Charles Ellicott Commentary Micah 6:6

"Wherewith shall I come before Jehovah, and bow myself before the high God? shall I come before him with burnt-offerings, with calves a year old?" — Micah 6:6 (ASV)

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.