pet her, coax her, bribe her, tell her all the nonsense that is in your heart, and still when you have ended she lifts her gleaming sword, and strikes for man and God. There may be temporary appearances to the contrary; the appearances, however, are but temporary. We do not take in field enough in judging God; it is not what he does to-day or tomorrow, in this decade or in that; he has no time. The river has no drops. You may have disturbed the river and broken it into drops, but the river is a unit; eternity rolls on, though now and again it has been shattered into the foam of so-called time. God will judge thee, thou whited sepulchre! It is delightful to the moral sense to find through the whole of the Old Testament the spirit of retribution going forward, saying, As I have done unto others, so the Lord hath done unto me; I cut off the thumbs and the great toes of seventy kings, and now my own must be cut off. God is just. Do not say he has forgotten yesterday; it is alway present to his mind.
Now the Lord passes from the people as a whole to the prophets:
“Thus saith the Lord concerning the prophets that make my people err, that bite with their teeth, and cry, Peace; and he that putteth not into their mouths, they even prepare war against him. Therefore night shall be unto you, that ye shall not have a vision; and it shall be dark unto you, that ye shall not divine; and the sun shall go down over the prophets, and the day shall be dark over them. Then shall the seers be ashamed, and the diviners confounded: yea, they shall all cover their lips; for there is no answer of God” ( Mic 3:5-7 ).
The biting here in the original is the biting of a serpent. The deterioration here indicated is the fall from a prophet to a viper. Such falls are possible, such apostasies are indeed the miracles of human story; but there they are, real, simple, indisputable, too obvious and too humiliating facts. The biting of a perverted man is the worst kind of biting. We say there is no zealot so mad as a pervert. There is no religion so tremendous as irreligiousness. It is this sour wine that becomes poison. Keep away from men who have been good, and have lost their religious and spiritual savour. They will cry anything that you want them to cry. In this instance the prophets cried, “Peace,” and if men did not praise them, they prepared war against the men who were hostile; if men did not give to them, men had to reckon for war. There is no man so bad as the fallen prophet. We are not speaking now of the temporary falls which seem to be incident to development of character honestly conducted, but to the men whose soul is turned away from love of truth and love of light. What is to be the consequence? The same law of retribution prevails:
“Therefore night shall be unto you, that ye shall not have a vision; and it shall be dark unto you, that ye shall not divine; and the sun shall go down over the prophets, and the day shall be dark over them” ( Mic 3:6 ).
So outer darkness is not a discovery of the New Testament. The unprofitable servant is there doomed to outer darkness, where shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth; but here we have the same darkness the darkness is of old; there is no new midnight. God will visit the prophet with darkness. When a genius is conscious that he has lost his inspiration there is no man so unhappy. The average ordinary man, whose life is a daily but not despicable commonplace, is not conscious of great losses, he never had great riches; but given a man once possessed with genius, and give him to feel that the angel is beyond him, outside of him, lifting glittering wings in eternal flight, and the moment of such consciousness is hell. The Lord sends night upon the prophets, and a prophet without light is in perdition; a prophet without his mantle is naked, not in body, but in soul.
What shall become of these prophets? “They shall cover their lips.” The action is that of a leper. The leper was commanded to cover his lips and to cry, Unclean, unclean! The Lord’s charge is: The lip has lied, cover it; the lip of the prophet has been prostituted to falsehood cover it, conceal it. See, the prophets that ought to have led the age are like lepers with bent heads, calling, Unclean, unclean! God will not have any bad service. He will not allow men to come in with genius to assist in the interpretation of his kingdom if genius be not sustained by honest goodness; not by that perfection which is the worst kind of imperfection, but by that perfectness of wish which is the guarantee of attainment. A man in London said that he himself was so good, so full of the Holy Spirit, that he did not believe that even God himself could increase the blessing. I no sooner heard it than I said, That’s a bad man, whoever he is. I did not know the man, but I said a man who can talk so is a bad man; and alas! that poor wretch was soon revealed. Do not let us aim at that kind of perfection. The more perfect we are the more modest we shall be, the more silent about ourselves. The more perfect a man is in the sight of God the more he feels any blemish or speck or flaw, and things he would not have seen aforetime now constitute his agony.
The Lord’s accusation ends with this awful word, namely:
“They build up Zion with blood, and Jerusalem with iniquity” ( Mic 3:10 ).
The Lord will not have a Zion so built. The meaning is that these men have gone forth to war and to bloodshed and desolation and so-called conquest, and then have baptised all their iniquity with the name of God, and have brought their spoils, and laid them up in Zion, and the Lord will not have them. Or the meaning is that men have been extortionate they have oppressed the poor; they have overreached the weak; and they have given a tenth of their profits to the building of the walls of Jerusalem. The Lord will not accept such offerings. Are there men who have served the devil with both hands earnestly, and have grown fat and bloated in his service, and do they atone for all by a cheque of a thousand pounds to God’s temple! Burn it! Yet there is a vulgarity that feeds its piety by writing enormous cheques. The larger the cheque the better, if it be given with an honest hand; then every coin of gold is worth ten times its nominal amount, then every copper piece is gold, because of the touch of honesty and the pain of sacrifice; but if a man shall eat and drink, and fill his house with devils, and become tired, sated, and shall seek to pay off the Lord’s sword, he will soon be made to feel what a fool he is. The Lord will have none of him. The walls of the sanctuary must be built with honest stone and laid with honest hands, then God will take care of it; but if even Zion be built with blood it shall be burned with fire. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God; yet the most joyous and glorious thing if our hearts be filled with a sincere desire to know his will and do it.
Prayer
Unto thee, O Lord, is our prayer directed; hear thou in heaven thy dwelling-place, and when thou nearest, Lord, forgive. It is a prayer from the heart which thou thyself hast given us to pray. We pray to know thee more clearly, to follow thee more steadfastly, to serve thee more obediently. This is the Lord’s prayer; this is no prayer of our own selfishness; this also cometh forth from the Lord of hosts, bearing upon its every letter the sign that God did teach it to our hearts. We pray this prayer, as all others, that are true and honest, at the Cross, the great altar, the blessed mercy-seat; there prayer is its own answer, prayer is turned into praise; the intercession of Christ magnifies our requests, and assures their fulfilment, according to the wisdom and tenderness of God. If we ask aught amiss thou dost not call it prayer, and thou wilt not answer our ignorance; if we ask aught aright it is of thy teaching; if we ask it at the Cross we have it whilst we are yet pleading for it. This is the mystery of thy love; this is the wonder and the miracle of prayer. Lord, hear us when we ask to be forgiven: the load of yesterday is too heavy for our strength, the shadow of our iniquity plunges us into sevenfold night; but where sin abounds, doth not grace much more abound? Can any black billows of iniquity overtop the Cross? Doth it not rise high above all oceans of wickedness? Is it not a sign that the mercy of the Lord endureth for ever? Truly men have wandered far from thee, but thou canst find them in their lost estate, and bring them back with rejoicing. This is the purpose of the Gospel, this is the one object of the Son of God he came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance; they that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick. He came to seek and to save the lost; Lord, he came therefore to seek and to save us. All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned every one to his own way; there is none righteous, no, not one. Thou hast come after us, thou Son of man, thou Son of God; seek us until thou dost find us, and restore us to the household we have left Be with us all the day; give insight, strength, wisdom, force of character; give us sensitiveness, that we may feel the life that is round about us. Create within us Christly sympathies, that we may answer all the need and distress that mark the days through which we pass, and give us the living, holy, eternal Spirit, that our bodies may become his temples, and our minds his dwelling-place. These are great requests, but they touch not the boundlessness of thy love; in so far as they are pure and wise thou wilt give us the answer ere we say Amen,
Fuente: The People’s Bible by Joseph Parker
XXIX
THE BOOK OF MICAH PART 2
Micah 3-7
The title of this section (Micah 3-5) in the analysis is “A Gross Sin, a Great Salvation (Restoration), and a Glorious Saviour.”
The prophet characterizes their sin in Mic 3:1-4 . In Mic 2 we have a painful picture of their sins but in this paragraph we have a more detailed account of their sins and the punishment. He again addresses the heads of Jacob and the rulers of the house of Israel, and asks them the question, “Is it not for you to know justice?” You are the men that should do right: you are the men appointed to bring justice to the people, but what are you like? “You hate the good, and love the evil.” And then he gives another and more terrible description of their oppression and the way they have treated the poor, “who pluck off their skin from off them and their flesh from off their bones; and flay their skin from off them, and break their bones, and chop them in pieces, as for the pot, and as flesh within the caldron,” which of course) is an extremely strong way of putting it. Before the French Revolution it was much the same. A peasant said, “They crop us as a sheep would crop the grass,” and another peasant made the remark, “They treat us as if we were but food.” This condition existed many times previous to the time of Micah, and many times since. The result will be destruction: “Then shall they cry unto the Lord, but he will not hear them; he will even hide his face from them at that time.”
Micah attacks the false prophets in these words: “Thus saith the Lord concerning the prophets that make my people to err; that bite with their teeth.” Most people thus bite, but these prophets had a peculiar purpose in biting with their teeth; they did all their prophesying that they might have something to bite. “They bite and cry, Peace; and whoso putteth not into their mouths they even prepare war against him.” Just as in Jeremiah’s day so they did in Micah’s day; both prophets had to contend with the false prophets. “And whoso putteth not into their mouths, they even prepare war against him,” that is, if a person did not feed them or give them something they proclaimed a war against him in the name of God. Because of this, the result would be darkness, mental, moral, and spiritual as well as political: “It shall be night unto you that ye shall have no vision; and it shall be dark unto you, that ye shall not divine; and the sun shall go down upon the prophets, and the day shall be black over them.”
The seers, the soothsayers, the diviners, the visionaries, the fortunetellers, and the class that live by preying upon the people, shall be ashamed and confounded; “Yea, they shall all cover their lips; for there is no answer of God.”
Now, the contrast between those false prophets and Micah, the true prophet of God, follows: “But as for me, I am full of power by the Spirit of the Lord and of judgment, and of might, to declare unto Jacob his transgression, and to Israel his sin.” The difference is an ethical and a spiritual one. One is indwelt and filled with the power of the Spirit, the other is indwelt and filled with the power of his own selfish ambition and desires. The difference is fundamentally one of character. In Mic 3:9-12 we hear Micah, again addressing the heads of Jacob, accusing them of abhorring justice and perverting equity. He says, “They build up Zion with blood and Jerusalem with iniquity. The heads thereof judge for reward, and the priests thereof teach for hire, and the prophets thereof divine for money: yet they lean upon the Lord, and say, Is not the Lord among us: No evil can come upon us.”
They felt this way when Jeremiah prophesied their downfall; they said, “The Temple ! The Temple! The Temple! It is impossible! This city, this temple, this people of Jehovah: God will protect us.” And in reply to this plea of false safety Micah says, “Therefore shall Zion for your sake be plowed as a field and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high places of a forest.” This, the princes in Jeremiah’s time said, produced in Hezekiah a deep repentance, and was largely influential in producing the reformation under that excellent king.
Micah’s vision of the mountain of the Lord’s house is found in Mic 4:1-5 . This magnificent passage is to be found almost word for word in Isaiah. Micah says,
In the latter days it shall come to pass, that the mountain of Jehovah’s house shall be established on the top of the mountains, and it shall be exalted above the hills; and peoples shall flow unto it. And many nations shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of Jehovah, and to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths. For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of Jehovah from Jerusalem. Mic 4:1-4
If we compare that with Isa 2:1-4 we see the verbal likeness between the two.
And it shall come to pass in the latter days, that the mountain of Jehovah’s house shall be established on the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it. And many peoples shall go and say. Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of Jehovah, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of Jehovah from Jerusalem. Isa 2:2 ff.
As we stated before these two prophets were contemporaries. Now the question arises, Which of these two copied from the other, which borrowed the other’s thought and the other’s phraseology, or are they both original, or did both Isaiah and Micah borrow from another prophet? It is the idea of a great many of the critics that both borrowed from another prophet, an earlier one, but it is not necessary to infer that Isaiah was the kind of man who needed to borrow from any other prophet. He himself was one of the most sublime poetic geniuses the world had ever seen; he possessed an imperial imagination, and he never needed to borrow or plagiarize. It seems more probable that Micah borrowed from Isaiah, if any borrowing was done. They lived in the same age, they prophesied at the same time and in the same city, and no doubt were acquainted with each other. They moved in a similar circle of ideas, and it is possible that a similar idea would come to both at the same time; that the Spirit of God would present a vision to each mind very much the same. That is possible, but the most reasonable explanation is that this is Isaiah’s vision, his phraseology, his picture. It is Isaiah’s imagination and Isaiah’s literary genius that is behind this, and Micah being familiar with the thought incorporated it into his prophecy and adds Mic 4:4-5 which we do not find in Isaiah, thus:
But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid: for the mouth of the Lord of hosts hath spoken it. For all peoples walk every one in the name of his god; and we will walk in the name of the Lord our God for ever and ever.
For the interpretation and fulfilment of this great prophecy see, Interpretation on Isa 2:1-4 , pp. 115-117.
The thought is carried forward in Mic 4:6-8 . This is the promise of the restoration. Here he takes up the same thought from a little different standpoint. He comes now to the details and peculiarities of the age and deals with the conditions of those people to whom he is speaking, thus: “In that day, saith Jehovah, will I assemble her that halteth, and I will gather her that is driven out, and her that I have afflicted.” This refers to the exiles. “And I will make her that halted a remnant, and her that was cast far off, a strong nation; and the Lord shall reign over them in Mount Zion from henceforth, even for ever.” This agrees with Isaiah, Amos, Hosea, Ezekiel, and Jeremiah. This is a picture of the restoration, while the other was a picture of the restored kingdom. This picture of the former power and dominion is expressed thus: “Thou, O tower of the flock, the hill of the daughter of Zion, unto thee shall it come, yea, the former dominion shall come, the kingdom of the daughter of Jerusalem.”
A period of anguish must precede this restoration. This is indicated by Micah’s questions, thus: “Now why dost thou cry out aloud? Is there no king in thee?” There didn’t seem to be when we remember the king was such a weakling. “Is thy counselor perished, that pangs have taken hold of thee as of a woman in travail?” All good counsellors had perished. He goes on: “Be in pain, and labour to bring forth, O daughter of Zion, like a woman in travail; for now shall thou go forth out of the city, and thou shalt dwell in the field, and thou shalt come even to Babylon: there shalt thou be delivered; there the Lord will redeem thee from the hand of thine enemies.” This statement, that they should go into Babylon troubles the critical school. They say that Babylon was not in the ascendancy in the time of Micah. Assyria was the nation that loomed upon the horizon as the power that would destroy, therefore they reason that Micah could not have conceived of Babylon being the place of exile because Babylon was not the leading nation. Of course, according to their theory Micah could not see into the future one hundred years.
They also say that this is an interpolation, in fact many of them say that Micah did not prophesy this at all, but it was spoken during the exile or after by some anonymous writer. But in Mic 4:11 he pictures the attitude of the other nations toward Judah and Jerusalem, thus: “Now also many nations are gathered against thee, that say, Let her be defiled, and let our eye see our desire upon Zion.” Isn’t that exactly why Ezekiel prophesied against all these nations and buried his threats of denunciation against them? Now Micah gives the reason why they act thus: “They know not the thoughts of Jehovah, neither understand they his counsel; for he hath gathered them as the sheaves into the threshing-floor.” Because of his attitude toward Judah they will be gathered as sheaves on the floor to be threshed.
The call of Mic 4:13-5:1 is a call to liberty and dominion. The prophet is now speaking of triumphant Israel whose time of deliverance is at hand, and through whom the nations are to be beaten and threshed in punishment. He says to the people of Israel, “Arise, and thresh, O daughter of Zion; for I will make thy horn iron, and I will make thy hoofs brass; and thou shalt beat in pieces many peoples: and I will consecrate their gain unto Jehovah, and their substance unto the Lord of the whole earth.” The figure is that of a great threshing floor upon which the sheaves lay, and the threshing instruments are driven over them, Israel is to be as a threshing instrument of iron which shall be driven over the other nations, and shall break in pieces many people, and their wealth shall be taken by Israel and devoted to the worship of Jehovah. That corresponds with Isa 60 one of the finest passages in Isaiah’s writings.
It also resembles his prediction of Tyre, which shall be destroyed and her whole wealth devoted to the worship of Jehovah. In Mic 5 he again summons Israel to activity: “Now gather thyself in troops, O daughter of troops: he hath laid siege against us; they shall smite the judge of Israel with a rod upon the cheek.” A strange expression, “they shall smite.” In spite of the fact that “thou hast been smitten, arise, smite back and conquer; your time has come, your dominion ye shall receive again.”
Mic 5 is devoted to the glorious Saviour and consequent deliverance, or the messianic King and the Blessedness of Israel. This is another view of the same glorious age of the restoration, a different vision, a different point of view, but essentially the same.
The king of this blessed age arises from among the poor (Mic 5:2-4 ). We saw in the last chapter that Micah was the prophet of the poor, that his sympathies went out for them in particular and now when he pictures this glorious age, and its king as rising, he represents him as rising from the poor class: “But thou Bethlehem, Ephrathah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall one come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting.” Bethlehem, the home of David, the village where the shepherd boy, who afterward became the shepherd king, lived, the place dear to the heart of every Israelite; this is to be the place whence the king shall come. It is one of the smallest places, the most insignificant and most obscure little villages.
It was no accident that the Saviour of the world rose from among the poor, the working class. Is it not the most fitting thing that could possibly have happened that a king of the world should rise from among the poor? Whether it be wise or not in our estimation it certainly was in God’s estimation, and a little thought along that line will convince us that God could not have done a wiser thing than to have Christ rise from among the poor people. “Whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting,” that is, there have been prophecies of him that had been looking forward, expecting him, and he had been manifesting himself in various ways from the beginning, and had been set forth in types and shadows as the one who should come and appear in his glory. Then he goes on with his picture: “Therefore will he give them up, until the time that she which travaileth hath brought forth: then the remnant of his brethren shall return unto the children of Israel.” And then this king, this shepherd-king, this descendant of David, as it says in Mic 5:4 , shall stand and shall feed his flock in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God. This is the picture of the Shepherd so common in Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Amos, Hosea, and again in that immortal parable of the shepherd as found in Joh 10:1 . “And they shall abide, for now shall he be great unto the ends of the earth.”
Micah’s vision of him as a deliverer is found in Mic 5:5-6 He is here presented as the one who shall deliver them from the Assyrian. He uses the Assyrian here because the Assyrian was the great barbaric power that was rising up on the horizon of the world at that time and extending her power over every nation. The very name itself sent terror to the people of that time. “And this man shall be our peace. When the Assyrian shall come into our land, and when he shall tread in our palaces, then shall we raise against him seven shepherds, and eight principal men.” These officials will surround him as his cabinet, to stand by, to support, to give aid, and he will be amply and ably supported on his throne. “And they shall waste the land of Assyria with the sword, and the land of Nimrod in the entrances thereof.” On time’s horizon the end seems close with Micah. Twenty-six hundred years or more have passed by since, and time’s horizon is yet enlarging. The Assyrians have been extinct since a hundred years after Micah’s time. So the Assyrian here is used to represent the enemies of the Messiah’s kingdom and thus includes all the nations that know not God.
The relation of Israel to her friends and to her foes is stated in Mic 5:7-9 . To her friends the remnant of Jacob shall be as dew from Jehovah, as showers upon the grass that tarrieth not for man, nor waiteth for the sons of men.” That is true yet regarding the remnant of Israel. But for their enemies, “the remnant of Jacob shall be among all the nations in the midst of many people, as a lion among the beasts of the forests and as a young lion among the flocks of sheep; who, if he go through both treadeth down, and teareth in pieces, and none can deliver.” This is not to be taken literally. There is a sense in which God’s people go forth like a lion, conquering, but the Messiah’s kingdom is spiritual.
Israel’s relation to idolatry in this new condition is set forth in Mic 5:10-15 . All idolatrous connection shall be rooted out: “I will cut off thy horses out of the midst of thee, and I will destroy thy chariots: and I will cut off the cities of thy land, and throw down all thy strongholds. And I will cut off witchcraft out of thine hand; and thou shalt have no more soothsayers: thy graven images also will I cut off, and thy standing images out of the midst of thee; and thou shalt no more worship the work of thine hands.” Israel shall be cleansed of her idolatry.
The title of Micah 6-7 in the analysis is “Jehovah’s Controversy with His People.” This is a different section of the book of Micah, different problems arise here, different modes of expression. A great many of the critics maintain that this was written during the reign of Manasseh when idolatry was revived, and heathen sacrifices were carried on. It would fit in with the reign of Ahaz, however, and Micah prophesied during the reign of Ahaz, Jotham, and Hezekiah. The conditions found here existed during that time.
The case of the controversy of Jehovah with his people is stated in Mic 6:1-9 . Here Jerusalem is called upon, thus: “Arise, contend thou before the mountains, and let the hills hear thy voice. Hear ye, the Lord’s controversy and ye strong foundations of the earth: for the Lord hath a controversy with his people, and he will plead with Israel.” All nature is called upon to hear. This is not mere poetry: there is eternal truth underlying it. “The Lord hath a controversy with his people and he will contend with Israel.” He goes on to describe the controversy. What is it about? Not about sin. Jeremiah calls the people to a great controversy regarding their sin; Micah does not. It is how they shall serve Jehovah, how they shall worship him.
Jehovah speaks: “O my people, what have I done unto thee? and wherein have I wearied thee? testify against me.” A marvelous statement, Jehovah asking his people to testify against him, if they have anything to testify. What condescension! Just like Isaiah I “Come now and let us reason together.” Then he goes on, “For I brought thee up out of the land of Egypt, and redeemed thee out of the house of servants; and I sent before thee Moses, Aaron, and Miriam.” “Remember what happened between Shittim and Gilgal,” that plain bordering on the Jordan in Moab, and Gilgal across the Jordan. What happened between these two places? “Ye know the great miracle I performed, the stopping of the waters, and the multitude crossing over on dry ground; remember that ye may know the righteous acts of Jehovah.” Mic 6:6 gives a little glimpse into the religious condition of the people, “Wherewith 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?” They had been doing that in abundance. “Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? and shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?” The numbers used are an exaggeration of course, for purposes of rhetoric and making it effective “with ten thousands of rivers of oil.” Oil was a part of the sacrifice and worship. “Shall I give my firstborn for my transgressions, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?” This gives us an idea of what the people were doing, and how they were worshiping. They were sacrificing the first-born, and seemed to seriously believe that Jehovah required them to do so.
Mic 6:8 is one of the greatest passages in the Old Testament. Micah sums up the whole of religion in one little verse; he gives one final answer to all such questions as to how we should serve and worship God, thus: “He hath shewed 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?” No prophet or writer ever summed up the whole duty of religion better than Micah does here to do justly, righteously in all conduct, i.e., kings, rulers, business magnates, commercial princes, millionaires, land owners, workmen. That is the first thing. And more than that, “love mercy,” go beyond strict justice; go farther than that, delight in tenderness, show mercy. That goes as far as Christianity almost. And then finally, “humble thyself to walk with thy God,” or “walk humbly with thy God”; the better translation, perhaps is, “Humble thyself to walk with God.” This is the finest expression that has ever been used to describe the service of true religion: “Do justly,” there is our relationship in all civil life. “Love mercy,” there is, our relationship in all home life, family life, all social life; there is the tender side of human life. “Walk humbly with God”; there is the divine side. There is just one passage that equals this, says Dr. George Adam Smith, and that is where Jesus says, “Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest” (Mat 11:28-29 ).
The charges here against the city (Mic 6:9-16 ) are their various sins which are the reasons for Jehovah’s visitation. Here we have the city’s life pictured in a vivid and lurid way. Mic 6:9 , “The Lord’s voice crieth unto the city, and the man of wisdom shall see thy name: hear ye the rod, and who hath appointed it.” Mic 6:10 , “Are there yet the treasures of wickedness in the house of the wicked, and the scant measure that is abominable?” Mic 6:11 , “Shall I count them pure with the wicked balances, and with the bag of deceitful weights? For the rich men thereof are full of violence and the inhabitants thereof have spoken lies, and their tongue is deceitful in their mouth.” And because of this he utters his threat of destruction and predicts the utter desolation of the country and the people. In Mic 6:16 he charges them with following the example of Omri: “For the statutes of Omri are kept and all the works of the house of Ahab.” Ahab seized Naboth’s vineyard and they followed his example, “and ye walk in their counsels: that I may make thee a desolation and the inhabitants thereof an hissing; therefore ye shall bear the reproach of my people.”
The prophet’s part in the case is found in Mic 7:1-6 . He appears as the prosecuting attorney here in this passage and bewails the utter corruption of society: “Woe is me! for I am as when they have gathered the summer fruits as the grape gleanings of the vintage: there is no cluster to eat; my soul desireth the first ripe fig. The good man is perished out of the earth: and there is none upright among men: they all lie in wait for blood; they hunt every man his brother with a net.” It does not necessarily mean literal blood, but when one takes away a man’s means of support, his wages, his necessities of life, he takes away his life because he will have less of the necessities of life. The oppression of the poor is simply the taking of the blood of the people. “They hunt every man his brother with a net,” and how many businessmen there are in this age that do love to get the net around another man! “That they may do evil with both hands earnestly, the prince asketh, and the judge is ready for a reward; and the great man, uttereth his mischievous desire; thus they weave it together.” There is a lot of sharp dealing among them, a hard people to deal with; “The best of them is as a brier: the most upright is sharper than a thorn hedge. Trust ye not in a friend, put ye not confidence in a guide: keep the doors of thy mouth from her that lieth in thy bosom.” No one can be trusted. When a man dare not confide in his own wife, it is about as bad as it can be. “For the son dishonoureth the father, the daughter riseth up against her mother, the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law, a man’s enemies are the men of his own house.” How desperate the entire life of the nation must have been with every form of deceit practiced. Jesus Christ used this very expression to tell how his gospel was going to cause division and enmity.
The righteous remnant takes part in the case (Mic 7:7-13 ). They plead guilty and hope for mercy and pardon. It is the voice of the prophet and in the prophet the voice of the righteous kernel the true Israel that speaks here, not the voice of the people nor the rulers, but the righteous kernel, the true Israel, the mother of sorrow. Notice what she says in resignation: “As for me, I will look unto the Lord, I will wait for the God of my salvation; my God will hear me.” That is a fine text, and the next one is even better: “Rejoice not against me, O mine enemy: when I fall, I shall arise; when I sit in darkness, the Lord shall be a light unto me.” To translate it literally: “I have fallen, I will arise.” Faith seldom, if ever, in dark moments, uttered a more hopeful, a more blessed sentiment than that. In Bunyan’s immortal allegory, where he describes Christian in the Valley of Humiliation and fighting with Apollyon, and Apollyon throws him to the ground, Christian thrusts him with his sword, quoting these words, “Rejoice not against me, O mine enemy: when I fall, I shall arise.” In Mic 7:9 we have a note of resignation that is beautiful: “I will bear the indignation of the Lord, because I have sinned against him, until he plead my cause and execute judgment for me; he will bring me forth to the light, and I shall behold his righteousness.” How hopeful and trustful that is!
Now the effect upon his enemies: “Then she that is mine enemy shall see it, and shame shall cover her which said unto me, Where is the Lord thy God? mine eyes shall behold her: now shall she be trodden down as the mire of the streets.” He gives another glimpse of the future: “In that day thy walls are to be built, in that day shall the decree be far removed.” That reminds us of Nehemiah and the rebuilding of the walls. Micah says the time will come when the walls will be rebuilt. “The decree”; we do not know just what is meant here, perhaps the marginal reading, “boundary,” is correct. Then he goes on to picture in glowing language the return of the people from all nations whither they have been scattered: “They shall come unto thee from Assyria, and from the fortified cities, and from the fortress, even to the River, and from sea to sea, and from mountain to mountain,” but that is to be after the desolation takes place, for in Mic 7:13 , it says, “Notwithstanding, the land shall be desolate because of them that dwell therein, for the fruit of their doings.”
The prophet’s final plea for and hope held out to Israel is as follows: “Feed thy people with thy rod, the flock of thine heritage, which dwell solitarily in the wood, in the midst of Carmel: let them feed in Bashan and Gilead, as in the days of old.” This seems to imply that Northern Israel had not been depopulated in Micah’s time, for just before this Tiglathpileser had deported all Palestine beyond the Jordan; that seems to have taken place and Micah pictures the return here as the people coming to feed in Bashan in the land from which they had been taken.
The hope here is that the nations, when they see this, shall come in dread and dismay, Mic 7:17 . “The nations shall see and be ashamed of all their might: they shall lay their hand upon their mouth; their ears shall be deaf. They shall lick the dust like the serpent,” referring to the account in Gen 3 regarding the serpent, saying that dust should be his meat, and that he should move along close to the earth and should lick up the dust. “They shall move out of their holes like worms of the earth: they shall be afraid of the Lord our God, and shall fear because of thee.” A picture of the terror of the nations after the Restoration. Ezekiel pictures them as being utterly subdued, so does Jeremiah to some extent, but Micah pictures them as being in abject submission and terror, crawling like servile beasts in fear before the presence of Israel.
Now come the beauties of the doxology (Mic 7:18 ): “Who is a God like unto thee, that pardoneth iniquity, and passeth by the transgression of the remnant of his heritage? he retaineth not his anger for ever, because he delighteth in mercy.” Isn’t that a beautiful picture of God? There are several texts there. “He will turn again, he will have compassion upon us: he will subdue our iniquities: and thou wilt cast all their sins into the depths of the sea.” How deep is the sea? In some places it is five miles deep. If their sins are cast down to the bottom of the sea they are gone forever. And he closes this beautiful statement thus: “Thou wilt perform the truth to Jacob and the mercy to ABRAHAM, which thou hast sworn unto our fathers from the days of old.” He goes back to Abraham, God’s promise to him: “All nations shall be blessed in thee,” and that promise must be fulfilled.
QUESTIONS
1. What is the title of this section (Micah 3-5) in the analysis?
2. How does the prophet characterize their sins in Mic 3:1-4 , what instances in modern history, and what is the result of the sin of Jacob?
3. Describe Micah’s attack on the false prophets and his contrast between himself and them.
4. What charge does Micah bring against the heads, the priests & the prophets, respectively, what their reply and what the consequent result?
5. What is Micah’s vision of the mountain of the Lord’s house (Mic 4:1-5 ), how does it compare with Isa 2:1-4 . Who borrowed in this case?
6. How is the thought carried forward in Mic 4:6-8 ?
7. Describe the period of anguish that must precede this restoration, the radical critics’ position on this passage, and the attitude of the other nations toward Judah and Jerusalem.
8. What is the call of Mic 4:13-5:1 ?
9. To what is Mic 5 devoted?
10. What Micah’s vision of this king as to his origin and place of birth?
11. What Micah’s vision of him as a deliverer and why the mention of the Assyrian in this connection (Mic 5:5-6 ) ?
12. What the relation of Israel to her friends and to her foes (Mic 5:7-9 )?
13. What shall be Israel’s relation to idolatry in this new condition (Mic 5:10-15 )?
14. What the title of Micah 6-7 in the analysis and what can you say in general of this section?
15. State the case of the controversy of Jehovah with his people (Mic 6:1-8 ).
16. What can you say of the beauty and meaning of Mic 6:8 and what the application of its several points?
17. What are the charges here against the city (Mic 6:9-16 )?
18. What is the prophet’s part in the case (Mic 7:1-6 )?
19. What part does the righteous remnant take in the case (Mic 7:7-13 ), and what hope do they see?
20. What is the prophet’s final plea for and hope held out to Israel?
21. What are the beauties of the doxology (Mic 7:18 )?
Fuente: B.H. Carroll’s An Interpretation of the English Bible
Mic 3:1 And I said, Hear, I pray you, O heads of Jacob, and ye princes of the house of Israel; [Is it] not for you to know judgment?
Ver. 1. And I said ] viz. At another time, and in a new discourse; the heads whereof we have here recorded. A stinging sermon it is, preached to the princes and prophets, those great heteroclites a in the house of Israel. For as in a fish, so in a Church and state, corruption begins at the head; and as rheum b falling from the head upon the lights, breeds a consumption of the whole body, so is it here. To the chieftains therefore, and capitanei, capital, our prophet applieth himself. And as it is said of Suetonius, that ea libertate, scripsit Imperatorum vitas qua ipsi vixerunt, that he wrote the emperors’ lives with as much liberty as they lived them; so did Micah as boldly reprove the princes’ sins as they committed them. Such another preacher among us was Latimer, and after him Deering; who in his sermon before Queen Elizabeth, speaking of the disorders of the times; These things are so, saith he, and you sit still and do nothing. And again, May we not well say with the prophet, saith he, It is the Lord’s mercy that we are not consumed, seeing there is so much disobedience both in subjects and prince. Once it was Tanquam ovis, as a sheep, before the shearer: but now it is Tanquam iuvenca petulca, as an untamed heifer. In our days Reverend Mr Stock had this commendation given him by a faithful witness; that he could speak his mind fitly, and that he dared speak it freely. I will go to the Bishop (Stephen Gardiner, then lord chancellor), and tell him to his beard that he doth naught, said Dr Taylor, martyr; and he did so, though his friends dissuaded him. Truth must be spoken, however it be taken. And if God’s messengers must be mannerly in the form, yet in the matter of their message they must be resolute and plain dealing. It is probable that Joseph used some kind of preface to Pharaoh’s baker in reading him that hard destiny, Gen 40:19 , such haply as was that of Daniel to Nebuchadnezzar, Dan 4:19 , or as Philo brings him in with a Utinam tale somnium non vidisses. But for the matter he gives him a sound, though a sharp, interpretation. So dealeth Micah by these corrupt princes, to whom nevertheless he giveth their due titles; and of whom he fairly begs audience. “Hear, I pray you, ye heads of Jacob,” &c. Or, hear ye now, who formerly have refused to hearken. It was in Hezekiah’s days that this sermon was preached, as appeareth Jer 26:18 , not long before Sennacherib invaded the land, Mic 5:5 . And although the king himself were religious and righteous, yet many of his princes and courtiers, who in the reign of his father Ahaz had been habituated in rapine and wrong-dealing, still played their pranks, and are here as barely told their own.
Is it not for you to know judgment?
a Deviating from the ordinary rule or standard; irregular, exceptional, abnormal, anomalous, eccentric. Said of persons and things. D
b Watery matter secreted by the mucous glands or membranes, such as collects in or drops from the nose, eyes, and mouth, etc., and which, when abnormal, was supposed to cause disease; hence, an excessive or morbid ‘defluxion’ of any kind. D
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
NASB (UPDATED) TEXT: Mic 3:1-4
1And I said,
‘Hear now, heads of Jacob
And rulers of the house of Israel.
Is it not for you to know justice?
2You who hate good and love evil,
Who tear off their skin from them
And their flesh from their bones,
3And who eat the flesh of my people,
Strip off their skin from them,
Break their bones,
And chop them up as for the pot
And as meat in a kettle.
4Then they will cry out to the LORD,
But He will not answer them.
Instead, He will hide His face from them at that time,
Because they have practiced evil deeds.
Mic 3:1 This is a strong contrast to Mic 2:12-13. The abrupt transition from judgment to restoration characterizes this book. This literary technique may be unconsciously related to the antithetical parallelism of Hebrew poetry! Chapter 3 picks up again on the theme of divine judgment.
Hear This is the Hebrew Shema (BDB 1033, KB 1570, Qal IMPERATIVE), which means to hear so as to do (cf. Mic 1:2; Mic 3:1; Mic 6:1). This word seems to outline the book. See note at Mic 1:2.
heads of Jacob. . .rulers of the house of Israel.
Is it not for you to know justice All three lines of poetry refer to the political leaders of Judah (cf. Mic 3:9-10) who should have been trained in the Mosaic law (cf. Deu 12:17), but followed a policy of greed and self-centeredness (cf. Amo 5:15; Isa 1:16-17). Calling Judah, Israel, probably shows (1) this was spoken after the fall of the Northern Ten Tribes to Assyria in 722 B.C. or (2) it was a way of showing condemnation (e.g., Ezekiel 23).
justice The Hebrew term (BDB 1048) has a wide semantic field:
1. the act of judging (e.g., Isa 41:1; Isa 59:11; Hos 5:1; Hos 5:11; Hos 10:4; Mic 7:9)
2. justice
a. an attribute of God (e.g., Hos 2:19)
b. an attribute of man (e.g., Mic 3:1; Mic 6:8; Isa 1:17)
3. ordinance
a. of God (e.g., Jer 8:7)
b. of king (e.g., 1Sa 8:9; 1Sa 8:11)
4. judge’s decision (e.g., Exo 21:1; Exo 21:31; Exo 24:3)
5. one’s legal right (e.g., Isa 10:2; Isa 49:4; Jer 5:8)
6. custom (e.g., 1Ki 18:28; 2Ki 11:14; 2Ki 17:34)
This term is found several times in Micah (cf. Mic 3:1; Mic 3:8-9; Mic 6:8; Mic 7:9) as well as other eighth century prophets.
1. Isaiah , 41 times
2. Amos , 4 times
3. Hosea , 6 times
Mic 3:2-3 Instead of acting like shepherds, these political leaders (cf. Ezekiel 34) acted like butchers (i.e., tear off, strip off, break, chop). The phrase, eat the flesh of my people, is used in this similar metaphorical sense in Psa 14:4; Psa 27:2 and Pro 30:14.
Mic 3:2 You who hate good and love evil The two VERBS (BDB 12, KB 17) are both Qal ACTIVE PARTICIPLES. These leaders’ response was exactly opposite from God’s will (cf. Isa 1:16-17; Isa 1:21-23; Isa 1:26; Isa 5:7-8; Isa 5:20; Amo 5:15).
Mic 3:4 Then they will cry out to the LORD,
But He will not answer them The VERB cry out (BDB 227, KB 277, Qal IMPERFECT) is a legal term for appealing to the court for help. As these wicked judges did not hear the cries of the poor aliens, orphans, and widows, God will not hear their cry either (cf. Deu 31:17-18; Deu 32:20; Pro 21:13; Isa 1:15; Isa 59:2; Isa 64:7; Jer 33:5; Jas 2:13).
He will hide His face from them at that time The VERB (BDB 711, KB 771) is JUSSIVE in form, but not in meaning. The them refers to the faithless leaders. This is ultimate rejection and parallel to He will not answer them and He will hide His face from them.
Because they have practiced evil deeds Here is the problem. God’s people have repeatedly and flagrantly rebelled and rejected their covenant obligations. They are now reaping what they sowed (cf. Mic 7:13; Isa 3:10-11; Gal 6:7).
Fuente: You Can Understand the Bible: Study Guide Commentary Series by Bob Utley
Hear. This is no indication of Structure. It is a continuation of the threatening against the rulers (Mic 3:1-4, p. 1253, corresponding with “-3”, Mic 3:9-12, below).
princes = judges.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Chapter 3
Now the Lord speaks of the coming judgment that is going to come against those that have gone into captivity.
And I said, Hear, I pray you, O heads of Jacob, and ye princes of the house of Israel; Is it not for you to know judgment? Who hate the good, and love the evil; who pluck off their skin from off them, and their flesh from off their bones; Who also eat the flesh of my people, and flay their skin from off them; and they break their bones, and chop them in pieces, as for the pot, and the flesh within the caldron. Then shall they cry unto the LORD, but he will not hear them: he will even hide his face from them at that time, as they have behaved themselves ill in their doings. Thus saith the LORD concerning the prophets that make my people err, that bite with their teeth, and cry, Peace; and he that putteth not into their mouths, they even prepare war against him ( Mic 3:1-5 ):
So God is speaking out against the people now because of their evil deeds. The judgments of God that are going to come, though they don’t want to hear of it, but it must come. Their prophets are saying unto them, “Peace,” but by that they are causing the people to error.
Therefore night shall be unto you, and ye shall not have a vision; and it shall be dark unto you, that you will not divine; and the sun will go down over the prophets, and the day shall be dark over them. Then shall the seers [or the prophets] be ashamed, and the diviners will be confused: yea, they shall all cover their lips; for there is no answer of God ( Mic 3:6-7 ).
God is not going to speak to them any longer. The voice of God will be silent and, of course, such became the case for four hundred years until John the Baptist came in the wilderness.
But truly [the Lord said] I am full of power by the Spirit of the LORD, and of judgment, and of might, to declare unto Jacob his transgression, and to Israel his sin. Hear this, I pray you, you heads of the house of Jacob, and the princes of the house of Israel, that abhor judgment, and pervert all equity. They build up Zion with blood, and Jerusalem with iniquity. For the heads of the people are taking bribes, and the priests are teaching for hire, and the prophets are divining for money: yet will they lean upon the LORD, and say, Is not the LORD among us? no evil can come upon us ( Mic 3:8-11 ).
So here was a corrupted leadership, both municipal and spiritual. The heads of the people, the judges of the people, the city councilmen were taking bribes and the county supervisors. The ministry had become a profession; professional ministers teaching for hire and the prophets divining for money and yet saying, “Hey, the Lord is with us. No evil is going to come.”
Therefore shall Zion for your sake be plowed as a field, and Jerusalem shall become a heap, and the mountain of the house as the high places of the forest ( Mic 3:12 ).
Jerusalem became a heap. At the present time Professor Shiloh is digging through the heap that was Jerusalem at the time that Micah prophesied. For though Jerusalem was spared from the Assyrians, the Babylonians later came and Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Jerusalem, ravaged the city, broke down the temple, the walls of Jerusalem, and destroyed the houses. And even now, interesting excavations are being made in what they call the hill of Ophel, which is just above the pool of Siloam. And it is that hill that goes from the Gihon Springs and Siloam where Hezekiah had tunneled underneath, above that the hill that goes on up, which is actually what they call Ophel the city of David, but continues on up to the Temple Mount. So it would be a part of the Mount Moriah.
As they are uncovering now the rubble of these houses where the people lived at the time that Micah was prophesying, these very houses in which the people were living then are being uncovered today by the archeologists. And the interesting thing is that as they are uncovering these houses, they are finding just multitudes of little idols, false gods, that the people were worshiping. And they’ve come across a collection of little idols like you can’t believe. They’ve made quite a display of them. Where these people, just as the prophets were warning them, had turned to idolatry and because of that idolatry they were going to be destroyed. Now the prophets were saying everything was all right. “Is not God with us?” But God was ready to bring His judgment. “
Fuente: Through the Bible Commentary
Mic 3:1-4
THIRD CYCLE
OUTRAGES OF CIVIL OFFICIALS(Mic 3:1-4)
(Mic 3:1) Micahs concern for the return of the people to the covenant reaches its highest pitch in chapter three, as he pleads with the official leaders of the people. He has dealt in chapters one and two with the economic and social leaders of the northern and southern kingdoms. Now he turns his attention to the official leaders. He is acutely aware that no nation can rise any higher than the moral standards of its officials, especially of its courts. Repeatedly Micah couches his appeal to people in high places in terms calculated to remind them that they are the temporal rulers of Gods people. He addresses them as the heads of Jacob and the rulers of the house of Israel. To these he addresses a warning of imminent doom, but with the underlying hope that they will repent. The King James version has princes of the house of Israel in this verse. This is unfortunate, since it is generally agreed that this passage is intended for the magistrates and judges rather than for the royal family.
Zerr: Mic 3:1. The hulk of this chapter is against the head men of the nation. Heads of Jacob would be the outstanding men whether they were prophets or men in high social rank. The class of men had for many years taken advantage of their position to impose on the poor and otherwise unfortunate people. The last clause means that the princes were expected to know how to act with good judgment.
These are obviously not included in the remnant mentioned in the closing verses of chapter two. The prophets warning to them follows immediately the glowing hope expressed for the deliverance of the remnant so that they will make no mistake about their own predicament. They must not mistake themselves for inclusion in the real Israel of God just because they sit in the seats of temporal judgement over the people,
IS IT NOT FOR YOU . . .
In Mic 2:1 -ff, we saw Micahs denunciation of the wealthy and influential for their merciless mistreatment of the poor, The prophet now challenges the judges that they have the responsibility of preventing and dealing with such injustice. The wealthy could not do what they do were it not for corrupt courts. (See above on Mic 1:5) Magistrates and judges above all others should be aware of the penalties of wrong doing and injustice. Micahs warning is that the laws apply equally well to the lawyers.
YOU WHO HATE GOOD AND LOVE EVIL( Mic 3:2)
These corrupt judges not only hate good men and love evil men, worse than that, they hate good as a principle and love evil as a principle. Modern existential philosophy and situation ethics notwithstanding, there is such a thing as absolute good and absolute evil . . . as abstract reality as well as in tangible experience.
That the early church fathers believed this to be true is seen in such ancient writings as that attributed to Jerome, the translater of the Latin Vulgate, It is sin not to love good; what guilt to hate it. It is faulty not to flee from evil, what ungodliness to love it.
Zerr: Mic 3:2. Instead of being examples of righteousness, these leaders reversed the proper attitude toward good and evil as to which they loved and hated. The pronouns their and them, stand for the common people who were the victims of the cruelty of the leaders. Pluck off their skin, etc., is said figuratively and refers to the severe treatment they imposed on the people, similar to that mentioned in Mic 2:8.
PLUCK OFF THEIR SKIN AND FLESH
FROM THEIR BONES . . .” (Mic 3:2-3)
Such alluusions as this to describe the cheating advantage taken by one man over another are to be found in every culture. Examples of it in the historic writings of Israel are to be seen in such passages as Psa 14:4 and Pro 30:14. We still speak of such practices as skinning someone.
A proverb attributed to the American Indian says, The Indian scalps his enemies, the white man skins his friends. It seems the white man cannot claim to be original in this maltreatment of his fellowman. The judges of Israel are warned here of the consequences of it.
This particular passage in Micah, denouncing the loving of evil and the hating of good brings to mind a very significant change in civilized mans evaluation of right and wrong. In 1867, Robert Milligan wrote, It will, I presume, be generally conceded that the will of God is the natural and only proper standard of all that is right. If God is our Sovereign King and Lawgiver, it is His right to command, and it is our duty to obey.
To this the Christian will readily say amen! To this also the ancient pagans would agree, although their confusion of deities could furnish no uniformly acceptable standard of right and wrong. To this even the evil doers addressed by Micah gave lip service, else the prophet could not have appealed to them on the ground of a clear cut distinction between good and evil.
We are something more than naive if we believe we can approach modern man, and especially the members of the intellectual and academic communities or young people on this basis today. Beginning with Hegel (1770-1831) through Kierkegaard (1813-1855) to the existential thinking of Karl Jaspers Sarte, Camus, Julian and Aldous Huxley, et al, to the ultramodern (now pass) God-is-dead cult, twentieth century man has reached the rationale which says there not only is not but that there cannot be any absolute good or evil. Everything is relative. Absolutism is dead and man must decide in the context of a given set of circumstances the situation ethics of the moment.
To try to cut through such layers of ignorance by quoting the dictums of God from the Bible is to try to sweep back the tide with a broom. To give up in despair of being able to reach those who think like this is to abandon an entire generation, and possibly an entire civilization to spiritual darkness forever.
Somehow modern Christians must learn, as it is said the early Christians did, to out-think, outlove and outdie those whose spiritual eyes have been blinded by the self-acclaimed wisdom of men. The warnings of the prophets concerning the consequences of loving evil and hating good must be gotten through to modern man, but our task is twice as difficult as that of Micah and the others. They at least shared with those whom they sought to warn the common presupposition that there is a Sovereign God and His word determines the difference between objective good and objective evil. It is no longer so in our day. We share no such common ground with those whom we seek to turn from the error of their ways.
Zerr: Mic 3:3 is more along the same line as the preceding verse (Mic 3:2).
Zerr: Mic 3:4. The pronouns change now and stand for the heads and princes of Israel who are mentioned in Mic 3:1. Then applies to the time when God would bring judgment upon the wicked men. When that time arrives it will be in vain for them to cry to God for mercy. He will turn his face away because they have behaved ill in their doings.
Questions
Third Cycle
1. Discuss Micahs concern for the covenant in light of his plea in Mic 3:1-4.
2. Discuss the concept of absolute good and evil in contrast with modern situation ethics (new morality). Mic 2:1 -ff
3. What is meant by pluch off their skin and flesh from their bones (Mic 2:2(b)-3)?
4. Discuss the will of God as the only natural and proper standard of all that is right.
5. Discuss ways to penetrate the layers of ignorance in modern philosophies with the truth of Gods sovereignty.
6. Are the prophetic warnings of the consequences of loving evil and hating good relevant to our current moral revolution?
7. What three classes of people does Micah denounce? (Mic 2:1-3; Mic 3:1-5)
8. What specific class of leaders are accused of making the people to err?
9. What seems to have been the chief concern of the false prophets?
10. What is Gods warning to mercenary prophets?
11. Comment on the idea that God is a tolerant benevolent benefactor.
12. What is to be the fate of the false prophets in the day of the judgement against the wicked nations as pronounced by Micah?
13. What three things characterize Micah as a true prophet as opposed to the false prophets?
14. Compare the false prophet syndrome of Micahs day with our present religious climate in America.
15. What is the relationship between false religious teaching and the cultural collapse of a civilization?
16. What are the specific sins with which Micah charges the wealthy, the false prophet, the magistrates, the political officials?
17. False teaching is always recognizable by its emphasis on the ____________ of God accompanied by a denial of His ____________.
18. The term head of Jacob calls attention to ____________.
19. Rulers of the house of Israel refers to ____________.
Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary
Addressing himself directly to the rulers of the people, in this second message the prophet describes their peculiar sin, and announces the coming judgment. He then foretells the coming of the one true Ruler, and the consequent deliverance. In dealing with the sins of the rulers, he first addresses the heads or princes, charging them with being corrupt. As to character, they hate the good, and as to conduct they spoil the people.
Turning to the prophets, he declares that their sin is that they make the people to err, exercising their sacred office for their own welfare. If they were fed, they were prepared to cry peace; if they were not fed, they made war. Judgment must overtake them in kind. Micah defends his own ministry by contrasting it with others.
He finally deals with all the ruling classes and his summary of their sin is forceful. The heads judge for reward; the priests teach for hire; the prophets divine for money. As a result of their sin, judgment must fall on Zion and Jerusalem.
Fuente: An Exposition on the Whole Bible
the Punishment of Avarice
Mic 3:1-12
The princes who as magistrates should have administered justice to others sat around the caldron, casting in the very flesh and skin of the people whom they were set to rule. Their perversion of justice would lead to their inability to distinguish between evil and good. Sin not only sears the conscience but darkens the understanding, Eph 4:18. Their punishment would be like their guilt. As they had refused the cry of the oppressed, so would God refuse theirs. The false prophets had wilfully misled the people. Their one desire was to get food. For those who provided it, they uttered peace; for those who opposed them, war. Therefore they would be left without a vision; Gods Spirit would cease to strive. How great the contrast between them and Micah, who spoke with the consciousness of spiritual power! Oh, that every minister and teacher of Gods holy gospel were able to utter Mic 3:8! It may be ours through the Holy Spirit.
Fuente: F.B. Meyer’s Through the Bible Commentary
Chapter 3
Princes And Priests Apostate
The second division of the book begins with a summons to the heads and princes of Israel to hear the prophets rebuke. It is no longer the common people who are addressed, but the princes, or judges, in vers. 1 to 4, and the prophets in vers. 5 to 8. Then both are grouped together, the priests also being included, as heads of the house of Jacob, in vers. 9 to 12.
It is a solemn thing when the leaders of Gods people cause them to err; when those who should have been a bulwark for the truth turn away therefrom, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them.
They who should have known judgment, and who were raised up of God to rule the nation in righteousness, were the very ones who were leading the mass astray. Often has it been so in the history of the Church, as well as of Israel. Therefore the need to test all that is taught or practised, by the only infallible rule, the unerring Word of God. If Christians are content to be styled the laity, and leave their spiritual interests in the hands of their guides, they have themselves to blame if they are led in wrong paths. Each is responsible to exercise himself unto godliness, and to try the things that differ.
It too frequently happens that leaders become pretentious and haughty, regarding themselves as the clergy, whose special province it is to find sustenance in the ministry, forgetting that to minister is to serve, not to lord it over possessions. No pride is worse than spiritual pride. No pretension is more to be abhorred than ecclesiastical pretension. But there are never wanting vain, self-confident men, who are ever ready to arrogate to themselves high-sounding titles and powers if the people love to have it so. And it is solemn indeed to realize that it generally is the people themselves who are responsible for this kind of thing, because of the readiness with which they accept the ipse dixit of some gifted uninspired man, rather than to search the Word for themselves, that they may find therein set forth the path for their feet.
Here, the people were indifferent, and the princes lived recklessly, despising the lower classes, and flourishing in their presumption and avarice. In place of caring for the flock of God, as those who must give an account, they looked upon them as their lawful prey, flaying the skin from off them (vers. 2, 3).
One is reminded of the grim jest of Pope Leo X, who, it is said, made the remark to his companion princes of the church, What a profitable thing this myth about Jesus Christ has been to us! And all because the Bible had been kept from the people, and they were willing it should be so.
But the hour of judgment is coming, when all such must answer to the great Shepherd of the sheep for their unholy ways. Then shall they cry unto the Lord, but He will not hear them: He will even hide His face from them at that time, as they have behaved themselves ill in their doings (ver. 4).
In the second section it is the prophets that make the people err, who are summoned to hear the Word of the Lord. The princes ruled by sheer power, because of the awe in which they were held. The prophets perverted the very words of the Lord, and gave false burdens, in order to hinder any from inquiring concerning the path of life. Prince and prophet have been blended into one splendid hierarchy in Christendom for centuries, but in our day have been largely divorced, so that we can readily distinguish between those whose power rests on assumption of ecclesiastical character, and those who lead astray because of professed spiritual insight, entitling them to be heard as exponents of the truth, while perverting, or setting aside, the Word of God.
But all alike, however their systems may differ, have one characteristic mark: They serve not our Lord Jesus Christ, but their own belly; and by good words and fair speeches deceive the hearts of the simple (Rom 16:18). This was what marked the false prophets in Micahs day- and in all days before and since. Who, when they have something to bite with their teeth, cry, Peace; but who prepare war against him who putteth nothing in their mouths (ver. 5)- such is Leesers graphic translation of a verse that in the Authorized Version is a little ambiguous.
The true prophet of the Lord is not concerned about financial or other recompense. He goes! forth in dependence on Him who has sent him, and is thus free to speak His Word, not as pleasing men, but God, who trieth the hearts. Every false religious system is marked by greed for filthy lucre, and its advocates act on the thought that so readily found lodgment in Simons heart, that the gift of God might be purchased for money. It is the error of Balaam, and is especially characteristic of the last days.
Thus perverting the truth for personal profit, they darken counsel by words without knowledge. But as they have hidden the light from others, they shall go into the night at last The sixth and seventh verses are intensely solemn, and may well cause teachers of error to tremble. Therefore the night shall be unto you, that ye shall not have a vision; and it shall be dark unto you, that ye shall not divine; and the sun shall go down over the prophets, and the day shall be dark over them. Then shall the seers be ashamed, and the diviners confounded: yea, they shall all cover their lips; for there is no answer of God. Unspeakably awful will be the awakening when those who have posed as the very oracles of divine truth before their fellows shall have their eyes opened to see that they are lost and ruined forever; and though they cry out in the anguish of their despair, there will be no answer of God!
How different was the case of Jehovahs true servant! In simple confidence he could say, Truly I am full of power by the Spirit of the Lord, and of judgment, and of might, to declare unto Jacob his transgression, and to Israel his sin (ver. 8). Undismayed by the fear of man that bringeth a snare, he could faithfully proclaim the mind of God, as revealed to him by the Holy Spirit. He was the servant not of men, but of Jehovah of hosts; and his ministry was in the energy of faith, hence in the mighty power of God.
The last section is a summing up, ere the glad tidings of future blessing are told, of which chap. 4 treats.
Abhorring judgment, and perverting all equity, the rulers built up Zion with blood; yet, with most barefaced effrontery, they declared the Lord was in their midst and ratified their doings. The heads thereof judge for reward, and the priests thereof teach for hire, and the prophets thereof divine for money: yet will they lean upon the Lord, and say, Is not the Lord among us? none evil can come upon us (ver. 11). Thus they made Him the minister of unrighteousness, and made His holy name their answer to any who sought to reach their consciences.
Saints of God are called to follow righteousness. If this be overlooked, it is the veriest assumption to talk of having the Lords presence, and declaring themselves in the line of His testimony. This 11th verse may profitably be weighed in connection with Jer 6:13, where the condition a few years later is found not to have improved, but deteriorated, as is ever the case when evil is left unjudged.
Because of this hardened condition, Zion was to be plowed as a field and Jerusalem destroyed; the mountain of Jehovahs house being treated as the idolatrous high places of the groves. If righteousness be not maintained by His saints, God will remove their candlestick and annul their pretensions. He who is the Holy and the True will not go on with iniquity.
Fuente: Commentaries on the New Testament and Prophets
THE SECOND PROPHETIC MESSAGE
CHAPTER 3
1. Address to the godless princes and judges (Mic 3:1-4)
2. Address to the false prophets (Mic 3:5-8)
3. The verdict of judgment (Mic 3:9-12)
Mic 3:1-4. The second prophetic message of Micah contains the great Messianic prophecies. But first the prophet gives a description of the degradation of the nation, the moral corruption of the leaders and judges, as well as the false prophets. It is all summed up in one sentence, who hate the good, and love the evil. The princes and judges robbed the people, treated them like cattle (Mic 3:3). For these unjust deeds the Lord would not hear them when they cried in the hour of their need, and would hide His face from them.
Mic 3:5-8. The false prophets were mostly responsible for these abominations, just as today the false in Christendom, the deniers of the faith, destructive critics and others, are responsible for the conditions in the professing Church. They make the people err. While they bite with their teeth, that is, being fed, they cried peace to their patrons; and those who did not support them, by putting food in their mouths, they fought and denounced. There would be night for them, with no vision; darkness would come upon them. They would be ashamed and confounded; the covering of the lips was a sign and emblem of mourning and silence. Such will be the fate of all false prophets and teachers.
The eighth verse (Mic 3:8) is a magnificent outburst of Gods true prophet, Micahs confession. As the true prophet he was full of power by the Spirit of the Lord, and thus filled he declared unto Jacob his transgression and to Israel his sin.
Mic 3:9-12. What Micah had announced in the preceding verse he does now. He tells the heads and rulers that they build Zion with blood and Jerusalem with iniquity. He speaks of the influence of money. judges acted for reward, priests taught for hire, and prophets prophesied for money. The verdict of judgment is mentioned in Jer 26:18. This prophecy was fulfilled when Babylon conquered Jerusalem. And when finally the returned remnant rejected the Lord of Glory, their King, Zion and Jerusalem became once more heaps, as he announced, Jerusalem shall be trodden down by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.
Fuente: Gaebelein’s Annotated Bible (Commentary)
Cir, am 3294, bc 710
Hear: Mic 3:9, Mic 3:10, Isa 1:10, Jer 13:15-18, Jer 22:2, Jer 22:3, Hos 5:1, Amo 4:1
Is it: Deu 1:13-17, Deu 16:18, 2Ch 19:5-10, Psa 14:4, Psa 82:1-5, Jer 5:4, Jer 5:5, 1Co 6:5
Reciprocal: Exo 23:6 – General Deu 1:17 – ye shall hear Deu 25:1 – General 1Ki 21:19 – Hast thou killed 2Ch 36:14 – all the chief Neh 13:17 – I contended Psa 58:2 – in heart Psa 82:2 – judge Psa 82:5 – know not Psa 101:8 – early Pro 29:7 – but Pro 30:14 – to devour Ecc 5:8 – regardeth Isa 1:23 – princes Isa 3:5 – the people Isa 10:1 – them Isa 29:10 – rulers Isa 32:6 – empty Isa 59:6 – their works Jer 6:7 – violence Jer 7:2 – Hear Jer 17:20 – General Jer 21:11 – General Jer 32:32 – they Jer 38:4 – the princes Eze 9:9 – perverseness Eze 22:6 – the princes Eze 34:2 – Woe Eze 34:3 – ye kill Eze 45:8 – and my princes Eze 46:18 – thrust Hos 12:7 – he loveth Joe 1:2 – Hear Amo 3:1 – Hear Amo 5:11 – treading Mic 6:12 – the rich Hab 1:4 – for Zep 3:3 – princes Zec 7:10 – oppress Zec 11:5 – possessors Mar 12:40 – devour Luk 13:32 – that fox Luk 18:2 – which Rom 13:4 – he is
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Mic 3:1. The hulk of this chapter is against the head men of the nation. Heads of Jacob would be the outstanding men whether they were prophets or men in high social rank. The class of men had for many years taken advantage of their position to impose on the poor and otherwise unfortunate people. The last clause means that the princes were expected to know how to act with good judgment.
Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary
Mic 3:1-4. Hear, O heads of Jacob, &c. That the justice of God, in bringing upon them the punishments which he had threatened, might more evidently appear, the prophet here shows that there was no rank of them free from very grievous crimes; that even those, who ought to have excelled others in piety and virtue, were the first in offences. We find Ezekiel making the same complaint, Eze 22:6, &c. Is it not for you to know judgment Ought not you to understand and conform to the just laws of your God? You princes, magistrates, and ruling officers, ought of all men to know and do right. And, as it is your province to judge and punish those who break human laws, this ought to make you reflect that God will certainly execute judgment on the breakers of his laws. If you make any reflection, you must needs be sensible, that punishment must await you for your crimes. Who hate the good Ye who hate, not only to do good, but the good which is done, and those that do it; and love the evil Choose and delight in both evil works and evil workers; who pluck off their skin from off them Who use the people, whom you govern, as cruelly as the shepherd would use his flock, who, instead of shearing the fleece, would pluck the skin and flesh from off their bones. Who eat the flesh of my people, &c. Who devour the goods and livelihood of your brethren. And break their bones, &c. An allusion to lions, bears, or wolves, which devour the flesh, and break the bones of the defenceless lambs. And chop them in pieces as for the pot, &c. All these are metaphorical expressions, to signify the oppressions of the people by their heads, or great men; and how they, by one means or other, deprived them of their substance, and divided it among themselves. Then shall they Namely, the heads of the people and princes spoken of above; cry unto the Lord When these miseries come upon them; but he will not hear them, he will even hide, &c. As they have showed no pity to others, he will have no pity on them.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Mic 3:10. They build up Zion with blood. The Chaldaic reads, they build up the houses of Zion with blood. They oppress the poor to a premature death, in order to build their town and country houses, their villas and mansions.
Mic 3:12. Therefore shall Zion for your sake be plowed as a field. This is a memorable prediction, one that Jeremiah alleged in self-defence: chap. 26:18. Josephus, a spectator of the burning of the temple, says, it was burned on the tenth day of the fifth month. The Romans entered it on the seventh day, and on the eighth put fire to the cloisters, or porches. On the ninth day, Titus called a council of war, and by three voices carried his motion, that the temple should be spared. Alas, on that day, a fresh commotion happening among the jews, a soldier in the evening carried the fire into the temple, which continued burning all the night, and all the tenth day till sunset. This happened on the same day that the Chaldeans had burned and desolated the city. The Jews therefore regard that as an unlucky day, for the wicked Turnus Rufus on that very day caused the plowshare to pass over the scite of the temple, and places adjacent, and literally fulfilled this prediction of Micah.Dr. Lightfoot. Vide Talmud in Taanith per 4. Halac. 6. Maimonides in Taanith per 5.
Joh. Heinrich Mayr, the German traveller, says, that Davids palace, now converted into a fortress, stands outside of the present Jerusalem, and is very elevated. Our Dr. Richardson adds, that in one part of Zion he saw barley growing. By consequence, the sentence of the plowshare is not yet removed.
REFLECTIONS.
Wicked as the jewish rulers were in griping away the lands of the poor, the prophet addresses them with respectful entreaties to do justice, to be fathers to the poor, and avengers of crimes.
The false prophets, ever speaking the language of the carnal heart, always sung the beguiling song of fine harvests, plenty of wine, the defeat of enemies, and prosperous seasons. They did their utmost, in envy and malice, to expose the Lords prophets to persecution and contempt. The rulers, by these lying prophets, were encouraged to go on with bribery on the bench, and corruptions at the altar. Micah therefore pronounced their sentence, that in the third and fourth generation, Zion should for their sake be plowed as a field. But he left not the saints in despair, for in the next chapter he foretels the erection of the spiritual temple in gospel times. Now, if Elis sons lost the ark; if the jewish priests twice lost their temple; if the French clergy in 1789 lost their churches, what have not we to fear from similar offences?
Fuente: Sutcliffe’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Mic 3:1-8. The Unjust Rulers and False Prophets of Judah.Micah first addresses those whose official duty it is to know justice, i.e. sympathetically, and declares that in fact they love its opposite, and cruelly oppress (cf. Isa 3:15) those they govern. In their (coming) distress, Yahweh will not heed them (cf. Isa 1:15). Micah then turns to the false prophets, whose utterances are dictated by self-interest, and proclaims against them, instead of the well-being they have foretold, the darkness of the Day of Yahweh (Amo 5:18), when there shall be no response to the diviners, and they shall go mourning. In contrast with them, Micah declares that Yahwehs Spirit has given him the inner qualities of independent strength and of justice, which underlie true prophecy, and are seen in the rebuke of sin.
Mic 3:2. pluck off their skin, etc.: the description is, of course, figurative.
Mic 3:5. J. M. P. Smith aptly compares the test of disinterestedness applied to prophets by the Didache, 11:36.
Mic 3:7. cover their lips: a sign of mourning (cf. Eze 24:17; Eze 24:22, Lev 13:45).
Mic 3:8. Cf. Micaiah ben Imlah in 1 Kings 22; by the Spirit of the Lord is perhaps a gloss, though a correct one.
Fuente: Peake’s Commentary on the Bible
3:1 And I said, Hear, I pray you, O heads of Jacob, and ye princes of the house of Israel; [Is it] not for you to know {a} judgment?
(a) That thing which is just and lawful, both to govern my people properly, and also to clear your own conscience.
Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes
1. The guilt of Israel’s civil leaders 3:1-4
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
This second oracle begins like the first and third ones, with a summons to hear the prophet’s message (cf. Mic 1:2; Mic 6:1). The initial "And I said" ties this oracle to the preceding one and provides continuity. Micah asked rhetorically if it was not proper for Israel’s rulers to practice justice (fairness, equity). It was not only proper, but it was essential. Again, Jacob and Israel are synonyms for all 12 tribes (cf. Mic 1:5; et al.).
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
THE PROPHET OF THE POOR
Mic 2:1-13; Mic 3:1-12
WE have proved Micahs love for his countryside in the effusion of his heart upon her villages with a grief for their danger greater than his grief for Jerusalem. Now in his treatment of the sins which give that danger its fatal significance, he is inspired by the same partiality for the fields and the folk about him. While Isaiah chiefly satirizes the fashions of the town and the intrigues of the court, Micah scourges the avarice of the landowner and the injustice which oppresses the peasant. He could not, of course, help sharing Isaiahs indignation for the fatal politics of the capital, any more than Isaiah could help sharing his sense of the economic dangers of the provinces; {Isa 5:8} but it is the latter with which Micah is most familiar and on which he spends his wrath. These so engross him, indeed, that he says almost nothing about the idolatry, or the luxury, or the hideous vice, which, according to Amos and Hosea, were now corrupting the nation.
Social wrongs are always felt most acutely, not in the town, but in the country. It was so in the days of Rome, whose earliest social revolts were agrarian. It was so in the Middle Ages: the fourteenth century saw both the Jacquerie in France and the Peasants Rising in England; Langland, who was equally familiar with town and country, expends nearly all his sympathy upon the poverty of the latter, “the poure folk in cotes.” It was so after the Reformation, under the new spirit of which the first social revolt was the Peasants War in Germany. It was so at the French Revolution, which began with the march of the starving peasants into Paris. And it is so still, for our new era of social legislation has been forced open, not by the poor of London and the large cities, but by the peasantry of Ireland and the crofters of the Scottish Highlands. Political discontent and religious heresy take their start among industrial and manufacturing centers, but the first springs of the social revolt are nearly always found among the rural populations.
Why the country should begin to feel the acuteness of social wrong before the town is sufficiently obvious. In the town there are mitigations, and there are escapes. If the conditions of one trade become oppressive, it is easier to pass to another. The workers are better educated and better organized; there is a middle class, and the tyrant dare not bring matters to so high a crisis. The might, of the wealthy, too, is divided; the poor mans employer is seldom at the same time his landlord. But in the country power easily gathers into the hands of the few. The laborers opportunities and means of work, his home, his very standing-ground, are often all of them the property of one man. In the country the rich have a real power of life and death, and are less hampered by competition with each other and by the force of public opinion. One man cannot hold a city in fee, but one man can affect for evil or for good almost as large a population as a citys, when it is scattered across a countryside.
This is precisely the state of wrong which Micah attacks. The social changes of the eighth century in Israel were peculiarly favorable to its growth. The enormous increase of money which had been produced by the trade of Uzziahs reign threatened to overwhelm the simple economy under which every family had its croft. As in many another land and period, the social problem was the descent of wealthy men, land-hungry, upon the rural districts. They made the poor their debtors, and bought out the peasant proprietors. They absorbed into their power numbers of homes, and had at their individual disposal the lives and the happiness of thousands of their fellow-countrymen. Isaiah had cried. “Woe upon them that join house to house, that lay field to field, till there be no room” for the common people, and the inhabitants of the rural districts grow fewer and Isa 5:8. Micah pictures the recklessness of those plutocrats – the fatal ease with which their wealth enabled them to dispossess the yeomen of Judah.
The prophet speaks:-
“Woe to them that plan mischief, And on their beds work out evil! As soon as morning breaks they put it into execution, For-it lies to the power of their hands!”
“They covet fields and-seize them, Houses and-lift them up. So they crush a good man and his home, A man and his heritage.”
This is the evil-the ease with which wrong is done in the country! “It lies to the power of their hands: they covet and seize.” And what is it that they get so easily-not merely field and house, so much land and stone and lime: it is human life, with all that makes up personal independence, and the security of home and of the family. That these should be at the mercy of the passion or the caprice of one man-this is what stirs the prophets indignation. We shall presently see how the tyranny of wealth was aided by the bribed and unjust judges of the country; and how, growing reckless, the rich betook themselves, as the lords of the feudal system in Europe continually did, to the basest of assaults upon the persons of peaceful men and women. But meantime Micah feels that by themselves the economic wrongs explain and justify the doom impending on the nation. When this doom falls, by the Divine irony of God it shall take the form of a conquest of the land by the heathen, and the disposal of these great estates to the foreigner.
The prophet speaks:-
“Therefore thus saith Jehovah: Behold I am planning evil against this race, From which ye shall not withdraw your necks, Nor walk upright: For an evil time it is! In that day shall they raise a taunt-song against you And wail out the wailing (“It is done”); and say, We be utterly undone: My peoples estate is measured off! How they take it away from me! To the rebel our fields are allotted. So thou shalt have none to cast the line by lot In the congregation of Jehovah.”
No restoration at time of Jubilee for lauds taken away in this fashion! There will be no congregation of Jehovah left!
At this point the prophets pessimist discourse, that must have galled the rich, is interrupted by their clamor to him to stop.
The rich speak:-
“Prate not, they prate, let none prate of such things! Revilings will never cease! O thou that speakest thus to the house of Jacob, Is the spirit of Jehovah cut short? Or are such His doings? Shall not His words mean well with him that walketh uprightly?”
So the rich, in their immoral confidence that Jehovah was neither weakened nor could permit such a disaster to fall on His own people, tell the prophet that his sentence of doom on the nation, and especially on themselves, is absurd, impossible. They cry the eternal cry of Respectability: “God can mean no harm to the like of us! His words are good to them that walk uprightly-and we are conscious of being such. What you, prophet, have charged us with are nothing but natural transactions.” The Lord Himself has His answer ready. Upright indeed! They have been unprovoked plunderers!
God speaks:-
“But ye are the foes of My people, Rising against those that are peaceful; The mantle ye strip from them that walk quietly by, Averse to war! Women of My people ye tear from their happy homes, From their children ye take My glory forever. Rise and begone-for this is no resting-place! Because of the uncleanness that bringeth destruction. Destruction incurable.”
Of the outrages on the goods of honest men, and the persons of women and children, which are possible in a time of peace, when the rich are tyrannous and abetted by mercenary judges and prophets, we have an illustration analogous to Micahs in the complaint of Peace in Langlands vision of English society in the fourteenth century. The parallel to our prophets words is very striking:-
“And thanne come Pees into parlement and put forth a bille, How Wronge ageines his wille had his wyf taken. “Both my gees and my grys his gadelynges feccheth; I dar noughte for fere of hym fyghte ne chyde. He borwed of me bayard he broughte hym home nevre, Ne no ferthynge therefore or naughte I couthe plede. He meynteneth his men to marther myne hewen, Forstalleth my feyres and fighteth in my chepynge, And breketh up my bernes dore and bereth aweye my whete, And taketh me but a taile for ten quarters of ores, And yet he bet me ther-to and lythbi my mayde, I nam noughte hardy for hym “uneth to loke.”
They pride themselves that all is stable and God is with them. How can such a state of affairs be stable! They feel at ease, yet injustice can never mean rest. God has spoken the final sentence, but with a rare sarcasm the prophet adds his comment on the scene. These rich men had been flattered into their religious security by hireling prophets, who had opposed himself. As they leave the presence of God, having heard their sentence, Micah looks after them and muses in quiet prose.
The prophet speaks:-
“Yea, if one whose walk is wind and falsehood were to try to cozen “thee, saying, “I will babble to thee of wine and strong drink, then he might be the prophet of such a people.”
At this point in chapter 2 there have somehow slipped into the text two verses (Mic 2:12-13), which all are agreed do not belong to it, and for which we must find another place. They speak of a return from the Exile, and interrupt the connection between Mic 2:11 and the first verse of chapter 3 (Mic 3:1). With the latter Micah begins a series of three oracles, which give the substance of his own prophesying in contrast to that of the false prophets whom he has just been satirizing. He has told us what they say, and he now begins the first of his own oracles with the words, “But I said.” It is an attack upon the authorities of the nation, whom the false prophets flatter. Micah speaks very plainly to them. Their business is to know justice, and yet they love wrong. They flay the people with their exactions; they cut up the people like meat.
The prophet speaks:-
“But I said, Hear now, O chiefs of Jacob, And rulers of the house of Israel: Is it not yours to know justice? Haters of good and lovers of evil, Tearing their hide from upon them.”
(he points to the people)
“And their flesh from the bones of them; And who devour the flesh of my people, And their hide they have stripped from them And their bones have they cleft, And served it up as if from a pot, Like meat from the thick of the caldron! At that time shall they cry to Jehovah, And He will not answer them; But hide His face from them at that time, Because they have aggravated their deeds.”
These words of Micah are terribly strong, but there have been many other ages and civilizations than his own of which they have been no more than true. “They crop us,” said a French peasant of the lords of the great Louis time, “as the sheep crops grass.” “They treat us like their food,” said another on the eve of the Revolution. Is there nothing of the same with ourselves?
While Micah spoke he had wasted lives and bent backs before him. His speech is elliptic till you see his finger pointing at them. Pinched peasant faces peer between all his words and fill the ellipses. And among the living poor today are there not starved and bitten faces-bodies with the blood sucked from them, with the Divine image crushed out of them? Brothers, we cannot explain all of these by vice. Drunkenness and unthrift do account for much; but how much more is explicable only by the following facts! Many men among us are able to live in fashionable streets and keep their families comfortable only by paying their employs a wage upon which it is impossible for men to be strong or women to be virtuous. Are those not using these as their food? They tell us that if they are to give higher wages they must close their business, and cease paying wages at all; and they are right if they themselves continue to live on the scale they do. As long as many families are maintained in comfort by the profits of businesses in which some or all of the employees work for less than they can nourish and repair their bodies upon, the simple fact is that the one set are feeding upon the other set. It may be inevitable, it may be the fault of the system and not of the individual, it may be that to break up the system would mean to make things worse than ever-but all the same the truth is clear that many families of the middle class, and some of the very wealthiest of the land, are nourished by the waste of the lives of the poor. Now and again the fact is acknowledged with as much shamelessness as was shown by any tyrant in the days of Micah. To a large employer of labor who was complaining that his employees, by refusing to live at the low scale of Belgian workmen, were driving trade from this country, the present writer once said: “Would it not meet your wishes if, instead of your workmen being leveled down, the Belgians were leveled up? This would make the competition fair between you and the employers in Belgium.” His answer was, “I care not so long as I get my profits.” He was a religious man, a liberal giver to his Church, and he died leaving more than one hundred thousand pounds.
Micahs tyrants, too, had religion to support them. A number of the hireling prophets, whom we have seen both Amos and Hosea attack, gave their blessing to this social system, which crushed the poor, for they shared its profits. They lived upon the alms of the rich, and flattered according as they were fed. To them Micah devotes the second oracle of chapter 3, and we find confirmed by his words the principle we laid down before, that in that age the one great difference between the false and the true prophet was what it has been in every age since then till now-an ethical difference; and not a difference of dogma, or tradition, or ecclesiastical note. The false prophet spoke, consciously or unconsciously, for himself and his living. He sided with the rich; he shut his eyes to the social condition of the people; he did not attack the sins of the day. This made him false – robbed him of insight and the power of prediction. But the true prophet exposed the sins of his people. Ethical insight and courage, burning indignation of wrong, clear vision of the facts of the day-this was what Jehovahs spirit put into him, this was what Micah felt to be respiration.
The prophet speaks:-
“Thus saith Jehovah against the prophets who lead my people astray, Who while they have aught between their teeth proclaim peace, But against him who will not lay to their mouths they sanctify war! Wherefore night shall be yours without vision, And yours shall be darkness without divination; And the sun shall go down on the prophets, And the day shall darken about them; And the seers shall be put to the blush, And the diviners be ashamed: All of them shall cover the beard, For there shall be no answer from God. But I am full of power by the spirit of Jehovah, and justice and might, To declare to Jacob his transgressions and to Israel his sin.”
In the third oracle of this chapter rulers and prophets are combined-how close the conspiracy between them! It is remarkable that, in harmony with Isaiah, Micah speaks no word against the king. But evidently Hezekiah had not power to restrain the nobles and the rich. When this oracle was uttered it was a time of peace, and the lavish building, which we have seen to be so marked a characteristic of Israel in the eighth century, was in process. Jerusalem was larger and finer than ever. Ah, it was a building of Gods own city in blood! Judges, priests, and prophets were all alike mercenary, and the poor were oppressed for a reward. No walls, however sacred, could stand on such foundations. Did they say that they built her so grandly, for Jehovahs sake? Did they believe her to be inviolate because He was in her? They should see. Zion-yes, Zion-should be ploughed like a field, and the Mountain of the Lords Temple become desolate.
The prophet speaks:-
“Hear now this, O chiefs of the house of Jacob, And rulers of the house of Israel, Who spurn justice and twist all that is straight, Building Zion in blood, and Jerusalem with crime! Her chiefs give judgment for a bribe,”
“And her priests oracles for a reward, And her prophets divine for silver; And on Jehovah they lean, saying: Is not Jehovah in the midst of us? Evil cannot come at us. Therefore for your sakes shall Zion be ploughed like a field, And Jerusalem become heaps, And the Mount of the House mounds in a jungle.”
It is extremely difficult for us to place ourselves in a state of society in which bribery is prevalent, and the fingers both of justice and of religion are gilded by their suitors. But this corruption has always been common in the East. “An Oriental state can never altogether prevent the abuse by which officials, small and great, enrich themselves in illicit ways.” The strongest government takes the bribery for granted, and periodically prunes the rank fortunes of its great officials. A weak government lets them alone. But in either case the poor suffer from unjust taxation and from laggard or perverted justice. Bribery has always been found, even in the more primitive and puritan forms of Semitic life. Mr. Doughty has borne testimony with regard to this among the austere Wahabees of Central Arabia. “When I asked if there were no handling of bribes at Hayil by those who are nigh the princes ear, it was answered, Nay. The Byzantine corruption cannot enter into the eternal and noble simplicity of this peoples (airy) life, in the poor nomad country; but (we have seen) the art is not unknown to the subtle-headed Shammar princes, who thereby help themselves with the neighbor Turkish governments.” The bribes of the ruler of Hayil “are, according to the shifting weather of the world, to great Ottoman government men; and now on account of Kheybar, he was gilding some of their crooked fingers in Medina.” Nothing marks the difference of Western government more than the absence of all this, especially from our courts of justice. Yet the improvement has only come about within comparatively recent centuries. What a large space, for instance, does Langland give to the arraigning of “Mede,” the corrupter of all authorities and influences in the society of his day! Let us quote his words, for again they provide a most exact parallel to Micahs, and may enable us to realize a state of life so contrary to our own. It is Conscience who arraigns Mede before the King:-
“By ihesus with here jeweles youre justices she shendeth, And lith agein the lawe and letteth hym the gate, That leith may noughte have his forth here floreines go so thikke, She ledeth the lawe as hire list and lovedays maketh And doth men lese thorw hire love that law myghte wynne, The mase for a mene man though he mote hit cure. Law is so lordeliche and loth to make ende, Without presentz or pens she pleseth wel fewe. For pore men mowe have no powere to pleyne hem though the smerte; Suche a maistre is Mede amonge men of gode”