Charles Ellicott Commentary Micah 6

Hear ye now what the Lord saith. The third portion of Micah’s prophecy opens with a solemn appeal to Nature to hear the Lord pleading with His people. A similar summons is found in Deuteronomy 32:1: “Give ear, O ye heavens, and hear, O earth, the words of my mouth.”

For I brought thee up. —There seems a pause intended; but Israel, abashed, remains silent. So the Lord continues to plead: “You do not testify against me? No; for I showed you the greatest mercies: I redeemed you out of Egypt, the house of bondage.” Moses, Aaron, and Miriam are mentioned as the three great members of the family to whom it was committed to carry out the Divine decree.

What Balaam the son of Beor answered. This incident is cited in the “pleading” as a clear instance of the controlling power of God, exercised in an unmistakable manner on behalf of the Israelites. Balaam was compelled to bless when he had the highest conceivable motive to curse the Israelites. He apologized for this involuntary action on his part to Balak. There is no more conclusive existing instance of the will of man being controlled to do the exact opposite of his intended action in the history of mankind.

It is better to place a period after “answered him.” The next sentence records an independent instance of the intervention of God on behalf of Israel: “Remember also the incidents which happened from Shittim to Gilgal.” Shittim was the name of a valley in the plains of Moab (Joel 3:18), from where Joshua sent two spies to view Jericho immediately before the passage of the Jordan to Gilgal was accomplished, under the circumstances mentioned in Joshua 4.

Righteousness. The word here rather means liberality, beneficence.

Wherewith shall I come ...? — This has been taken by some commentators as Balak’s question to Balaam, who gives his reply in Micah 6:8. Dean Stanley writes, in his picturesque manner, of “the short dialogue preserved, not by the Mosaic historian, but by the Prophet Micah, which at once exhibits the agony of the king and the lofty conceptions of the great Seer” (Jewish Church, Lect. 8). However, it is more in harmony with the context to understand it as the alarmed and conscience-stricken reply of the Jewish people, personified in some earnest speaker, to the pleading brought before them by the prophet in the Lord’s name.

The fruit of my body. —Will God require the sacrifice of such a precious possession, as Isaac was to Abraham, to atone for my wrong-doing? There may possibly be an allusion to human sacrifices, such as Ahaz offered to Molech, or to the act of Mesha, King of Moab, who "took his eldest son, that should have reigned in his stead, and offered him up for a burnt offering upon the wall."