Albert Barnes Commentary Micah 2:11

"If a man walking in a spirit of falsehood do lie, [saying], I will prophesy unto thee of wine and of strong drink; he shall even be the prophet of this people." — Micah 2:11 (ASV)

If a man walking in the spirit and falsehood - Literally, “in spirit” (not My Spirit) “and falsehood,” that is, in a lying spirit; such as those whose woe Ezekiel pronounces (Ezekiel 13:3): Woe unto the foolish prophets who walk after their own spirit and what they have not seen (compare Ezekiel 13:2, Ezekiel 13:17); prophets out of their own hearts, who prophesied a vision of falsehood, and a destruction and nothingness; prophesied falsehood; indeed, prophets of the deceit of their hearts.

These, like the true prophets, “walked in spirit”; as Isaiah speaks of walking in righteousness (Isaiah 33:15). Their habitual conduct was in a spirit, but of falsehood.

If such a one lies, saying, “I will prophesy to you of wine and strong drink.” A person’s conscience needs some plea when speaking falsely of God. The false prophets had to please the rich, to embolden them in their self-indulgence, to tell them that God would not punish.

They doubtless spoke of God’s temporal promises to His people, the land flowing with milk and honey. His promises of abundant harvest and vintage, and assured them that God would not withdraw these, that He was not so precise about His law. Micah tells them in plain words what it all came to; it was a prophesying of “wine and strong drink.”

He shall even be the prophet of this people - Literally, “and shall be bedewing this people.” He uses the same words that scorners of Israel and Judah employed in forbidding to prophesy.

They said, “Drop not,” forbidding God’s word as a wearisome dropping. It wore away their patience, not their hearts of stone.

He tells them who might speak to them without wearying, of whose words they would never tire, who might do habitually what they forbade to God—one who, in the Name of God, set them at ease in their sensual indulgences.

This is the secret of the success of everything opposed to God and Christ. Man wants a God. God has made it a necessity of our nature to crave for Him. Spiritual, like natural, hunger, denied wholesome food or loathing it, must be stilled, stifled, with what will appease its pangs.

Our natural intellect longs for Him, for it cannot understand itself without Him. Our restlessness longs for Him, to rest upon.

Our helplessness longs for Him, to escape from the unbearable pressure of our unknown futurity. Our imagination craves for Him, for, being made for the Infinite, it cannot be content with the finite.

Aching affections long for Him, for no creature can soothe them. Our dissatisfied conscience longs for Him, to teach it and make it one with itself.

But man does not want to be responsible, nor to owe duty, still less to be liable to penalties for disobeying.

The Christian, not the natural man, longs that his whole being should tend to God.

The natural man wishes to be well rid of what makes him uneasy, not to belong to God.

And the horrible subtlety of false teaching, in each age or country, is to meet its own favorite requirements, without calling for self-sacrifice or self-oblation, to give it a god such as it would have, such as might content it. “The people will to be deceived, let them be deceived,” is a true proverb. Men turn away their ears from the truth (2 Timothy 4:4) which they dislike, and so are turned to fables which they like. They who receive not the love of the truth—believe a lie (2 Thessalonians 2:11–12). If men will not retain God in their knowledge, God giveth them over to an undistinguishing mind (Romans 1:28). They who would not receive our Lord, coming in His Father’s Name, have ever since, as He said, received them who came in their own (John 5:43).

Men teach their teachers how they wish to be mistaught, and receive the echo of their wishes as the Voice of God.