Albert Barnes Commentary Micah 1:5

"For the transgression of Jacob is all this, and for the sins of the house of Israel. What is the transgression of Jacob? is it not Samaria? and what are the high places of Judah? are they not Jerusalem?" — Micah 1:5 (ASV)

For the transgression of Jacob is all this—Not for any change of purpose in God; nor, again, as the effect of man’s lust of conquest. None could have any power against God’s people, unless it had been given him by God. Those mighty monarchies of old existed only as God’s instruments, especially toward His own people. God said at this time of Assyria, Asshur rod of Mine anger, and the staff in their hand is Mine indignation (Isaiah 10:5); and, Now have I brought it to pass, that thou shouldest be to lay waste defenced cities into ruinous heaps (Isaiah 37:26).

Each scourge of God chastised just those nations, which God willed him to chasten; but the especial object for which each was raised up was his mission against that people, in whom God most showed His mercies and His judgments. I will send him against an ungodly nation and against the people of My wrath will I give him a charge (Isaiah 10:6).

Jacob and Israel, in this place, alike comprise the ten tribes and the two. They still bore the name of their father (who, wrestling with the Angel, became a prince with God), whom they forgot. The name of Jacob then, as of Christian now, stamped those who did not do the deeds of their father as deserters.

“What (rather who) is the transgression of Jacob?” Who is its cause? In whom does it lie? Is it not Samaria?

The metropolis must, in its own nature, be the source of good or evil to the land. It is the heart whose pulses beat throughout the whole system. As the seat of power, the residence of justice or injustice, the place of counsel, and the concentration of wealth—which all the most influential people of the land visit for their various occasions—its manners penetrate to some degree the utmost corners of the land.

Corrupted, it becomes a focus of corruption. The blood passes through it, not to be purified, but to be diseased. Samaria—being founded on apostasy, owing its existence to rebellion against God, and the home of that policy which set up a rival system of worship to His (which He had forbidden)—became a fountain of evil from which the stream of ungodliness overflowed the land. It became the impersonation of the people’s sin, “the heart and the head of the body of sin.”

And what—Literally, who (מי) always relates to a personal object, and apparent exceptions may be reduced to this. So Ae. Kim. Tanch. Pococke.

Are the high places of Judah? Are they not Jerusalem?—Jerusalem God had formed to be a center of unity in holiness. The tribes of the Lord were to go up there to the testimony of Israel; there was the unceasing worship of God, the morning and evening sacrifice, the Feasts, the memorials of past miraculous mercies, and the foreshadowings of redemption.

But there too Satan placed his throne. Ahaz brought there that most hateful idolatry: burning children to Moloch in the valley of the son of Hinnom (2 Chronicles 28:3). There (2 Chronicles 28:24), he made for himself altars in every corner of Jerusalem.

From there, he extended the idolatry to all Judah. And in every several city of Judah he made high places to burn incense unto other gods, and provoked to anger the Lord God of his fathers (2 Chronicles 28:25). Hezekiah, in his reformation, with all Israel, went out to the cities of Judah and broke the images in pieces, bowed down the statues of Asherah, and threw down the high places and the altars from all Judah and Benjamin, as well as from Ephraim and Manasseh (2 Chronicles 31:1). Indeed, by a perverse interchange, Ahaz took the Brazen Altar, consecrated to God, for his own divinations, and assigned to the worship of God the altar copied from the idol-altar at Damascus, whose fashion pleased his taste (2 Kings 16:10–16).

Since God and mammon cannot be served together, Jerusalem had become one great idol-temple, in which Judah brought its sin into the very face of God and of His worship. The Holy City had itself become sin, and the fountain of unholiness.

The one temple of God was the single protest against the idolatries which encompassed and besieged it; the incense went up to God from it, morning and evening. However, from every head of every street of the city (Ezekiel 16:31; 2 Chronicles 28:24), and (since Ahaz had brought in the worship of Baalim (2 Chronicles 28:2), and the rites of idolatry continued the same) from the roofs of all their houses (Jeremiah 32:29), incense went up to Baal—a worship which, denying the Unity, denied the Being of God.