Albert Barnes Commentary Micah 1:16

"Make thee bald, and cut off thy hair for the children of thy delight: enlarge thy baldness as the eagle; for they are gone into captivity from thee." — Micah 1:16 (ASV)

Make yourself bald, shear yourself (literally, shear yourself for your delicate children). Some special ways of cutting the hair were forbidden to the Israelites, as being idolatrous customs, such as rounding the hair in front, cutting it away from the temples, or between the eyes (Deuteronomy 14:1). All shearing of the hair was not forbidden; indeed, for the Nazarite it was commanded at the close of his vow. The removal of that chief ornament of the countenance was a natural expression of grief, which revolts at all personal appearance. It belonged not to idolatry, but to nature.

“Your delicate children.” The change was the more bitter for those tended and brought up delicately. Moses from the first spoke of special miseries which should fall on the tender and very delicate. “Enlarge your baldness;” outdo in grief what others do, for the cause of your grief is more than that of others. The point of comparison in the Eagle might either be the actual baldness of the head or its molting.

If the comparison refers to the baldness of the head, the word translated "eagle" is significant. Unless nesher is the golden eagle, there is no other Hebrew name for it, whereas it is still a bird of Palestine. Smaller eagles are mentioned in the same verse (Leviticus 11:13): namely, the ossifrage (פרס) and the black eagle (עזניה). The black eagle is so called from its strength, like the valeria, of which Pliny says, “the melanaetos or valeria, least in size, remarkable for strength, blackish in color” (Book 10, Chapter 3).

The same list of unclean birds also contains the vulture (דיה, Deuteronomy 14:13), (as it must be, being a gregarious bird, Isaiah 34:15), in its different species (Deuteronomy 14:13). This includes the gier-eagle (that is, Geyer-vulture), gypaetos, or vultur percnopterus (Hasselquist, Forskal, Shaw, Bruce in Savigny p. 77), partaking of the character of both (רהם, Leviticus 11:18; Deuteronomy 14:17), together with the falcon (דאה, Leviticus 11:14) and hawk with its subordinate species (למינהו נץ, Leviticus 11:18; Deuteronomy 14:15). Although mostly used of the Eagle itself, the term might here comprehend the Vulture. For entire baldness is so marked a feature in the vulture, whereas the “bald-headed Eagle” was probably not a bird of Palestine.

On the other hand, David, who lived so long among the rocks of Palestine, and Isaiah seem to have known of effects of molting upon the Eagle in producing (although in a lesser degree than in other birds) a temporary diminution of strength, which have not in modern times been commonly observed.

For David says, "Thou shalt renew, like the eagle, thy youth, which speaks of fresh strength after temporary weakness" (Psalms 103:5); and Isaiah, "They that trust in the Lord shall put forth fresh strength; they shall put forth pinion-feathers like eagles" (Isaiah 40:31), comparing the fresh strength that should succeed what was gone to the eagle’s recovering its strong pinion-feathers.

Bochart, however, says unhesitatingly, “At the beginning of spring, the rapacious birds are subject to shedding of their feathers, which we call molting.” If this is so, the comparison is yet more vivid. For the baldness of the vulture belongs to its matured strength and could only be an external likeness. The molting of the eagle involves some degree of weakness, with which he compares Judah’s mournful and weak condition amid the loss of their children, gone into captivity.

Thus closes the first general portion of the prophecy. The people had cast aside their own Glory, God; now their sons, their pride and their trust, shall go away from them.

Lapide: “The eagle, laying aside its old feathers and taking new, is a symbol of penitence and of the penitents who lay aside their former evil habits and become other and new men. True, but rare form of penitence!”

Gregory the Great thus applies this to the siege of Rome by the Lombards: “That happened to her which we know to have been foretold of Judea by the prophet, enlarge thy baldness like the eagle. For baldness befalls man in the head only, but the eagle in its whole body; for, when it is very old, its feathers and pinions fall from all its body. She lost her feathers, who lost her people.

Her pinions too fell out, with which she was accustomed to fly to the prey; for all her mighty men, through whom she plundered others, perished. But this which we speak of, the breaking to pieces of the city of Rome, we know has been done in all the cities of the world. Some were desolated by pestilence, others devoured by the sword, others racked by famine, others swallowed by earthquakes. Let us despise them with our whole heart, at least, when brought to naught; at least with the end of the world, let us end our eagerness after the world.

Let us follow, wherein we can, the deeds of the good.”

One whose commentaries Jerome had read thus applies this verse to the whole human race: “O soul of man! O city, once the mother of saints, which were formerly in Paradise, and did enjoy the delights of different trees, and were adorned most beautifully, now being cast down from your place aloft, and brought down to Babylon, and come into a place of captivity, and having lost your glory, make yourself bald and take the habit of a penitent; and you who flew aloft like an eagle, mourn your sons, your offspring, which from you is led captive.”