Micah 6:16 - Exposition

The threatening is closed by repeating its cause: the punishment is the just reward of ungodly conduct. The first part of the verse corresponds to Micah 6:10-12 , the second part to Micah 6:13-15 . The statutes of Omri. The statutes are the rules of worship prescribed by him of whom it is said ( 1 Kings 16:25 ) that he "wrought evil in the eyes of the Lord, and did worse than all that were before him." No special "statutes" of his are anywhere mentioned; but he is named here as the founder of that evil dynasty which gave Ahab to Israel, and the murderess Athaliah (who is called in 2 Kings 8:26 , "the daughter of Omri") to Judah. The people keep his statutes instead of the Lord's (Le 20:22). The works of the house of Ahab are their crimes and sins, especially the idolatrous practices observed by that family, such as the worship of Baal, which became the national religion ( 1 Kings 16:31 , etc.). Such apostasy had a disastrous effect upon the neighbouring kingdom of Judah ( 2 Kings 8:18 ). Walk in their counsels. Take your tone and policy from them. That I should make thee. "The punishment was as certainly connected with the sin, in the purpose of God, as if its infliction had been the end at which they aimed" (Henderson). The prophet hero threatens a threefold penalty, as he had mentioned a threefold guiltiness. A desolation; ἀφανισμόν ; perditionem (Vulgate). According to Keil, "an object of horror," as Deuteronomy 28:37 ; Jeremiah 25:9 . Micah addresses Jerusalem itself in the first clause, its inhabitants in the second, and the whole nation in the last. An hissing; i.e. an object of derision, as Jeremiah 19:8 ; Jeremiah 25:18 , etc. Therefore ( and ) ye shall bear the reproach of my people. Ye shall have to hear yourselves reproached at the mouth of the heathen, in that, though ye were the Lord's peculiar people, ye were cast out and given into the hands of your enemies. The Septuagint, from a different reading, renders, καιδη λαῶν λήψεσθε , "Ye shall receive the reproaches of nations," which is like Ezekiel 34:29 ; Ezekiel 36:6 , Ezekiel 36:15 .