Albert Barnes Commentary Micah 6:16

"For the statutes of Omri are kept, and all the works of the house of Ahab, and ye walk in their counsels; that I may make thee a desolation, and the inhabitants thereof a hissing: and ye shall bear the reproach of my people." — Micah 6:16 (ASV)

For the statutes of Omri are kept - Rather (as the English margin notes, 'he does much keep'), he diligently keeps them for himself. Both interpretations express great diligence in evil. To 'keep God’s commandments' was the familiar phrase by which Israel was exhorted, with every motive of hope and fear, to obey God. 'I know him,' God says of Abraham, 'that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord, to do judgment and justice' (Genesis 18:19).

This was the fundamental commandment immediately after the deliverance from Egypt, upon their first murmuring. 'The Lord made there' (at Marah) 'for them a statute and ordinance, and said, If you will diligently listen to the voice of the Lord your God, and will do that which is right in His sight, and will give ear to His commandments and keep all His statutes, I will put none of these diseases upon you which I have brought upon the Egyptians' (Exodus 15:25–26).

In this character He revealed Himself on Mount Sinai, as 'showing mercy to thousands of them that love Me and keep My commandments' (Exodus 20:6). This was their covenant: 'You have declared the Lord this day to be your God and to walk in His ways, and to keep His statutes and His commandments and His judgments and to listen to His voice' (Deuteronomy 26:17).

This was so often enforced upon them in the Law as the condition for holding their land: if they kept the covenant (Exodus 19:5; the words of this covenant, Deuteronomy 29:9); the commandments (Leviticus 22:31; Leviticus 26:3; Deuteronomy 4:2; Deuteronomy 6:17; Deuteronomy 7:11; Deuteronomy 8:6, 11; Deuteronomy 10:13; Deuteronomy 11:1, 8, 22; Deuteronomy 13:5; Deuteronomy 15:5; Deuteronomy 19:9; Deuteronomy 27:1; Deuteronomy 28:9; Deuteronomy 30:10); the judgments (Leviticus 18:5, 26; Leviticus 20:22; Deuteronomy 7:11; Deuteronomy 8:11; Deuteronomy 11:1); the statutes (Leviticus 18:5, 26; Leviticus 20:8, 22; Deuteronomy 4:40; Deuteronomy 6:17; Deuteronomy 7:11; Deuteronomy 10:13; Deuteronomy 11:1; Deuteronomy 30:10); the testimonies (Deuteronomy 6:17); and the charge of the Lord (Leviticus 18:30; Deuteronomy 11:1).

Under this term all the curses of the Law were threatened if they 'did not listen to the voice of the Lord their God, to keep His commandments and His statutes which He commanded them' (Deuteronomy 28:15).

Under this again, the future of good and evil was set before the house of David in Solomon’s time: unbroken succession on his throne, if 'you will keep My commandments; but conversely, if you or your children will not keep My commandments and My statutes' (1 Kings 9:4–6), then banishment, destruction of the temple, and they themselves to be 'a proverb and a byword among all people' (1 Kings 9:7).

The object of their existence was 'that they might keep His statutes and observe His laws' (Psalms 105:45). The summary of their disobedience was, 'they kept not the covenant of God' (Psalms 78:11).

And now the contrary to all this had come. They had not kept the commandments of God; and those commandments of man which were most contrary to God’s commandments, they had kept and did keep diligently. Alas, that the Christian world should be so like them! What iron habit or custom of man, what fashion, is not kept if it is against the law of God?

How few are not more afraid of man than God? If God’s command had been, 'Speak evil of one another, brothers,' would it not have been the best kept of all His commandments? God says, 'Do not speak evil'; custom, the conversation around us, and fear of man say, 'Speak evil.' Man’s commandment is kept; God’s is not. And no one repents or makes restitution; few even cease from the sin.

Scripture does not record what the special aggravation of Omri’s sin was, since the accursed worship of Baal was brought in by Ahab, his son. But, as usual, 'like father, like son.' The son developed the sins of the father. Some special sinfulness of Omri is implied, in that Athaliah, the murderess of her children, is called after her grandfather, Omri, not after her father, Ahab (2 Kings 8:26; 2 Chronicles 22:2). Heresiarchs have a deeper guilt than their followers, although the heresy itself is commonly developed later. Omri settled the kingdom of Israel for a while, after the anarchy that followed the murder of Elah, and slew Zimri, his murderer.

Yet before God, he did worse than all before him and walked in all the way of Jeroboam (1 Kings 16:25–26). Yet this too did not suffice Judah, for it follows, 'And all the doings of the house of Ahab,' who again 'did evil in the sight of the Lord above all that were before him and served Baal' (1 Kings 16:30–33); Ahab, to whom none 'was like in sin, who did sell himself to work wickedness in the sight of the Lord' (1 Kings 21:25). These were they whose statutes Judah now kept, as diligently and accurately as if it had been a religious act.

They kept, not the statutes of the Lord, 'but the statutes of Omri'; they kept, as their pattern before their eyes, all the doings of the house of Ahab—his luxury, oppression, the bloodshedding of Naboth—and they walked onward, not, as God bid them, humbly with Him, but in their own counsels. And what must be the end of all this? 'That I should make you a desolation.' They acted as though the very end and object of all their acts were that in which they ended: their own destruction and reproach.

Therefore you shall bear the reproach of My people - The title 'the people of God' must be a glory or a reproach. Judah had gloried in being God’s people outwardly, by His covenant and protection; they were envied for the outward distinction.

They refused to be so inwardly and gave themselves to the hideous, desecrating worship of Baal. Now then, what had been their pride would be the aggravation of their punishment. Now too, we hear of people everywhere zealous for a system that their deeds contradict. Faith without love (such as their character had been) feels any insult to the relation to God, which by its deeds it disgraces.

Though they had themselves neglected God, it was a heavy burden for them to bear the triumph of the pagans over them—the taunt that God was unable to help them or had cast them off: 'These are the people of the Lord and are gone forth out of His land' (Ezekiel 36:20). 'Why should they say among the pagans, Where is their God?' (see the notes at Joel 2:17).

As it is written: 'We are confounded because we have heard reproach; shame has covered our faces, for strangers have come into the sanctuaries of the Lord’s house' (Jeremiah 51:51). And, 'We have become a reproach to our neighbors, a scorn and derision to them that are round about us' (Psalms 79:4). Also, 'You make us a reproach to our neighbors, a scorn and derision to them that are round about us. You make us a byword among the pagans, a shaking of the head among the people. My confusion is daily before me, and the shame of my face has covered me, for the voice of him that slanders and blasphemes, by reason of the enemy and the avenger' (Psalms 44:13–16).

The words 'the reproach of My people' may also include 'the reproach with which God in the Law (Deuteronomy 28:36) threatened His people if they should forsake Him,' which indeed amounts to the same thing, one being the prophecy, the other the fulfillment. The word 'hissing' in itself recalled the threat to David’s house in Solomon’s time: 'At this house, which is high, every one that passes by it shall be astonished and hiss' (1 Kings 9:8).

Micah’s phrase became a favorite expression of Jeremiah. So only do God’s prophets denounce. It is a marvelous glimpse into man’s religious history that faith, although it had been inoperative and was trampled upon outwardly, could still survive; indeed, that God, whom in prosperity they had forsaken and forgotten, would be remembered when He seemed to forget and forsake them. If the captive Jews had abandoned their faith, the reproach would have ceased. The words 'you shall bear the reproach of My people' are, at once, a prediction of their deserved suffering for the profanation of God’s name by their misdeeds, and of their perseverance in that faith which, until that time, they had mostly neglected.