Albert Barnes Commentary Micah 3:10

"They build up Zion with blood, and Jerusalem with iniquity." — Micah 3:10 (ASV)

They build up - (literally, building, singular) Zion with blood. This may be taken literally on both sides: that the rich built their palaces “with wealth gotten by bloodshed, by plunder of the poor, by slaughter of the saints,” as Ezekiel says, her princes in the midst thereof are like wolves, to shed blood, to destroy souls, to get dishonest gain (Ezekiel 22:27). Or by blood he may mean that they indirectly took away life, in that, through wrong judgments, extortion, usury, fraud, oppression, reducing wages or detaining them, they took away what was necessary to support life.

So it is said: The bread of the needy is their life; he that defrauds him of it is a man of blood. He that takes away his neighbor’s living slays him, and he that defrauds the laborer of his hire is a bloodshedder . Or it may be that, as David prayed to God, Build You the walls of Jerusalem (Psalms 51:18), thereby asking Him to maintain or increase its well-being, so these men thought to promote the temporal prosperity of Jerusalem by actions which were unjust, oppressive, and crushing to their inferiors.

So Solomon, in his degenerate days, made the yoke upon his people and his service grievous (1 Kings 12:4). Ambitious monarchs, by large standing armies or by filling their treasuries, likewise drain the life-blood of their people.

The physical condition and stature of the poorer population in much of France was lowered permanently by the conscriptions under the first Emperor.

In our wealthy nation, the term poverty describes a condition of former times. We have had to coin a new name to designate the misery that is the offspring of our material prosperity. From our wealthy towns (as from those of Flanders) ascends to heaven against us, “the cry of ‘pauperism’—that is, the cry of distress, arrived at a condition of system and of power, and, by an unexpected curse, issuing from the very development of wealth.

“The political economy of unbelief has been crushed by facts on all the theaters of human activity and industry.”

Truly we “build up Zion with blood” when we cheapen luxuries and comforts at the price of souls, use Christian toil like brute strength, tempt men to dishonesty and women to other sin to supplement the scanty wages which our selfish thirst for cheapness alone allows, heedless of everything except our individual gratification or the commercial prosperity which we have made our god.

Most terribly was “Zion built with blood” when the Jews shed the innocent Blood, so that the Romans might not take away their place and nation (John 11:48).

But since He has said, Inasmuch as you did it not to one of the least of these My brothers, you did it not to Me (Matthew 25:45), and, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me? (Acts 9:4)—when Saul was persecuting Christ’s members—then, in this waste of lives and of souls, we are not only wasting the Price of His Blood in ourselves and others, but are slaying Christ anew, and that from the same motives as those who crucified Him (1 Corinthians 8:12). When you sin (against the members), you sin against Christ. Our commercial greatness is the Price of His Blood (Matthew 27:6).

In the judgments on the Jews, we may read our own national future; in the woe on those through whom the weak brother perishes for whom Christ died (1 Corinthians 8:11), we, if we partake in or connive at it, may read our own.