Albert Barnes Commentary Micah 1:8

"For this will I lament and wail; I will go stripped and naked; I will make a wailing like the jackals, and a lamentation like the ostriches." — Micah 1:8 (ASV)

Therefore I will – Therefore I would

Wail – (properly, beat, that is, on the breast).

And howl – “Let me alone,” he would say, “that I may vent my sorrow in all ways of expressing sorrow: beating on the breast and wailing, using all acts and sounds of grief.” It is as we would say, “Let me mourn on”—a mourning inexhaustible, because the woe and the cause of grief were also unceasing.

The prophet becomes, in words and probably in actions too, an image of his people, doing as they should do in the future. He mourns because they would have to mourn, and in the same way, bearing punishment, deprived of all outward beauty, and serving as an example of repentance, since what he did were the chief outward signs of mourning.

I will (would) go stripped – despoiled.

And naked – He explains the actions, showing that they represented no mere voluntary mourning. Not only would he, representing them, go bared of all garments of beauty (as we say, “half-naked”), but also despoiled—the proper term for those plundered and stripped by an enemy. He speaks of his doing what we know Isaiah did by God’s command: representing in action what his people should afterward do.

As the saying goes, “If you would have me weep, you must yourself grieve first.” Micah doubtless went about not merely speaking of grief, but actually grieving, in the manner of one mourning and deprived of everything. He prolongs the voice of wailing in these words, choosing unaccustomed forms of words to carry on the sound of grief.

I will make a wailing like the dragons – (jackals).

And mourning as the owls – (ostriches). The cry of both, as heard at night, is very pitiful. Both are mournful creatures, dwelling in deserted and lonely places. “The jackals make a lamentable howling noise, so that travelers unacquainted with them would think that a company of people, women, or children were howling to one another.”

“Its howl,” says an Arabic natural historian, “is like the crying of an infant.” “We heard them,” says another, “through the night, wandering around the villages, with a continual, prolonged, mournful cry.”

The ostrich, having forsaken its young (Job 39:16), is an image of bereavement. Jerome says: “As the ostrich forgets her eggs and leaves them as though they were not hers, to be trampled by the feet of wild beasts, so too shall I go childless, spoiled, and naked.” Its screech is spoken of by travelers as “fearful, terrifying”: “During the lonesome part of the night they often make a mournful and pitiful noise. I have often heard them groan, as if they were in the greatest agonies.”

Dionysius says: “I will grieve from the heart over those who perish, mourning for the hardness of the ungodly, as the Apostle had (Romans 9:1) great heaviness and continual sorrow in his heart for his brothers, the unrepentant and unbelieving Jews. Again he says, Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is offended, and I burn not? (2 Corinthians 11:29).

For by as much as the soul is nobler than the body, and by as much as eternal damnation is heavier than any temporal punishment, so much more vehemently should we grieve and weep for the danger and perpetual damnation of souls, than for bodily sickness or any temporal evil.”