Micah 2:3-4

Micah 2:3-4 announce the judgment.

Therefore Because they devise evil.

I devise an evil Or, calamity (Amos 3:6). Jehovah will bring upon the evil doers a calamity from which there can be no escape.

This family May, perhaps, include the whole nation (Amos 3:1), though it could be used of Judah alone.

Shall not remove your necks The evil is likened to a yoke that rests heavily upon the neck and cannot be shaken off.

Haughtily The pressure of the yoke makes impossible walking with heads erect, a sign of pride and arrogance. Evidently the prophet expects the calamity to be inflicted by a foreign conqueror, who will place his yoke upon the nation’s neck.

This time is evil R.V., “it is an evil time.” The expression is used again in Amos 5:13, but with a slightly different meaning.

The downfall of Israel will cause rejoicing among the conquerors and lamentation among the conquered.

Parable Hebrews mashal, which denotes any figurative saying; here probably a “taunt song” (compare Isaiah 14:4; Habakkuk 2:6).

Against you By the successful opponents. This seems to be the most natural interpretation, though the Hebrew does not make it absolutely necessary to suppose that it is to be uttered by the victorious conqueror.

Lamentation To be uttered by Israel over the calamity suffered (Amos 5:16). A supposed play upon words in the original, Pusey reproduces by, “They shall wail a wail of woe.” The whole verse is in poetic form and may be rendered more accurately:

In that day men will raise against you a taunting song,

They will lament a lamentation:

It is finished, they shall say,

We are utterly ruined,

The portion of my people he changeth,

How doth he remove it from (literally, for ) me;

Unto the rebellious he divideth our fields.

The purport of the verse is clear. The enemies will taunt Israel because their God has failed to deliver them; Israel will lament because enemies have taken possession of the holy land and divided it among themselves. At the same time it is recognized that all this is Jehovah’s doing; he takes back the land formerly assigned to Israel and hands it over to the enemy.

The Hebrew text of Micah 2:4 contains several peculiarities; the most marked of these are the abrupt transition, without even the slightest indication, from the enemies to Israel (lines 1 and 2), and the unexpected change from plural to singular and singular to plural (lines 4-7; “we”… “my”… “me”… “our”); besides, LXX. varies considerably from the present Hebrew text. For these reasons modern commentators are inclined to regard the text as more or less corrupt. Nowack, following Stade, reconstructs it, partly on the basis of LXX., and partly by conjecture, so that it reads, “Then will be uttered over you a proverb and a lamentation, as follows:

The portion of my people is divided off with a measuring rod, there is none to give it back,

To those who have led us into exile are apportioned our fields, we are utterly ruined.”

The lament itself Marti restores:

Alas! how are we utterly ruined! our land is apportioned!

Alas! how our captors do mock! our land is divided!

In both reconstructions the Kinah verse (see on Amos 5:1-3) is used, which is very appropriate in this connection.

With Micah 2:5 the difficulties increase. That in Micah 2:6 the prophet takes up the words of some one else and bases his words upon this utterance is beyond doubt; but who pronounces the curse in Micah 2:5? Some consider the verse a continuation of Micah 2:3-4. There loss of property and deportation are threatened; but, it is said, the prophets always look forward to a restoration, and this was in the mind of Micah when he uttered Micah 2:5; he means to say that when the restoration becomes a reality the ungodly will have no part in the redistribution of the land. Others insist that there is no thought of a restoration in this verse; hence they refer the threat to the immediate future; the ungodly are to have no longer any part in the inheritance of Jehovah, because their families will be cut off in the impending judgment. The singular “thou” is thought to be used in order to indicate that every individual sinner is to be punished; not one will escape the threatened judgment. The first interpretation is perfectly possible, the second is highly improbable, because the context makes no distinction between the fate of the good and the bad at the time of the judgment. In Micah 2:3-4 the threat is made against the whole people; it will be utterly ruined, the enemy will take possession of the entire land, everybody is expected to go into exile. In the exile some will remain loyal to Jehovah, others will apostatize. Between the two classes a separation will be made at the time of the restoration; only the faithful will return to their former home. In this restored community, which is the congregation of Jehovah, the ungodly will have no part.

Others, who insist that the only reference to a restoration in this chapter is in Micah 2:12-13, give a still different interpretation. They consider Micah 2:5 the utterance of a bystander who, as the spokesman of the people, attempts to interrupt the denunciatory discourse of Micah. To a great majority of the people the words of Micah 2:4 would seem blasphemy. How could a man dare to announce that Jehovah was weaker than the gods of the Assyrians, that he could not or would not protect his chosen people; that the sanctuary would be desecrated? A man who uttered words such as Micah dared to utter must be a blasphemer or a madman; in either case he deserved the wrath of God. These thoughts a bystander put into words.

“Because of his blasphemous words, the Jews think, Micah should be killed (compare Jeremiah 26:8-9; Jeremiah 26:11), destroyed with his entire family (Jeremiah 11:19), so that his possessions would fall into the hands of strangers (Amos 7:17); he should suffer the punishment of the false prophet (Deuteronomy 13:9), and with him will suffer his descendants (Jeremiah 22:30), who are rooted out before they see the light. The form of this threat corresponds with the prophet’s prediction; he is to suffer the very fate which he threatens them, lose permanently his inheritance.” The most recent commentators, Nowack and Marti, consider Micah 2:5 a later gloss. If the verse is original the choice lies between the first and the third interpretations, and of these the third seems to be, on the whole, the most satisfactory.