Albert Barnes Commentary Micah 2

The prophet had declared that evil should come down on Samaria and Jerusalem for their sins. He had pronounced them sinners against God; he now speaks of their hard unlovingness toward man, just as our Blessed Lord in the Gospel speaks of sins against Himself in His members as the ground for the condemnation of the wicked. The time of warning is past. He speaks as in the person of the Judge, declaring the righteous judgments of God, pronouncing sentence on the hardened, but blessing on those who follow Christ. The sins thus visited were done with a high hand; first, with forethought:

Woe - All woe, woe from God; “the woe of temporal captivity; and, unless you repent, the woe of eternal damnation, hangs over you.” Woe to them that devise iniquity. They devise it, “they are not led into it by others, but invent it out of their own hearts.” They plot and forecast and fulfill it even in thought, before it comes to action. And work evil upon their beds. Thoughts and imaginations of evil are works of the soul (Psalms 58:2). Upon their beds , which ought to be the place of holy thought, and of communing with their own hearts and with God (Psalms 4:4).

Stillness must be filled with thought, good or bad; if not with good, then with bad. The chamber, if not the sanctuary of holy thoughts, is filled with unholy purposes and imaginations.

Man’s last and first thoughts, if not of good, are especially of vanity and evil. The Psalmist says, “Lord, have I not remembered Thee in my bed, and thought upon Thee when I was waking?” (Psalms 63:6). These men thought of sin on their bed, and did it on waking. When the morning is light (literally, in the light of the morning), that is, instantly, shamelessly, not shrinking from the light of day; not ignorantly, but knowingly, deliberately, in full light. Nor again through infirmity, but in the wantonness of might, because it is in the power of their hand, as, of old, God said, “This they begin to do, and now nothing will be restrained from them which they have imagined to do” (Genesis 11:6). Rup.: “Impiously mighty, and mighty in impiety.”

Lap.: See the need of the daily prayer, “Vouchsafe, O Lord, to keep us this day without sin;” and “Almighty God, who hast brought us to the beginning of this day, defend us in the same by Thy mighty power, that we may fall into no sin, etc.” The illusions of the night, if such are permitted, have no power against the prayer of the morning.

And they covet fields and take them by violence - (they tear them away) and houses, and take them away. Yet, first they sin in heart, then in act. And yet, with them, to covet and to rob, to desire and to take, are the same. They were prompt, instantaneous, without a scruple, in violence. As soon as they coveted, they took. Desired, acquired! Coveted, robbed! “They saw, they coveted, they took,” had been their past history. They did violence, not to one only, but, touched with no mercy, to whole families, their little ones also; they oppressed a man and his house.

They spoiled not goods only, but life, a man and his inheritance; destroying him by false accusations or violence and seizing upon his inheritance. Thus, Ahab first coveted Naboth’s vineyard, then, through Jezebel, slew him; and, “they who devoured widow’s houses, did at the last plot by night against Him of whom they said, Come, let us kill Him, and the inheritance shall be ours; and in the morning, they practiced it, leading Him away to Pilate.” : “Who of us does not desire the villas of this world, forgetful of the possessions of Paradise? You see men join field to field, and fence to fence. Whole places do not suffice for the tiny frame of one man.” : “Such is the fire of concupiscence, raging within, that, as those seized by burning fevers cannot rest, no bed suffices them, so no houses or fields content them.

Yet no more than seven feet of earth will suffice them soon. Death only shows how small the frame of man is.”

Such had been their habitual doings. He says they had done all this as one continuous act, up to that time. They were habitually devisers of iniquity, doers of evil. It was ever-renewed. By night they sinned in heart and thought; by day, in act. And so he speaks of it in the present. They do it. But, although renewed in fresh acts, it was one unbroken course of acting. And so he also uses the form, in which the Hebrews spoke of uninterrupted habits, They have coveted, they have robbed, they have taken. Now came God’s part.

Therefore, thus says the Lord - Since they oppress whole families, behold I will set Myself against this whole family; since they devise iniquity, behold I too, Myself, by Myself, in My own Person, am devising. It is very dreadful that Almighty God sets His own Infinite Wisdom against the devices of man and employs it fittingly to punish. I am devising no common punishment, but one to bow them down without escape; an evil from which” – He turns suddenly to them – “you shall not remove your necks, neither shall you go haughtily.” Ribera: “Pride then was the source of that boundless covetousness,” since it was pride which was to be bowed down in punishment. The punishment is proportioned to the sin. They had done all this in pride; they should have the liberty and self-will in which they had indulged, tamed or taken from them. Like animals with a heavy yoke upon them, they should live in disgraced slavery.

The ten tribes were never able to withdraw their necks from the yoke. From the two tribes God removed it after the 70 years. But the same sins against the love of God and man brought on the same punishment. Our Lord again spoke the woe against their covetousness (Luke 16:13–14; Luke 11:39; Matthew 23:14, 23:23, 23:25; Mark 12:40). It still shut them out from the service of God, or from receiving Him, their Redeemer. They still spoiled the goods (Hebrews 10:34) of their brethren.

In the last dreadful siege, “there were insatiable longings for plunder, searching-out of the houses of the rich; murder of men and insults of women were enacted as sports; they drank down what they had spoiled, with blood.” And so the prophecy was for the third time fulfilled. They who withdraw from Christ’s easy yoke of obedience shall not remove from the yoke of punishment; they who, through pride, will not bow down their necks, but make them stiff, shall be bent low, so that they do not go upright or haughtily any more (Isaiah 2:11). The Lord alone shall be exalted in that Day. For it is an evil time. Perhaps he gives a more special meaning to the words of Amos (Amos 5:13), that a time of moral evil will be, or will end in, a time, full of evil, that is, of gravest calamity.

In that day one will take up a parable against you - The mashal or likeness may, in itself, be any speech in which one thing is likened to another:

1. Figured speech,
2. Proverb, and, since such proverbs were often sharp sayings against others,
3. Taunting figurative speech.

But of the person himself it is always said, he “is made, becomes a proverb” (Deuteronomy 28:37; 1 Kings 9:7; 2 Chronicles 7:20; Psalms 44:15; Psalms 69:12; Jeremiah 24:9; Ezekiel 14:8). To take up or utter such a speech against one is, elsewhere, followed by the speech itself; “Thou shalt take up this parable against the king of Babylon, and say, ...” (Isaiah 14:4). “Shall not all these take up a parable against him, and say, ...” (Habakkuk 2:6).

Although then the name of the Jews has passed into a proverb of reproach (Jerome, loc. cit.), this is not contained here. The parable here must be the same as the doleful lamentation, or dirge, which follows. No mockery is more cutting or fiendish than to repeat in jest words by which one bemoans himself. The dirge which Israel should use of themselves in sorrow, the enemy will take up in derision, as Satan doubtless does the self-condemnation of the damned.

Ribera says: “Men do any evil, undergo any peril, to avoid shame. God brings before us that deepest and eternal shame,” the shame and everlasting contempt, in presence of Himself and angels and devils and the good (Psalms 52:6–7; Isaiah 66:24), that we may avoid shame by avoiding evil.

And lament with a doleful lamentation - The words in Hebrew are varied inflections of a word imitating the sounds of woe. It is the voice of woe in all languages, because it is the voice of nature. Shall wail a wail of woe. It is the funeral dirge over the dead (Jeremiah 31:15), or of the living doomed to die (Ezekiel 32:18); it is sometimes the measured mourning of those employed to call forth sorrow (Amos 5:16; Jeremiah 9:17, 9:19), or mourning generally (1 Samuel 7:2; Jeremiah 9:18).

Among such elegies are still Zion-songs (elegies over the ruin of Zion) and mournings for the dead. The word woe is thrice repeated in Hebrew, in different forms, according to that solemn way in which the extremest good or evil is spoken of; the threefold blessing, morning and evening, with the thrice-repeated name of God (Numbers 6:24–26), impressing upon them the mystery which developed itself, as the divinity of the Messiah and the personal agency of the Holy Spirit were unfolded to them. The dirge which follows is purposely in abrupt brief words, as those in trouble speak, with scarce breath for utterance.

First, in two words, with perhaps a softened inflection, they express the utterness of their desolation. Then, in a threefold sentence, each clause consisting of three short words, they say what God had done, but do not name Him, because they are angry with Him. God’s chastisements irritate those whom they do not subdue.

The portion of my people He changes;
How He removes (it) as to me!
To a rebel our fields He divides.

They act the patriot. They, the rich, mourn over “the portion of my people” (they say) which they had themselves despoiled; they speak (as men do) as if things were what they ought to be: they hold to the theory and ignore the facts. As if, because God had divided it to His people, therefore it so remained! As if, because the poor were in theory and by God’s law provided for, they were so in fact! Then they are enraged at God’s dealings. He removes the portion as to me; and to whom does He give our fields?

“To a rebel!” the Assyrian, or the Chaldean. They had deprived the poor of their portion of “the Lord’s land.” And now they marvel that God resumes the possession of His own, and requires from them, not only the fourfold (Exodus 22:1; 2 Samuel 12:6; Luke 19:8) of their spoil, but His whole heritage. Well might Assyrian or Chaldean, as they did, jeer at the word, renegade. They had not forsaken their gods—but Israel, what was its whole history but a turning back? “Hath a nation changed their gods, which are yet no gods? But My people have changed their glory for that which doth not profit” (Jeremiah 2:11).

Such was the meaning in their lips. The word “divideth” had the more bitterness because it was the reversal of that first “division” at the entrance into Canaan. Then, with the use of this same word (Numbers 26:53, 26:55-56; Joshua 13:7; Joshua 14:5; Joshua 18:2, 18:5, 18:10; Joshua 19:51), the division of the land of the pagan was appointed to them.

Ezekiel, in his great symbolic vision, afterward prophesied the restoration of Israel, with the use of this same term (Ezekiel 47:21). Joel spoke of the parting of their land, under this same term, as a sin of the pagan (Joel 4:2, compare Joel 3:3 in English translations). Now, they say, God “divideth our fields,” not to us, but to the pagan, whose lands He gave us. It was a change of act: in impenitence, they think it a change of purpose or will.

But what lies in that, we are “utterly despoiled?” Despoiled of everything; of what they felt, temporal things; and of what they did not feel, spiritual things.

Despoiled of the land of promise, the good things of this life, but also of the Presence of God in His Temple, the grace of the Lord, the image of God and everlasting glory. “Their portion” was changed, as to themselves and with others. As to themselves, riches, honor, pleasure, their own land, were changed into want, disgrace, suffering, captivity; and yet more bitter was it to see others gain what they by their own fault had forfeited. As time went on, and their transgression deepened, the exchange of the portion of that former people of God became more complete.

The casting-off of the Jews was the grafting-in of the Gentiles (Acts 13:46). Seeing ye judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, lo! we turn to the Gentiles. And so they who were “no people” (Romans 10:19), became the people of God, and they who were His people, became, for the time, “not My people” (Hosea 1:9): and “the adoption of sons, and the glory, and the covenants, and the lawgiving, and the service of God, and the promises” (Romans 9:4–5), came to us Gentiles, since to us Christ Himself our God blessed forever came, and made us His.

How has He removed - The words do not say what He removed. They thought of His gifts; the words include Himself. They say “How?” in amazement. The change is so great and bitter, it cannot be said. Time, indeed eternity cannot utter it.

“He has divided our fields.” The land was but the outward symbol of the inward heritage. Unjust gain, kept back, is restored with usury; it taketh away the life of the owners thereof (Proverbs 1:19). The vineyard of which the Jews said, the inheritance shall be ours, was taken from them and given to others, even to Christians.

So now is that awful change begun, when Christians, leaving God, their only unchanging Good, turn to earthly vanities, and, for the grace of God which He withdraws, have these only for their fleeting portion, until it will be finally exchanged in the Day of Judgment. Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things; but now he is comforted and thou art tormented (Luke 16:25).

Israel defended himself in impenitence and self-righteousness. He was already the Pharisee. The doom of such was hopeless. The prophet breaks in with a renewed, “Therefore.” He had already prophesied that they should lose the lands which they had unjustly gotten, the land which they had profaned. He had described it in their own impenitent words. Now on the impenitence he pronounces the judgment which impenitence entails, that they should not be restored.

Therefore you shall have none that shall cast a cord by lot in the congregation of the Lord - You, in the first instance, are the impenitent Jew of that day. God had promised by Hosea to restore Judah; shortly after, the prophet himself foretells it (Micah 2:12). Now he forewarns these and such as these, that they would have no portion in it. They had neither part nor lot in this matter (Acts 8:21).

They, the not-Israel then, were the images and examples of the not-Israel afterward, those who seem to be God’s people and are not; members of the body, not of the soul of the Church; who have a sort of faith, but have not love. Such was afterward the Israel after the flesh, which was broken off, while the true Israel was restored, passing out of themselves into Christ. Such, at the end, shall be those, who, being admitted by Christ into their portion, renounce the world in word not in deed. Such shall have no portion forever in the congregation of the Lord. For nothing defiled shall enter there, nor whatsoever worketh abomination or a lie, but they which are written in the Lamb’s book of life (Revelation 21:27).

The ground of their condemnation is their resistance to light and known truth. These not only entered not in (Luke 11:52) themselves, but, being hinderers of God’s word, them that were entering in, they hindered.