Albert Barnes Commentary Micah 7:4

"The best of them is as a brier; the most upright is [worse] than a thorn hedge: the day of thy watchmen, even thy visitation, is come; now shall be their perplexity." — Micah 7:4 (ASV)

The best of them is as a brier - The gentlest of them is a thorn, strong, hard, piercing, which lets nothing unresisting pass by without taking from it, “robbing the fleece, and wounding the sheep.” The most upright—those who, in comparison with others still worse, seem so—is sharper than a thorn hedge (literally, the upright, them a thorn hedge). They are not like it only, but worse, and that in all ways; none is specified, and so none excepted; they were more crooked, more tangled, sharper. Both, as hedges, were set for protection; both, turned to injury. Jerome: “So that, where you would look for help, from there comes suffering.” And if such are the best, what about the rest?

The day of thy watchmen and thy visitation cometh - When all, even the good, are thus corrupted, the iniquity is full. Nothing now hinders the visitation, which the watchmen, or prophets, had so long foreseen and forewarned of. Now shall be their perplexity; now, without delay; for the day of destruction ever breaks suddenly upon the sinner. When they say, peace and safety, then sudden destruction cometh upon them (1 Thessalonians 5:3): whose destruction cometh suddenly at an instant. They had perplexed the cause of the oppressed; they themselves were tangled together, intertwined in mischief, as a thorn-hedge. They should be caught in their own snare; they had perplexed their paths and should find no outlet.