Albert Barnes Commentary Micah 1:7

"And all her graven images shall be beaten to pieces, and all her hires shall be burned with fire, and all her idols will I lay desolate; for of the hire of a harlot hath she gathered them, and unto the hire of a harlot shall they return." — Micah 1:7 (ASV)

And all the graven images of it will be beaten to pieces - Its idols in whom she trusts, so far from protecting her, will themselves go into captivity, broken up for the gold and silver of which they were made. The wars of the Assyrians being religious wars, the idolatry of Assyria destroyed the idolatry and idols of Israel.

And all the hires of it will be burned with fire - All forsaking of God is spiritual fornication from Him who made His creatures for Himself. The hires are all that man would gain by that desertion of his God, used in man's dealings with his idols, whether as bribing his idols to give him what are the gifts of God, or as himself bribed by them.

For there is no pure service, except that of the love of God. God alone can be loved purely, for Himself; offerings to Him alone are the creature’s pure homage to the Creator, going out of itself, not looking back to itself, not seeking itself, but stretching forth to Him and seeking Him for Himself.

Whatever man gives to or hopes from his idols, man himself is equally his object in both. The hire then is, both what he gives to his idols—the gold of which he makes his Baal, the offerings which the pagans used to store in their temples—and what, as he thought, he himself received back.

For he gave only earthly things, in order to receive back earthly things. He hired their service to him, and his earthly gains were his hire. It is a strong mockery in the mouth of God, that they had these things from their idols. He speaks to them according to their thoughts. Yet it is true that, although God overrules all, man does receive from Satan (Matthew 4:9), the god of this world (2 Corinthians 4:4), all that he gains wrongly. It is the price for which he sells his soul and profanes himself. Yet in this the pagan was more religious than the Christian worldling. The pagan offered an ignorant service to what they did not know.

Our idolatry of mammon, being less abstract, is more evident self-worship, a more visible ignoring of God and thus a more open dethroning of Him. It is a worship of material prosperity, of which we ourselves seem to be the authors, and to which we habitually immolate the souls of men—so habitually that we have ceased to be conscious of it.

And all the idols of it I will lay desolate - Literally, “make a desolation.” They, now thronged by their worshipers, would be deserted; their place and temple, a waste. He repeats “all” three times: all her graven images, all her hires, all her idols; all would be destroyed.

He adds a threefold destruction that would overtake them; so that, while the Assyrian broke and carried off what was more precious, or burned what could be burned, and what could not be burned nor was worth transporting would be left desolate, all would come to an end. He sets the whole more vividly before the mind, exhibiting to us so many separate pictures of the mode of destruction.

For from the hire of a harlot she gathered them, and to the hire of a harlot they will return - Jerome says: “The wealth and abundant provision that (as she thought) were gained by fornication with her idols, will go to another harlot, Nineveh; so that, as they prostituted themselves in their own land, they would go to another land of idols and fornication, the Assyrians.” They (Romans 1:23) turned their glory into shame, changing the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like unto corruptible man; and so it would turn to them into shame.

It sprang out of their shame, and would turn to it again. “Ill got, ill spent.” Evil gain, cursed in its origin, has the curse of God upon it, makes its gainer a curse, and ends accursedly. “Make not ill gains,” says even a pagan (H. 354. L), “ill gains are equal to losses;” and another, “Unlawful sweetness a most bitter end awaits.”

Probably, the most literal sense is not to be excluded. The degrading idolatrous custom, related of Babylon and Cyprus, still continued among the Babylonians at the date of the book of Baruch , and to the Christian era. Augustine speaks of it as having existed among the Phoenicians, and Theodoret says that it was still practiced by some in Syria.

The existence of the idolatrous custom is presupposed by the prohibition by Moses (Deuteronomy 23:18); and, in the time of Hosea, self-desecration was an idolatrous rite in Israel.

In the Day of Judgment, when the foundation of those who build their house upon the sand will be laid bare, the riches that they gained unlawfully will be burned up. All the idols that they set up instead of God are then described along with their fate: “the vain thoughts, and useless fancies, and hurtful forms and images which they picture in their mind, defiling it, and hindering it from the steadfast contemplation of divine things, will be punished. They were the hire of the soul that went astray from God, and those who conceived them will, with them, become the prey again of that infernal host which is unceasingly turned from God.”