Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

as unbounded Ruler of the world (cf. Amos iv. 13 and Deut. xxxli. 13), will come down in fire, so that the mountains melt before Him, that is to say, as Judge of the world. The description of this theophany is founded upon the idea of a terrible storm and earthquake, as in Ps. xvili. 8 sqq. The mountains melt (Judg. v. 4 and Ps. Ixviii. 9) with the streams of water, which discharge themselves from heaven (Judg. v. 4), and the valleys split with the deep channels cut out by the torrents of water. The similes, “like wax,” etc. (as in Ps. Ixviii. 3), and “like water,” etc., are intended to express the complete dissolution of mountains and valleys. The actual facts answering to this description are the destructive influences exerted upon nature by great national judgments.

This judicial interposition on the part of God is occasioned by the sin of Israel. Ver. 5. “ For the apostasy of Jacob (is) all this, and for the sins of the house of Israel. Who is Jacob’s apostasy? is it not Samaria? And who Judah’s high places? is it not Jerusalem? Ver. 6. Therefore I make Samaria into, a stone-heap of the field, into plantations of vines; and I pour her stones into the valley, and I will lay bare her foundations. Ver. 7. And all her stone images will be beaten to pieces, and all her lovers’ yifts be burned with fire, and all her idols will I make into a waste: for she has gathered them of prostitutes hire, and to prostitutes hire shall they return.” “ All this” refers to the coming of Jehovah to judgment announced in vers. 3,4. This takes place on account of the apostasy and the sins of Israel. 2 (for) used to denote reward or wages, as in 2 Sam. il. 27 compared with ver. 80. Jacob and Israel in ver. 5a are synonymous, signifying the whole of the covenant nation, as we may see from the fact that in ver. 5) Jacob and not Israel is the epithet applied to the ten tribes in distinction from Judah. %, who?—referring to the author. The apostasy of Israel originates with Samaria; the worship on the high places with Jerusalem. The capitals of the two kingdoms are the authors _ of the apostasy, as the centres and sources of the corruption which has spread from them over the kingdoms. The allusion to the bdmoth of the illegal worship of the high places, which even the most godly kings were unable to abolish (see at 1 Kings xv. 14), shows, moreover, that)¥B denotes that religious apostasy from Jehovah which was formally sanctioned in the kingdom of the ten tribes by the introduction of the calf-worship. But because this apostasy commenced in the kingdom of the ten tribes, the pnnishment would fall upon this kingdom first, and Samaria would be utterly destroyed. Stone-heaps of the field and vineyard plantations harmonize badly, in Hitzig’s view: he therefore proposes to alter the text. But there is no necessity for this. The point of comparison is simply that Samaria will be so destroyed, that not a single trace of a city will be left, and the site thereof will become like a ploughed field or plain. 187 is added to ‘Y, a heap of ruins or stones, to strengthen it. Samaria shall become like a heap, not of ruins or building stones, but of stones collected from the field. DID *ywID?, i.é. into arable land upon which you can plant vineyards. ‘The figure answers to the situation of Samaria upon a hill in a very fruitful region, which was well adapted for planting vineyards (see at Amos iii. 9). The situation of the city helps to explain the casting of its stones into the valley. Laying bare the foundations denotes destruction to the very foundation (cf. Ps. exxxvii. 7). On the destruction of the city all its idols will be annihilated. £’sz/im, idols, as in Isa. x. 10; not wooden idols, however, to which the expression yukkatti, smitten to pieces, would not apply, but stone idols, from pdsal (Ex. xxxiv. 1). By the lovers’ gifts (ethndn, see at Hos. ix. 1) we are to understand, not “the riches of the city or their possessions, inasmuch as the idolaters regarded their wealth and prosperity as a reward from their gods, according to Hos. ii. 7,14” (Rashi, Hitzig, and others), but the temple gifts, “ gifts suspended in the temples and sacred places in honour of the gods” (Rosenmiiller), by which the temple worship with its apparatus were maintained; so that by ’ethndn we may understand the entire apparatus of religious worship. For the parallelism of the clauses requires that the word should be restricted to this. OY are also idolatrous images. “To make them into a waste,” i.e. not only to divest them of their ornament, but so utterly to destroy them that the place where they once stood becomes waste. The next clause, containing the reason, must not be restricted to the ‘dsabbim, as Hitzig supposes, but refers to the two clauses of the first hemistich, so that p°stlim and ‘dtsabbim are to be supplied as objects to qibldtsah (she gathered), and to be regarded as the subject to yashabha (shall return). Samaria gathered together the entire apparatus of her idolatrous worship from prostitute’s gifts (the wages of prostitution), namely, through gifts presented by the idolaters. The acquisition of all this is described as the gain of prostitute’s wages, according to the scriptural view that idolatry was spiritual whoredom. There is no ground for thinking of literal wages of prostitution, or money which flowed into the temples from the voluptuous worship of Aphrodite, because Micah had in his mind not literal (heathenish) idolatry, but simply the transformation of the Jehovah-worship into idolatry by the worship of Jehovah under the symbols of the golden calves. These things return back to the wages of prostitution, z.e. they become this once more (cf. Gen. iii. 19) by being carried away by the enemies, who conquer the city and destroy it, and being applied to their idolatrous worship. On the capture of cities, the idols and temple treasures were carried away (cf. Isa. xlvi. 1, 2; Dan. i. 3).

Vers. 8-16. The judgment will not stop at Samaria, however, but spread over Judah. The prophet depicts this by saying that he will go about mourning as a prisoner, to set forth the misery that will come upon Judah (vers. 8, 9); and then, to confirm this, he announces to a series of cities the fate awaiting them, or rather awaiting the kingdom, by a continued play upon words founded upon their names (vers. 10-15); and finally he summons Zion to deep mourning (ver. 16). Ver. 8 “ Therefore will I lament and howl, I will go spoiled and naked: L will keep lamentation like the jackals, and mourning like the ostriches. Ver. 9. Lor her stripes are malignant; for it comes to Judah, reaches to the gate of my people, to Jerusalem.” nxirby points back to what precedes, and is then explained in ver. 9. The prophet will lament over the destruction of Samaria, because the judgment which has befallen this city will come upon Judah also. Micah does not speak in his own name here as a patriot (Hitzig¢), but in the name of his nation, with which he identifies himself as being a member thereof. This is indisputably evident from the expression Diny) Pay MIN, which describes the costume of a prisoner, not that of a mourner. The form 725s with ' appears to have been simply suggested by } np ON, Doe i is formed like 17°7 in Isa. xvi. 9, 10, sndh other similar words (see Olshausen, Gramm. p- 342). The Masoretes have substituted Obey after Job xii. 17, but without the slightest reason, It does not mean “ Marefontedeg avuTrooeTos (LXX.), for which there was already 4? in ie language (2 Sam. xv. 30; Isa. xx. 2,3; Jer. il. 25), but plundered, spoiled. ony, naked, 7.¢. without upper garment (see my comm. on 1. Sam. xix. 24), not merely vestitu solido et decente privatus. Mourners do indeed go barefooted (ydchéph, see 2 Sam. xv. 80), and in deep mourning in a hairy garment (sag, 2 Sam. iii. 31; Gen. xxxvii. 34, ate.), but not inne and naked. ‘The assertion, however, that a man was ¢alled ‘arom when he had put on a mourning garment (sag, sackcloth) in the place of his upper garment, derives no support from Isa, xx. 2, but rather a refutation. Tor there the prophet does not go about ‘arom v’ydchéph, te. in the dress of a prisoner, to symbolize the captivity of Egypt, till after he has loosened the hairy garment (sag) from his loins, «.e. taken it off. And here also the plundering of the prophet and his walking naked are to be understood in the same way. Micah’s intention is not only to exhibit publicly his mourning for the approaching calamity of Judah, but also to set forth in a symbolical form the fate that awaits the Judeans, And he can only do this by including himself in the nation, and exhibiting the fate of the nation in his own person. Wailing like jackals and ostriches is a loud, strong, mournful cry, those animals being distinguished by a mournful wail; see the comm. on Job xxx. 29, which passage may possibly have floated before the prophet’s mind. Thus shall Judah wail, because the stroke which falls upon Samaria is malignant, i.e. incurable (the suffix attached to ™ni3!2 refers to Shem! ron, Samaria, in vers. 6and 7. For the ‘singular of the predicate before a subject in the plural, see Ewald, § 295, a, and 317, a). It reaches to Judah, yea, to Jerusalem. Jerusalem, as the capital, is called the “ gate of my people,” because in it par ewcellence the people went out andin. That 7Y is not exclusive here, but inclusive, embracing the terminus ad quem, is evident from the parallel “even to Judah;” for if it only reached to the border of Judah, it would not have been able to come to Jerusalem; and still more clearly so from the description in vers. 10 sqq. The fact that Jerusalem is not mentioned till after Judah is to be interpreted rhetorically, and not geographically. Even the capital, where the temple of Jehovah stood, would not be spared.

The penetration of the judgment into Judah is now clearly depicted by an individualizing enumeration of a number of cities which will be smitten by it. Ver. 10. “ Go not to Gath to declare it; weeping, weep not. At Beth-Leafra (dust-home) L have strewed dust upon myself. Ver. 11. Pass thou away, O inhabitress of Shajir (beautiful city), stripped in shame. The inhabitress of Zaanan (departure) has not departed; the lamentation of Beth-Haézel (near-house) takes from you the standing near ut. Ver. 12. For the inhabitress of Maroth (bitterness) writhes for good; for evil has come down from Jehovah to the gate of Jerusalem.” The description commences with words borrowed from David’s elegy on the death of Saul and Jonathan (2 Sam. i. 20), “Publish it not in Gath,” in which there is a play upon the words in O‘gath and taggidu. The Philistines are not to hear of the distress of Judah, lest they should rejoice over it. There is also a play upon words in WDAR"ON i3a, The sentence belongs to what precedes, and supplies the fuller definition, that they are not to proclaim the calamity in Gath with weeping, i.e. not to weep over it there.’ After this reminiscence of the mourning of David for Saul, which expresses the greatness of the grief, and is all the more significant, because in the approaching catastrophe Judah is also to lose its king (cf. iv. 9), so that David is to experience the fate of Saul

1 On the ground of the Septuagint rendering, wat of "Evaxsiu wy dvorxoodoueire, most of the modern expositors follow Reland (Palwst. ill. p. 534 sqq-) in the opinion that j3 is the name of a city, a contraction of jaya, ‘Cand weep not at Acco.” “There is no force in the objection brought against this by Caspari (Zich. p. 110), namely, that in that case the inhabitants of both kingdoms must have stood out before the prophet’s mind in hemistich a, which, though not rendered actually impossible by ver. 9a, and the expression nsrby in ver. 8, is hardly reconcilable with the fact that from ver. 11 onwards Judah only stands out before his mind, and that in vers. 8-10 the distress of his people, in the stricter sense (i.e. of Judah), is obviously the pre-eminent object of his mourning. For Acco would not be taken into consideration as a city of the kingdom of Israel, but as a city inhabited by heathen, since, according to Judg. i. 31, the Canaanites were not driven out of Acco, and it cannot be shown from any passage of the Old Testament that this city ever came into the actual possession of the Israelites. It is evidently a more important objection to the supposed contraction, that not a single analogous case can be pointed out. The forms npws for mypwia (Amos vill. 8) and npa for nova (Josh. xix. 3 and xy. 29) are of a different kind; and the blending of the prepo-

(Hengstenberg), Micah mentions places in which Judah will mourn, or, at any rate, experience something very painful. From ver. 100 to ver. 15 he mentions ten places, whose names, with a very slight alteration, were adapted for jeua de mots, with which to depict what would happen to them or take place within them. The number ten (the stamp of completeness, pointing to the fact that the judgment would be a complete one, spreading over the whole kingdom) is divided into twice five by the statement, which is repeated in ver. 12, that the calamity would come to the gate of Jerusalem; five places being mentioned before Jerusalem (vers. 10-12), and five after (vers. 13-15). This division makes Hengstenberg’s conjecture a very natural one, viz. that the five places mentioned before Jerusalem are to be sought for to the north of Jerusalem, and the others to the south or south-west, and that in this way Micah indicates that the judgment will proceed from the north to the south. On the other hand, Caspari’s opinion, that the prophet simply enumerates certain places in the neighbourhood of Moresheth, his own home, rests upon no firm foundation. Maye m2 is noe: the Ophra of Benjamin (™5y, Josh. xviii. 23), which was situated, according to Eusebius, not far from Bethel (see comm. on Josh. J.c.). flee is pointed with pathach here for the sake of the paronomasia with 78). The chethib ‘mya is the correct reading, the keri wbann being merely an emen- sition 3 with the noun jay, by dropping the y, so as to form one word, is altogether unparalleled. The Septuagint translation furnishes no sufficient authority for such an assumption. All that we can infer from the fact that Eusebius has adopted the reading ’Eveye/« in his Onom. (ed. Lars. p. 188), observing at the same time that this name occurs in Micah, whilst Aq. and Symm. have ¢y zawvdue (in fletu) instead, is that these Greek fathers regarded the Evayese of the LXX. as the name of a place; but this does not in the smallest degree prove the correctness of the LXX. rendering. Nor does the position of i332 before Os furnish any tenable ground for maintaining that this word cannot be the inf. abs. of na, but must contain the name of a place. The assertion of Hitzig, that “if the word were regarded as an inf. abs., neither the inf. itself nor 5 for x5 would be admissible in a negative sentence (Jer. xxii. 10),” has no grammatical foundation. It is by no means a necessary consequence, that because by cannot be connected with the inf. abs. (Ewald, § 350, a), therefore the inf. abs. could not be written before a finite verb with Oy for the sake of emphasis, dation springing out of a misunderstanding of the true meaning. wpann does not mean to revolve, but to bestrew one’s self. Bestrewing with dust or ashes was a sign of deep mourning (Jer. vi. 26; 2 Sam. xiii. 19). The prophet speaks in the name of the people of what the people will do. The inhabitants of Shafir are to go stripped into captivity. 72, to pass’ by, here in the sense of moving forwards. The plural n2> is to be accounted for from the fact that yoshebheth is the population. Shdphir, te. beautiful city, is not the same as the Shamir in Josh. xv. 48, for this was situated in the south-west of the mountains of Judah; nor the same as the Shémir in the mountains of Ephraim (Judg. x. 1), which did not belong to the kingdom of Judah; but is a place to the north of Jerusalem, of which nothing further is known. The statement in the Onomast. s.v. Zapeip—ev yj dpewh between Eleutheropolis and Askalon—is probably intended to apply to the Shamir of Joshua; but this is evidently erroneous, as the country between Eleutheropolis and Askalon did not belong to the mountains of Judah, but to the Shephelah. nYa7AMy, a combination like PIs“ in Ps, xly. 5, equivalent to stripping which is shame, shame-nakedness = ignominious stripping. Y is an accusative defining the manner in which they would go out. The next two clauses are difficult to explain. }J8¥, a play upon words with MNS’, is traceable to this verb, so far as its meaning is concerned. The primary meaning of the name is uncertain; the more modern commentators combine it with jN¥, in the sense of rich in flocks. The situation of Zaanan is quite unknown. The supposed identity with Zendn (see at Josh. xv. 37) must be given up, as Zendn was in the plain, and Zaanan was most probably to the north of Jerusalem. The meaning of the clause can hardly be any other than this, that the population of Zaanan had not gone out of their city to this war from fear of the enemy, but, on the contrary, had fallen back behind their walls (Ros., Casp., Hitzig). ox M3 is most likely the same as PSN in Zech. xiv. 5, a place in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem, to the east of the Mount of Olives, as Beth is frequently omitted in the names of places (sce Ges. Thes. p. 193). Etsel signifies side, and as an adverb or preposition, “by the side of.’ This meaning comes into consideration here. The thought of the words mispad beth, etc. might be: VOL. I. 2E

“The lamentation of Beth-Haezel will take away its standing (the standing by the side of it, ’ets/o) from you (Judzans), 2.2. will not allow you to tarry there as fugitives (cf. Jer. xlviii. 45). The distress into which the enemy staying there has plunged Beth-Haezel, will make it impossible for you to stop there” (Hitzig, Caspari). But the next clause, which is connected by ‘3, does not suit this explanation (ver. 12). The only way in which this clause can be made to follow suitably as an explanation is by taking the words thus: “The lamentation of Beth- Haezel will take its standing (the stopping of the calamity or judgement) from you, t.e. the calamity will not stop at Beth- Haezel (at the near house), 7.e. stop near it, as we should expect -from its name; for (ver. 12) Maroth, which stands further off, will feel pain,” ete. With this view, which Caspari also suggests, Hengstenberg (on Zech. xiv. 5) agrees in the main, except that he refers the suffix in 1N7Y to 18D, and renders the words thus: “ The lamentation of Beth-Haezel will take its stopping away from you, ¢.e. will not allow you the stopping of the lamentation.” Grammatically considered, this connection is the more natural one; but there is this objection, that it cannot be shown that TY is used in the sense of the stopping or ceasing of a lamentation, whereas the supposition that the suffix refers to the calamity simply by constructio ad sensum has all the less difficulty, inasmuch as the calamity has already been hinted at in the verb Y1) in ver. 9, and in ver. 10a also it forms the object to be supplied in thought. Maroth (lit. something bitter, bitternesses) is quite unknown; it is simply evident, from the explanatory clause '3) 77° °3, that it was situated in the immediate neighbourhood of Jerusalem. The inhabitants of Maroth writhe (chalah, from chal, to writhe with pain, like a woman in child-birth), because they are also smitten with the calamity, when it comes down to the gate of Jerusalem. aid, “on account of the good,” which they have lost, or are about to lose.

And the judgment will not even stop at Jerusalem, but will spread still further over the land. This spreading is depicted in vers. 13-15 in the same manner as before. Ver. 13. “ Harness the horse to the chariot, O inhabitress of Lachish! It was the beginning of sin to the daughter Zion, that the iniquities of Israel were found in her. Ver. 14. Therefore wilt thow give dismissal-presents to Moresheth-Gath (i.e. the betrothed of Gath); the houses of Achzib (lying fountain) become a lying brook for Israel's kings. Wer. 15. I will still bring thee the heir, O inhabitress of Mareshah (hereditary city); the nobility of Israel will come to Adullam. Ver. 16. Make thyself bald, and shave thyself upon the sons of thy delights: spread out thy baldness like the eagle; for they have wandered away from thee.’ The inhabitants of Lachish, a fortified city in the Shephelah, to the west of Eleutheropolis, preserved in the ruins of Um Lakis (see at Josh. x. 3), are to harness the horses to the chariot (rekhesh, a runner; see at 1 Kings v. 8: the word is used as ringing with /ékhish), namely, to flee as rapidly as possible before the advancing foe. DM, dz. rey. “to bind... the horse to the chariot,” answering to the Latin currum jungere equis. Upon this city will the judgment fall with especial severity, because it has grievously sinned. It was the beginning of sin to the daughter of Zion, z.e. to the population of Jerusalem; it was the first to grant admission to the iniquities of Israel, 7.c. to the idolatry of the image-worship of the ten tribes (for Oyen ‘YwR, see ver. 5 and Amos ili. 14), which penetrated even to the capital. Nothing more is known of this, as the historical books contain no account of it. For this reason, namely, because the sin of Israel found admission into Jerusalem, she (the daughter Zion) will be obliged to renounce Moresheth-Gath. This is the thought of ver. 14a, the drapery of which rests upon the resemblance in sound between Moresheth and m* ordsdh, the betrothed (Deut. xxii. 23). Shillachim, dismissal, denotes anything belonging to a man, which he dismisses or gives up for a time, or for ever. It is applied in Ex. xviii. 2 to the sending away of wife and children to the father-in-law for a time; and in 1 Kings ix. 16 to a dowry, or the present which a father gives to his daughter when she is married and leaves his house. The meaning “divorce,” i.e. sépher k*vithuth (Deut. xxiv. 1, 3), has been arbitrarily forced upon the word. The meaning is not to be determined from shillédch in Jer. ii. 8, as Hitzig supposes, but from 1 Kings ix. 16, where the same expression occurs, except that it is construed with S, which makes no material difference. For >Y 1nd signifies to give to a person, either to lay upon him or to hand to him; Ind, to give to him. The object given by Zion to Moresheth as a parting present is not mentioned, but it is really the city itself; for the meaning is simply this: Zion will be obliged to relinquish all further claim to Moresheth, to give it up to the enemy. Moresheth is not an appellative, as the old translators suppose, but the proper name of Micah’s home; and Gath is a more precise definition of its situation —“ by Gath,” viz. the well-known Philistian capital, analogous to Bethlehem-Judah in Judg. xvii. 7-9, xix. 1, or Abel-Maim (Abel by the water) in 2 Gren xvi. 4. According to Jerome (comm. in Mich. Prol.), Morasthi, qui usque heii juata Eleuther ropolin, urbem Palestine, haud grandis est viculus (cf. Robinson, Pal. il. P- 423). The context does not admit of our taking the word in an appellative sense, “ possession of Gath,” since the prophet does not mean to say that Judah will have to give up to the enemy a place belonging to Gath, but rather that it will have to give up the cities of its own possession. For, as Maurer correctly observes, “ when the enemy is at the gate, men think of defending the kingdom, not of enlarging it.’ But if the addition of the term Gath is not merely intended to define the situation of Moresheth with greater minuteness, or to distinguish it from other places of the same name, and if the play upon words in Moresheth was intended to point to a closer relation to Gath, the thought expressed could only be, that the place situated in the neighbourhood of Gath had frequently been taken by the Philistines, or claimed as their property, and not that they were in actual possession of Gath at this time. The play upon words in the second clause of the verse also points to the loss of places in Judea: “the houses of Achzib will become Achzab to the kings of Israel.” 3138, a lie, for 3I28 on3, is a stream which fire up in the hot season, and deceives the expectation of the traveller that he shall fi water weet xv. Ss cladoo vin Lb sqq.). Achzib, a city in the plain of Judah, whose name has been preserved in the ruins of Kussabeh, to the south-west of Beit-Jibrin (see at Josh. xv. 44). The houses of Achzib are mentioned, because they are, por speaking, to be compared to ae contents of the river’s bed, whereas the ground on which they stood, with the wall that panobniaed them, answered to the river’s bed itself (Hitzig), so that the words do not denote the loss or destruction of the houses so much as the loss of the city itself. The “kings of Israel” are not the kings of

Samaria and Judah, for Achzib belonged to the kingdom of Judah alone, but the kings of Judah who followed one another (cf. Jer. xix. 13); so that the plural is to be understood as relating to the monarchy of Israel (Judah). Mareshah will also pass into other hands. This is affirmed in the words, “ I will bring the heir to thee again” (28 for N'28, as in 1 Kings xxi. 29). The first heir of Mareshah was the Israelites, who received the city, which had been previously occupied by the Canaanites, for their possession on the conquest of the land. The second heir will be the enemy, into whose possession the land is now to pass. Mareshah, also in the lowland of Judah, has been preserved, so far as the name is concerned, in the ruins of Marash (see at Josh. xv. 44, and Tobler, Dritte Wanderung, pp. 129, 142-3). To the north of this was Adullam (see at Josh. xii. 15), which has not yet been discovered, but which Tobler (p. 151) erroneously seeks for in Bét Déla. Micah mentions it simply on account of the cave there (1 Sam. xxii. 1), as a place of refuge, to which the great and glorious of Israel would flee (“the glory of Israel,” as in Isa. v. 13). The description is rounded off in ver. 16, by returning to the thought that Zion would mourn deeply over the carrying away of the people, with which it had first set out in ver. 8. In 43) MP Zion is addressed as the mother of the people. 71P, to shave smooth, and 1, to cut off the hair, are synonyms, which are here combined to strengthen the meaning. ‘The children of thy delights, in whom thou hast thy pleasure, are the members of the nation. Shaving the head bald, or shaving a bald place, was a sign of mourning, which had been handed down as a traditional custom in Israel, in spite of the prohibition in Deut. xiv. 1 (see at Lev. xix. 28). The bald place is to be made to spread out like that of a nesher, t.e. not the true eagle, but the vulture, which was also commonly classed in the eagle family,—either the bearded vulture, vultur barbatus (see Oedmann, Verm. Sammi. i. p. 54 sqq.), or more probably the carrion vulture, vultur percnopterus L., common in Kgypt, and also in Palestine, which has the front part of the head completely bald, and only a few hairs at the back of the head, so that a bald place may very well be attributed to it (see Hasselquist, Meise, p- 286 sqq.). The words cannot possibly be understood as referring to the yearly moulting of the eagle itself.

If we inquire still further as to the fulfilment of the prophecy concerning Judah (vers. 8-16), it cannot be referred, or speaking more correctly, it must not be restricted, to the Assyrian invasion, as Theod., Cyril, Marck, and others suppose. For the carrying away of Judah, which is hinted at in ver. 11, and clearly expressed in ver. 16, was not effected by the Assyrians, but by the Chaldeans; and that Micah himself did not expect this judgment from the Assyrians, but from Babel, is perfectly obvious from ch. iv. 10, where he mentions Babel as the place to which Judah was to be carried into exile. At the same time, we must not exclude the Assyrian oppression altogether; for Sennacherib had not only already conquered the greater part of Judah, and penetrated to the very gates of Jerusalem (2 Kings xviii. 18, 14, xix.; Isa. xxxvi-xxxviil.), but would have destroyed the kingdom of Judah, as his predecessor Shalmaneser had destroyed the kingdom of Israel, if the Lord had not heard the prayer of His servant Hezekiah, and miraculously destroyed Sennacherib’s army before the walls of Jerusalem. Micah prophesies throughout this chapter, not of certain distinct judgments, but of judgment in general, without any special allusions to the way in which it would be realized; so that the proclamation embraces all the judgments that have fallen upon Judah from the Assyrian invasion down to the Roman catastrophe.

After having prophesied generally in ch. i. of the judgment that would fall upon both kingdoms on account of their apostasy from the living God, Micah proceeds in ch. ii. to condemn, as the principal sins, the injustice and oppressions on the part of the great (vers. 1, 2), for which the nation was to be driven away from its inheritance (vers. 3-5). He then vindicates this threat, as opposed to the prophecies of the false prophets, who confirmed the nation in its ungodliness by the lies that they told (vers. 6-11); and then closes with the brief but definite promise, that the Lord would one day gather together the remnant of His people, and would multiply it greatly, and make it His kingdom (vers. 12, 13). As this promise applies to all Israel of the twelve tribes, the reproof and threat of punishment are also addressed to the house of Jacob as such (ver. 7), and apply to both kingdoms. There are no valid grounds for restricting them to Judah, even though Micah may have had the citizens of that kingdom more particularly in his’ mind.

Vers. 1-5. The violent acts of the great men would be punished by God with the withdrawal of the inheritance of His people, or the lossof Canaan. Ver. 1. “ Woe to those who devise mischief, and prepare evil upon their beds! In the light of the morning they carry tt out, for their hand is their god. Ver. 2. They covet fields and plunder them, and houses and take them; and oppress the man and his house, the man and his inheritance.” The woe applies to the great and mighty of the nation, who by acts of injustice deprive the common people of the inheritance conferred upon them by the Lord (cf. Isa. v. 8). The prophet describes them as those who devise plans by night upon their beds for robbing the poor, and carry them out as soon as the day dawns. [is awn denotes the sketching out of plans (see Peixexvi oy sand 33 2yB, to work evil, the preparation of the ways and means for carrying out their wicked plans. 2vB, the preparation, is distinguished from MY, the execution, as in Isa. xli. 4, for which 73' and MY are also used (e.g. Isa. xliii. 7). “Upon their beds,” i.e. by night, the time of quiet reflection (Ps. iv. 5; cf. Job iv.13). “ By the light of the morning,” we. at daybreak, without delay. ‘1 wD, lit. “for their hand is for a god,” 2.e. their power passes as a god to them; they know of no higher power than their own arm; whatever they wish it is in their power to do (cf. Gen. xxxi. 29; Prov. iii. 27; Hab.i.11; Job xii. 6). Ewald and Riickert weaken the thought by adopting the rendering, “because it stands free in their hand;” and Hitzig’s rendering, “if it stands in their hand,” is decidedly false. Ai cannot be a conditional particle here, because the thought would thereby be weakened in a manner quite irreconcilable with the context. In ver. 2 the evil which they plan by night, and carry out by day, is still more precisely defined. By force and injustice they seize upon the property (fields, houses) of the poor, the possessions which the Lord has given to His people for their inheritance. Chdémad points to the command against coveting (Ex. xx. 14 (17); cf. Deut. v.18). The second half of the verse (ver. 2) contains a conclusion drawn from the first: “and so they practise violence upon the man and his property.” Bath answers to bottim, and nachalah to the Sddoth, as their hereditary portion in the land—the portion of land which each family received when Canaan was divided.

Ver. 3. “ Therefore thus saith Jehovah, Behold, I devise evil concerning this family, from which ye shall not withdraw your necks, and not walk loftily, for it is an evil time. Ver. 4. In that day will men raise against you a proverb, and lament a lamentation. It has come to pass, they say; we are waste, lad waste; the inheritance of my people he exchanges: how does he withdraw it from me! To the rebellious one he divides our field.” The punishment introduced with /akhén (therefore) will correspond to the sin. Because they reflect upon evil, to deprive their fellow-men of their possessions, Jehovah will bring evil upon this generation, lay a heavy yoke upon their neck, out of which they will not be able to draw their necks, and under which they will not be able to walk loftily, or with extended neck. DN] NMBA is not this godless family, but the whole of the existing nation, whose corrupt members are to be exterminated by the judgment (see Isa. xxix. 20 sqq.). The yoke which the Lord will bring upon them is subjugation to the hostile conqueror of the land and the oppression of exile (see Jer. xxvii. 12). Halakh romah, to walk on high, i.e. with the head lifted up, which is a sign of pride and haughtiness. Rdméah is different from 3"2\P, an upright attitude, in Lev. xxvi. 13. nya nyi, as in Amos v. 13, but in a different sense, is not used of moral depravity, but of the distress which will come upon Israel through the laying on of the yoke. Then will the opponents raise derisive songs concerning Israel, and Israel itself will bewail its misery. The verbs yissd’, nadhah, and ’dmar are used impersonally. Mdshal is not synonymous with n*Ai, a mournful song (Ros.), but signifies a figurative saying, a proverb-song, as in Isa, xiv. 4, Hab: ii. 6. The subject to NW is the opponents of Israel, Kbiio DD ey; on the other hand, Se subject to nahah and ’dmar is the Dudes themselves, as 137. teaches. 12 is not a feminine formation from ‘73, a ae song, lamentum lamenti, i.e. a mournfully aeaentel song, as Rossumilian Umbreit, and the earlier commentators suppose; but the Eyer of 7 (cf. Dan. vill. 27): actum est! it is all over!—an exclamation of despair (Le de Dieu, Ewald, etc.); and it is written after ’émar, because 7°72 as an Panties is equivalent in meaning to an object. The omission of the copula Vav precludes our taking ’@mar in connection with what follows (Maurer). The following clauses are a still further explanation of 7°73: we are quite a waste. The form 3272 for BIW) is Sanh int chosen simply to imitate the tone of lamentation better (Hitzig). The inheritance of my people, é.e. the land of Canaan, He (Jehovah) changes, i.e. causes it to pass over to another possessor, namely, to the heathen. The words receive their explanation from the clauses which follow: How does He cause (sc. the inheritance) to depart from me! Not how does He cause me to depart. aniv? is not an infinitive, ad reddendum, or restituendum, which is altogether unsuitable, but nomen verbale, the fallen or rebellious one, like 723\¥ in Jer. xxxl. 22, xlix. 4. This is the term applied by mourning Israel to the heathenish foe, to whom Jehovah apportions the fields of His people. The withdrawal of the land is the just punishment for the way in which the wicked great men have robbed the people of their inheritance

Ver. 5. “ Therefore wilt thou have none to cast a measure for the lot in the congregation of Jehovah.” With lékhen (therefore) the threat, commenced with (ékhén in ver. 3, is resumed and applied to individual sinners. The whole nation is not addressed in 7, still less the prophet, as Hitzig supposes, but every individual among the tyrannical great men (vers. 1, 2). The singular is used instead of the plural, to make the address more impressive, that no one may imagine that he is excepted from the threatened judgment. For a similar transition from the plural to the singular, see ch. ili. 10, The expression, to cast the measure bgordl, i.e. in the nature of a lot (equivalent to for a lot, or as a lot), may be explained on the ground that the land was divided to the Israelites by lot, and then the portion that fell to each tribe was divided among the different families by measure. The words are not to be taken, however, as referring purely to the future, as Caspari supposes, 7.¢. to the time when the promised land would be divided afresh among the people on their return. For even if the prophet does proclaim in vers. 12, 13 the reassembling of Israel and its restoration to its hereditary land, this thought cannot be arbitrarily taken for granted here. We therefore regard the words as containing a general threat, that the ungodly will henceforth receive no further part in the inheritance of the Lord, but that they are to be separated from the congregation of Jehovah.

Vers. 6-11. As such a prophecy as this met with violent contradiction, not only from the corrupt great men, but also from the false prophets who flattered the people, Micah indicates it by showing that the people are abusing the long-suffering and mercy of the Lord; and that, by robbing the peaceable poor, the widows, and the orphans, they are bringing about the punishment of banishment out of the land. Ver. 6. “ Drip not (prophesy not), they drip: tf they drip not this, the shame will not depart. Ver. 7. Thou, called house of Jacob, ts the patience of Jehovah short, then? or is this His doing? Are not my words good to him that walketh uprightly 2?” "5, to drip, to cause words to flow, used of prophesying, as in Amos vii. 16. The speakers in ver. 6a are not the Jews generally, or the rich oppressors who have just been punished and threatened. The word yattipha does not agree with this, since it does not mean to chatter, but to, prophesy, as ver. 11 and also the primary passage Deut. xxxii. 2 show. But Micah could not call the rich men’s speaking prophesying. It is rather false prophets who are speaking,—namely, those who in the word ’al-tatttphu (prophesy not) would prohibit the true prophets from predicting the judgments of the Lord. The second hemistich is rendered by most of the modern commentators, “they are not to chatter (preach) of such things; the reproaches cease not,” or “there is no end to reproaching” (Ewald, Hitzig, Maurer, and Caspari). But this is open to the following objections: (1) That? "7 in ver. 11 means to prophesy to a person (not concerning or of anything); (2) that sag or ndsag means to depart, not to cease; (3) that even the thought, “the reproaches do not cease,” is apparently unsuitable, since Micah could not well call a prohibition against prophesying an incessant reproach; and to this we may add, (4) the grammatical harshness of taking 35°). NS as an imperative, and the following 3D’ NP as an indicative (a simple declaration). Still less can the rendering, “they (the true prophets) will not chatter about this, yet the reproach will not depart” (Ros., Riickert), be vindicated, as such an antithesis as this would necessarily be indicated by a particle. The only course that remains, therefore, is that adopted by C. B. Michaelis and Hengstenberg, viz. to take the words as conditional: if they (the true prophets) do not prophesy to these (the unrighteous rich in vers. 1, 2: Hengstenberg), or on account of these things (Michaelis), the shame will not depart, i.e. shameful destruction will burst incessantly upon them. On the absence of the conditional Ox, see Ewald, p. 357, 6. Such addresses as these do not please the corrupt great men; but they imagine that such threats are irreconcilable with the goodness of Jehovah. This is the connection of ver. 7, in which the prophet meets the reproach cast upon his threatening words with the remark, that God is not wrathful, and has no love for punishing, but that He is stirred up to wrath by the sins of the nation, and obliged to punish. O87 is not an exclamation, “O, what is said!=O for such talk as this!” (Ewald, Umbreit, Caspari); for it cannot be shown that the participle is ever used in this way, and it cannot be supported from 02357 in Isa. xxix. 16, especially as here a second vocative would follow. Nor is it a question: “Num dicendum? Dare one say this?” (Hitzig.) For although might be an interrogative particle (cf. Ezek. xxviii. 9), the passive participle cannot express the idea of daring, in support of which Hitzig is quite wrong in appealing to Lev. xi. 47 and Ps. xxii. 32, 2877 is no doubt a vocative, but it is to be taken in connection with beth- Ya‘agob: thou who art called house of Jacob. There is very little force in the objection, that this would have required * ‘3 I? ONT, since WS, when used in the sense of being called or being named, is always construed with P of the person bearing the name. The part. paiil of ’dmar only occurs here; and although the niphal, when used in this sense, is generally construed with es: the same rule may apply to 7S as to N71? in the sense of naming,—namely, that in the passive construction the? may either be inserted or omitted (cf. Isa. lvi. 7, liv. 5; Deut. iii. 13), and WS may just as well be used in the sense of dicta (domus) as D'81P30 in Isa, xlvili. 1 in the sense of vocati=qui appellantur. ‘The whole nation is addressed, although the address points especially to the unrighteous great men. Is Jehovah indeed wrathful? de. has He not patience, does He not exercise long-suffering? Qdtsar radch must not be explained according to Ex. vi. 9, but according to Prov. xiv. 29. Or are these (éleh, the punishments threatened) His deeds? 7.e. is He accustomed, or does He only like to punish? The answer to these questions, or speaking more correctly, their refutation, follows in the next question, which is introduced with the assuring nidn, and in which Jehovah speaks: My words deal kindly with him that walks uprightly. The Lord not only makes promises to the upright, but He also grants His blessing. The words of the Lord contain their fulfilment within themselves. In 3217 1w7, it is for the sake of emphasis that ydshdr stands first, and the article properly belongs to holekh; but it is placed before yadshdr to bind together the two words into one idea. The reason why the Lord threatens by His prophets is therefore to be found in the unrighteousness of the people.

Ver. 8. “ But yesterday my people rises up as an enemy: off from the garment ye draw the cloak from those who pass by carelessly, averted from war. Ver. 9. The women of my people ye drive away out of the house of their delights; from their children ye take my ornament for ever.” ’Ethmal, yesterday, lately, not =long ago, but, as y°qamém shows, denoting an action that is repeated, equivalent to “again, recently.” O'2'P is not used here in a causative sense, “to set up,” but as an intensified kal, to take a standing = to stand up or rise up. The causative view, They set up my people as an enemy (Ewald), yields no fitting sense; and if the meaning were, “My people causes me to rise up as its enemy” (Caspari), the suffixes could not be omitted. If this were the thought, it would be expressed as clearly as in Isa. Ixiii. 10. There is no valid ground for altering the text, as Hitzig proposes. It is not stated against whom the people rise up as an enemy, but according to the context it can only be against Jehovah. This is done by robbing the peaceable travellers, as well as the widows and orphans, whereby they act with hostility towards Jehovah and excite His wrath (Ex. xxii. 21 sqq.; Deut. xxvii. 19). byro1 new, from before, i.c. right away from, the garment. Salmdh is the upper garment; 778 —=N7I8 the broad dress-cloak. They take this away from those who pass carelessly by. ‘2W is an intransitive participle: averted from the war, averse to conflict, 7.e. peaceably disposed (see Ps. cxx. 7). We have not only to think of open highway robbery, but also of their taking away the cloak in the public street from their own poor debtors, when they are walking peaceably along, suspecting nothing, for the purpose of repaying themselves. The “wives of my people” are widows, whom they deprive of house and home, and indeed widows of the people of Jehovah, in whose person Jehovah is injured. These children are fatherless orphans (Dey with a singular suffix: the children of the widow). Hdddari, my ornament, i.e. the ornament which I have given them. ‘The reference, as by shows, is to the garment or upper coat. The expression “ for ever” may be explained from the evident allusion to the Mosaic law in Ex. xxii. 25, according to which the coat taken from the poor as a pledge was to be returned before sunset, whereas ungodly creditors retained it for ever.

Such conduct as this must be followed by banishment from the land. Ver. 10. “ Rise up, and go; for this is not the place of vest: because of the defilement which brings destruction, and mighty destruction. Ver. 11. If there were a man, walking after wind, who would le deceit, ‘I will prophesy to thee of wine and strong drink, he would be a prophet of this people.” The prophet having overthrown in vers. 7-9 the objection to his threatening prophecies, by pointing to thevsins of the people, now repeats the announcement of punishment, and that in the form of a summons to go out of the land into captivity, because the land cannot bear the defilement consequent upon such abominations. The passage is based upon the idea contained in Ley. xviii. 25, 28, that the land is defiled by the sins of its inhabitants, and will vomit them out because of this defilement, in connection with such passages as Deut. xii. 9, 10, where coming to Canaan is described as coming to rest. nwt (this) refers to the land. This (the land in which ye dwell) is not the place of rest (hamm*nichah, as in Zech. ix. 1 and Ps. exxxii. 14). If “this” were to be taken as referring to their sinful conduct, in the sense of “this does not bring or cause rest,” it would be difficult to connect it with what follows, viz. “ because of the defilement;” whereas no difficulty arises if we take “this” as referring to the land, which the expression “rise up and go” naturally suggests. OND = AND, defilement; 2ann is to be taken in a relative sense, “ which brings destruction,” and is strengthened by 2am, with an explanatory 1: and indeed terrible destruction. 229, perditio; and }2) as in 1 Kings ii. 8. The destruction consists in the fact that the land vomits out its inhabitants (Lev. xviii. 25). Such prophecies are very unwelcome to the corrupt great men, because they do not want to hear the truth, but simply what flatters their wicked heart. They would like to have only prophets who prophesy lies to them. qin, walking after the wind; the construction is the same as Nips 727 in Isa. xxxiil. 15, and radch is a ficure signifying what is vain or worthless, as in Isa. xxvi. 18, xli. 29, etc. The words ‘0 1 FOS are the words of a false prophet: I prophesy to thee with regard to wine. The meaning is not “that there will be an abundant supply of wine,” or “that the wine will turn out well” (Rosenmiiller and others); but wine and strong drink (for shékhdr, see Delitzsch on Isa. v. 11) are figures used to denote earthly blessings and sensual enjoyments, and the words refer to such promises as Ley. xxvi. A, 5, 10, Deut. xxviii. 4, 11, Joel ii. 24, iv. 18 sqq., which false prophets held out to the people without any regard to their attitude towards God. “This people,” because the great men represent the nation. With this explanation pointing back to ver. 6, the threatening is brought to a close.

In vers. 12, 13 there follows, altogether without introduction, the promise of the future reassembling of the people from their dispersion. Ver. 12. “JZ will assemble, assemble thee all together, O Jacob; gather together, gather together the remnant of Israel; I will bring him together like the sheep of Bozrah, like a flock in the midst of their pasture: they will be noisy with men. Ver. 13. Lhe breaker through comes up before them; they break through, and pass along through the gate, and go out by it; and their King goes before them, and Jehovah at their head.” Micah is indeed not a prophet, prophesying lies of wine and strong drink; nevertheless he also has salvation to proclaim, only not for the morally corrupt people of his own time. They will be banished out of the land; but the captivity and dispersion are not at an end. For the remnant of Israel, for the nation when sifted and refined by the judgements, the time will come when the Lord will assemble them again, miraculously multiply them, and redeem them as their King, and lead them home. The sudden and abrupt transition from threatening to promise, just as in Hos. ii. 2, vi. 1, xi. 9, has given rise to this mistaken supposition, that vers. 12, 13 contain a prophecy uttered by the lying prophets mentioned in ver. 10 (Abenezra, Mich., Ewald, etc.). But this supposition founders not only on the Ose nx, inasmuch as the gathering together of the remnant of Israel presupposes the carrying away into exile, but also on the entire contents of these verses. Micah could not possibly introduce a false prophet as speaking in the name of Jehovah, and saying, “I will gather;” such a man would at the most have said, “ Jehovah will gather.” Nor could he have put a true prophecy like that contained in vers. 12, 13 into the mouth of such a man. For this reason, not only Hengstenberg, Caspari, and Umbreit, but even Maurer and Hitzig, have rejected this assumption; and the latter observes, among other things, quite correctly, that “the idea expressed here is one common to the true prophets (see Hos. i. 2), which Micah himself also utters in ch. iv. 6.” The emphasis lies upon the assembling, and hence FID and /aps are strengthened by infinitive absolutes. But the assembling together presupposes a dispersion among the heathen, such as Micah has threatened in ch. i. 11, 16, ii. 4. And the Lord will gather together all Jacob, not merely a portion, and yet only the remnant of Israel. This involves the thought, that the whole nation of the twelve tribes, or of the two kingdoms, will be reduced to a remnant by the judgment. Jacob and Israel are identical epithets applied to the whole nation, as in ch. i. 5, and the two clauses of the verse are synonymous, so that 33 apy’ coincides in actual fact with oxy manv, The further description rests upon the fact of the leading of Israel out of Egypt, which is to be renewed in all that is essential at a future time. The following clauses also predict the miraculous multiplication of the remnant of Israel (see Hos. ii. 1, 2; Jer. xxxi. 10), as experienced by the people in the olden time under the oppression of Egypt (Ex. i. 12). The comparison to the flock of Bozrah presupposes that Bozrah’s wealth in flocks was well known. Now, as the wealth of the Moabites in flocks of sheep is very evident from 2 Kings iii. 4, many have understood by 772 not the Edomitish Bozrah, but the Moabitish Bostra (e.g. Hengstenberg). Others, again, take botsrdh as an appellative noun in the sense of hurdle or fold (see Hitzig, Caspari, and Dietrich in Ges. Lew. after the Chaldee). But there is not sufficient ground for either. The Bostra situated in the Hauran does not occur at all in the Old Testament, not even in Jer. xlviii. 24, and the appellative meaning of the word is simply postulated for this particular passage. That the Edomites were also rich in flocks of sheep is evident from Isa. xxxiv. 6, where the massacre which Jehovah will inflict upon Edom and Bozrah is described as a sacrificial slaughtering of lambs, he-goats, rams, and oxen; a description which presupposes the wealth of Bozrah in natural flocks. The comparison which follows, “like a flock in the midst of its pasture,’ belongs to the last verse, and refers to the multiplication, and to the noise made by a densely packed and numerous flock. The same tumult will be made by the assembled Israelites on account of the multitude of the men. For the article in 1295, which is already determined by the suffix, see at Josh. vii. 21. In ver. 18 the redemption of Israel out of exile is depicted under the figure of liberation from captivity. Was Egypt a slave-house (ch. vi. 4; cf. Ex. xx. 2); so is exile a prison with walls and gates, which must be broken through. 153, the breaker through, who goes before them, is not Jehovah, but, as the counterpart of Moses the leader of Israel out of Egypt, the captain appointed by God for His people, answering to the head which they are said to choose for themselves in Hos. ii. 2, a second Moses, viz. Zerubbabel, and in the highest sense Christ, who opens the prison-doors, and redeems the captives of Zion (vid. Isa. xl. 7). Led by him, they break through the walls, and march through the gate, and go out through it out of the prison. “The three verbs, they break through, they march through, they go out, describe in a pictorial manner progress which cannot be stopped by any human power” (Hengstenberg). Their King Jehovah goes before them at their head (the last two clauses of the verse are synonymous). Just. as Jehovah went before Israel as the angel of the Lord in the pillar of cloud and fire at the exodus from EKeypt (Ex. xiii. 21), so at the future redemption of the people of God will Jehovah go before them as King, and lead the procession (see Isa. lii. 12),

The fulfilment of this propheey commenced with the gathering together of Israel to its God and King by the preaching of the gospel, and will be completed at some future time when the Lord shall redeem Israel, which is now pining in dispersion, out of the fetters of its unbelief and life of sin. We must not exclude all allusion to the deliverance of the Jewish nation out of the earthly Babylon by Cyrus; at the same time, it is only in its typical significance that this comes into consideration at all,—namely, as a preliminary stage and pledge of the redemption to be effected by Christ out of the spiritual Babylon of this world.

The prophet’s second address is of a predominantly Messianic character. The announcement of the utter desolation of Zion on account of the corruption of both the civil rulers and the spiritual leaders of the nation, with which this address opens in ch. ili., serves to a certain extent simply asa foil for the prophecy which follows in ch. iv. and v. of the salvation with which the remnant of Israel, that has been rescued throughout the judgment, will be blessed in the future. This salvation is depicted first of all in all its fulness (ch. iv. 1-7); then in its gradual development, in the re-erection of the former dominion of the daughter of Zion, by her redemption out of Babylon, and her victory over the powers of the world (ch. iv. 8-14); and lastly, in its realization by the Ruler proceeding out of Bethlehem, and by the power and blessing of

The threatening of punishment contained in this chapter is specially directed against the heads and leaders of Israel, and proclaims, in three strophes of four verses each, (a) to the princes, who turn right into wrong and flay the people (vers. 1-4), and (2) to the false prophets, who lead the people astray, and confirm them in their sin by lying prophecies of peace

(vers. 5-8), retribution for their wicked conduct; and (¢) to all three classes of the divinely-appointed chiefs of the nation —the princes, the priests, and the prophets—the destruction of Jerusalem, and the turning of Zion and the temple mountain into a ploughed field and wooded heights on account of their degeneracy (vers. 9-12).

Vers. 1-4. First stro ophe. —Ver. 1. “ And I said, Hear ye, O heads of Jacob, and princes of the house of Israel: Is it not for you to know the right? Ver. 2. Ye who hate good, and love evil; who draw off their skin from them, and their flesh from their bones. Ver. 3. And who have eaten the flesh of my people, and stripped off their skin from them; and broken their bones, and cut them in pieces, as if in the pot, and like flesh in the midst of the caldron. Ver. 4. Then will they ery to Jehovah, and He will not hearken; and let Him lide His face from them at the same time, as they have made their actions evil.” By the expression “ And JI said” (vaé’omar), the following address is indicated as a continuation of the preceding one. ‘The reproofs of this chapter are also a still further expansion of the woe pronounced in ch. ii. 1, 2 upon the godless chiefs of the nation. The heads of Jacob are addressed, that is to say, the princes of the tribes and families of Israel, and the g‘tsinim, lit. deciders

(answering to the Arabic el, a judge) of the house of Israel, i.e. the heads of families and households, upon whom the administration of justice devolved (cf. Isa. i. 10, xxii. 3). pap sidn, is it not your duty and your office to know justice? Da‘ath is practical knowledge, which manifests itself in practice; mishpdt, the public administration of justice. Instead of this, they do the opposite. The description of this conduct is appended by participles, in the form of apposition to the heads and princes addressed in ver. 1. Hating good and loving evil refer to the disposition, and indicate the radical corruption of these men. my, generally misfortune, here evil; hence the Masoretes have altered it into ¥2; but the very fact that it deviates from the ordinary rule shows that it is the original word. Instead of administering justice to the people, they take off their skin, and tear the flesh from the bones. The suffixes attached to Dy and DIX point back to awa i in ver. 1. The words answer to the German expression, K to pull the skin over the ears.” In ver. 3 the expression is still stronger; but the address is continued in the form of a simple description, and instead of the participles, WS is used with the finite verb. They not only flay the people, 7 ae. rob them of all their means of subsistence, but even devour them—treat them like cattle, which men first of all flay, then break their bones, cut the flesh into pieces, and boil it in the pot. In this figure, which is carried out into the most minute details, we must not give any special meaning to the particular features, such as that “the skin, and boiling portions, which are cut up and put into the pot, are figures signifying the pledged clothing and coveted fields (ii. 2, 8).” The prophet paints in very glaring colours, to make an impression upon the ungodly. Therefore, in the time of judgment, God will not hear their crying to Him for help, but will hide His face from them, te. withdraw His mercy from them. 18 and 873 Nya point back to the evil time announced in ch. ii. 3. For ver. 4a, compare Prov. i. 28. Vyastér in ver. 4b is an optative. The prophet continues ities announcement of the punishment in the form of a desire. WN3, as = according to the way in which, as in 1 Sam. xxviii. 18, Num. xxvii. 14, etc., ie. answering to their evil doings.

Vers. 5-8. In the second strophe, Micah turns from the godless princes and judges to the prophets who lead the people astray, with whom he contrasts the true prophets and their ways. Ver. 5. “Thus saith Jehovah concerning the prophets who lead my people astray, who bite with their teeth, and preach peace; and whoever should put nothing into their mouths, against him they sanctify war. Ver. 6. Therefore night to you because of the visions, and darkness to you because of the soothsaying! and the sun will set over the prophets, and the day blacken itself over them. Ver. 7. And the seers will be ashamed, and the soothsayers blush, and all cover their beard, because (there is) no answer of God. Ver. 8. But J, [ am filled with power, with the Spirit of Jehovah, and with judgment and strength, to show to Jacob his transgression, and to Israel his sin.’ As the first strophe attaches itself to ch. ii. 1, 2, so does the second to ch. ii. 6 and 11, carrying out still further what is there affirmed concerning the false prophets. Micah describes them as people who predict peace and prosperity for a morsel of bread, and thereby lead the people astray, setting before them prosperity and salvation, instead of preaching repentance to them, by charging them with their sins. Thus they became accomplices of the wicked rulers, with whom they are therefore classed in ver. 11, together with the wicked priests. Dyn, leading astray (cf. Isa. iii. 12, ix. 15) my people, namely, by failing to charge them with their sins, and preach repentance, as the true prophets do, and predicting prosperity for bread and payment. The words, “who bite with their teeth,” are to be connected closely with the next clause, “and they preach peace,” in the sense of “who preach peace if they can bite with their teeth,” ze. if they receive something to bite (or eat). This explanation, which has already been expressed by the Chaldee, is necessarily required by the antithesis, “ but whoever puts nothing into their mouth,” e. gives them nothing to eat, notwithstanding the fact that in other passages ndshakh only signifies to bite, in the sense of to wound, and is the word generally applied to the bite of a snake (Amos v. 19; Gen. xlix. 17; Num. xxi. 6, 8). If, however, we understand the biting with the teeth as a figurative representation of the words of the prophets who always preach prosperity, and of the injury they do to the real welfare of the people (Ros., Casp., and others), the obvious antithesis of the two double clauses of ver. 5b is totally destroyed. The harsh expression, to “ bite with the teeth,” in the sense of “to eat,” is perfectly in harmony with the harsh words of vers. 2 and 3. Qiddésh milchamdah, to sanctify war, z.e. to preach a holy war (cf. Joel iv. 9), or, in reality, to proclaim the vengeance of God. For this shall night and darkness burst upon them. Night and darkness denote primarily the calamity which would come upon the false prophets (unto yow) in connection with the judgment (ch. ii. 4). The sun which sets to them is the sun of salvation or prosperity (Amos viii. 9; Jer. xv. 9); and the day which becomes black over them is the day of judgment, which is darkness, and not light (Amos v.18). This calamity is heightened by the fact that they will then stand ashamed, because their own former prophecies are thereby proved to be lies, and fresh, true prophecies fail them, because God gives no answer. Convicted by the result, they are thus utterly put to shame, because God does not help them out of their trouble by any word of revelation” (Hitzig). Bosh, to be ashamed, when connected with chdphér (cf. Jer. xv. 9; Ps. xxxv. 26 sqq,, etc.), signifies to become pale with shame; chdéphér, to blush, with min cause, to denote the thing of which a man is ashamed. Qos’mim (diviners) alternates with chdzim (seers), because these false prophets had no visions of God, but only divinations out of their own hearts. ‘Atdh sdéphdm: to cover the beard, 2.e. to cover the face up to the nose, is a sign of mourning (Lev. xiii. 45), here of trouble and shame (cf. Ezek. xxiv. 17), and is really equivalent to covering the head (Jer. xiv. 4; Esth. vi. 12). Ma‘dnéh, the construct state of the substantive, but in the sense of the participle; some codd. have indeed MY. In ver. 8 Micah contrasts himself and his own doings with these false prophets, as beirig filled with power by the Spirit of Jehovah (i.e. through His assistance) and with judgment. Mishpat, governed by NPD, is the divine justice which the prophet has to proclaim, and g’bhardh strength, manliness, to hold up before the people their sins and the justice of God. In this divine strength he can and must declare their unrighteousness to all ranks of the people, and predict the punishment of God (vers. 9-12).

Vers. 9-12. Third strophe.—Ver. 9. “ Hear this, I pray, O ye heads of the house of Jacob, and princes of the house of Israel, who abhor right, and bend all that is straight. Ver. 10. Building Zion with blood, and Jerusalem with wickedness. Ver. 11. Their heads, they judge for reward; and their priests, they teach for hire; and their prophets, they divine for money, and lean upon Jehovah, saying, Is not Jehovah among us? evil will not come upon us.” With the words “Hear this, I pray,” the address returns to its starting-point in ver. 1, but only to announce to the leaders of the people the threat of punishment for which the way has been prepared by vers. 2-7. ‘To this end their God-forgetting conduct is briefly summed up once more in vers. 10,11. The summons to hear is really attached to the end of ver. 8. They are to hear the sin of Jacob (vers. 9-11); but they are also to hear the punishment for their sin, to which the word “this” points. The civil rulers only are addressed in ver. 9,—namely, those who were charged with the administration of justice and of the affairs of the state, but who did the very opposite, who abhorred justice, and made the straight crooked, because they passed sentence for bribes (ver. 11).

They thereby build Zion with blood, etc., 7.e. obtain the means of erecting splendid buildings by cruel extortions, and partly also by actual judicial murders, as Ahab (1 Kings xxi. compared with Mic. vi. 16), and after him Jehoiakim, had done (Jer. xxii. 18-17). The Chaldeans built with blood in a different sense (Hab. ii. 12). The participle daneh (building) is also in apposition to r@shé beth (heads of the house, etc.), and the singular without the article is to be taken collectively. They do not, however, truly build the city by this, they simply labour for its destruction (ver. 12). But before saying this, Micah once more sums up briefly all the sins of the leading ranks. The teaching of the priests for reward refers to the fact that they had to give instruction as to the ritual requirements of the law, and were to do this gratuitously (cf. Lev. x. 11; Deut. xvii. 11, xxxiii. 10), and that in disputed cases the judges were to pronounce sentence accordingly. At the same time, these men (not the prophets merely, but also the priests and the heads of the nation as the administrators of justice) placed their reliance upon Jehovah, upon the assurance that He was in the midst of them enthroned in His temple at Jerusalem, and that He would protect the city and its inhabitants from misfortune, without ever reflecting that Jehovah as the Holy One demands sanctification of life, and exterminates the sinners out of His people.

Ver. 12. “Therefore will Zion for your sake be ploughed as a field, and Jerusalem become stone heaps, and the mountain of the house become forest heights.” Lakhén (therefore) applies primarily to ver. 11, directing the threat of punishment by p3p223 to all the sinners mentioned there; but it also points back to vers. 9, 10, expressing what is there indicated by “this.” Zion is not “the site on which the city stood,” or Jerusalem, “the mass of houses in the city,” as Maurer and Caspari suppose; but Zion is that portion of the city which contained the royal palace, and Jerusalem the rest of the city (cf. ch. iv. 8), The mountain of the house, z.e. the temple hill, is also specially mentioned, for the purpose of destroying all false trust in the temple (cf. Jer. vii. 4). The predicates are divided rhetorically, and the thought is this: the royal palace, the city, and the temple shall be so utterly destroyed, that of all the houses and palaces only heaps of rubbish will remain, and the ground upon which the city stood will be partly used as a ploughed field, and partly overgrown with bushes (cf. Isa. xxxil. 138, 14). On sdédeh as an accusative of effect (as a field = becoming a field), see Ewald, § 281, ¢; and for the plural form #2, see Ewald, § 177, a. Habbayith (the house) is probably chosen intentionally instead of béth Y*hovdh (the house of Jehovah), because the temple ceased to be the dwelling-place of Jehovah as soon as it was destroyed. Hence in Ezekiel (x. 18 sqq., xi. 22 sqq.) the Schechinah departs before the Babylonians destroy it. With regard to the fulfilment of this threat, see the points discussed at ch. iv. 10.

GLORIFICATION OF THE HOUSE OF THE LORD, AND RESTORA- TION OF THE DOMINION OF ZION.—CHAP. IV.

Zion will eventually be exalted from the deepest degradation to the highest glory. This fundamental thought of the announcement of salvation contained in ch. iv. and v. is carried out thus far in ch. iv.: the first section (vers. 1-7) depicts the glorification of the temple mountain by the streaming of the heathen nations to it to hear the law of the Lord, and the blessing which Israel and the nations will derive therefrom; and the second section (vers. 8-14) describes the restoration of the dominion of Zion from its fallen condition through the redemption of the nation out of Babel, and its victorious conflict with the nations of the world.

Vers. 1-5. ‘The promise of salvation opens, in closest connection with the destruction of Jerusalem and of the temple, with a picture of the glory awaiting in the remotest future the temple mountain, which has now become a wild forest-height. Ver. 1. “And tt comes to pass at the end of the days, that the mountain of Jehovah's house will be established on the head of the mountains, and it will be exalted above the hills, and nations stream to it. Ver. 2. And many nations go, and say, Up, let us go up to the mountain of Jehovah, and to the house of the God of Jacob, that He may teach us of His ways, and we may walk in His paths: for from Zion will law go forth, and the word of Jehovah from Jerusalem. Ver. 3. And LHe will judge between many nations, and pronounce sentence on strong nations afar off; and they forge their swords into coulters, and their spears into pruning-hooks: nation will not lift up sword against nation, nor will they learn war any more. Ver. 4. And they will sit, every one under his vine, and under his fig-tree, and no one will make them afraid: for the mouth of Jehovah of hosts hath spoken tt.”* By the phrase “at the end of the days,” which always denotes the Messianic era when used by the prophets (see at Hos. iii. 5), the predicted exaltation of the temple mountain is assigned to the period of the completion of the kingdom of God. The mountain of the house of Jehovah is the temple mountain, strictly speaking, Moriah, as the distinction made between the mountain of the house and Zion in ch. iti. 12 clearly shows; but as a subordinate peak of Zion, it is embraced along with Zion in what follows (compare ver. 2 with ver. 7) as the seat of Jehovah’s rule, from which the law proceeds. \33 does not mean placed or set up, but established, founded. By connecting the participle with 7, the founding is designated as a permanent one. DM viva, upon (not a0 the top of the mountains, as in Judg. ix. ie 1 Sara xxvi. 13, Ps. Ixxii. 16; whereas such passages as ch. ii. 13, Amos vi. 7, and 1 Kings xxi. 9 are of a different character, and have no bearing upon the point. The temple mountain, or Zion, will be so exalted above all the mountains and hills, that it will appear to be founded upon the top of the mountains. This exaltation is of course not a physical one, as Hofmann, Drechsler, and several of the Rabbins suppose, but a spiritual (ethical) elevation above all the mountains. This is obvious from ver. 2, according to which Zion will tower above all the mountains, because the law of the Lord issues from it. The assumption of a physical elevation cannot be established from Ezek. xl. 2 and Rev. xxi. 10, for in the visions described in both these passages the earthly elevation is a symbol of a spiritual one. “Through a new revelation of the Lord, which is made upon it, and which leaves the older revelations far behind, whether made upon Sinai or upon itself, Zion becomes the greatest and _loftiest

1 This promise is placed by Isaiah (ch. ii, 2-4) at the head of his prophecy of Zion’s way through judgment from the false glory to the true. The originality of the passage in Micah is open to no question. Delitzsch acknowledges this, and has given the principal arguments in its favour in the Commentary on Isaiah. For still more elaborate proofs, see Caspari’s Micha, pp. 444-6.

mountain in the world” (Caspari), and the mountain seen from afar, to which “nations” stream, and not merely the one nation of Israel. 5° is more precisely defined in ver. 2 as 0°32 O%3, The attractive power which this mountain exerts upon the nations, so that they call upon one another to go up to it (ver. 2), does not reside in its height, which towers above that of all other mountains, but in the fact that the house of the God of Jacob stands upon it, i.e. that Jehovah is enthroned there, and teaches how to walk in His ways. 2 7757, to teach out of the ways, so that the ways of God form the material from which they derive continual instruction. The desire for salvation, therefore, is the motive which prompts them to this pilgrimage; for they desire instruction in the ways of the Lord, that they may walk in them. The ways of Jehovah are the ways which God takes in His dealing with men, and by which men are led by Him; in reality, therefore, the ordinances of salvation which He has revealed in His word, the knowledge and observance of which secure life and blessedness. The words “for the law goes forth from Zion,” etc., are words spoken not by the nations, but by the prophet, and assign the reason why the heathen go with such zeal to the mountain of Jehovah. The accent is laid upon {3 (from Zion), which stands at the head, and Devan (from Jerusalem), which is parallel to it. Thence does tordh, 2.é. instruction in the ways of God, proceed,—in other words, the law as the rule of a godly life,—and d’bhar Y*hovah (the word of Jehovah), or the word of revelation as the source of salvation. It is evident from this that the mountain of the house of God is not thought of here as the place of worship, but as the scene of divine rovelaion! the centre of the kingdom of God. Zion is the source of the law and word of the ica) from which the nations draw instruction how to walk in the ways of God, to make it their own, take it to their homes, and walk according to it. The fruit of this adoption of the word of the Lord will be, that they will no longer fight out their disputes with weapons of war, but let Jehovah judge and settle them, and thus acknowledge Him as their King and Judge. pay signifies to act as judge; 21h (lit. to set right), to settle and put a stop to a dispute. “Many nations,” in contrast with the one nation, which formerly was alone in acknowledging Jehovah as its King and Judge. This is strengthened still further by the parallel

“strong, mighty nations afar off.” In consequence of this they will turn their weapons into instruments of peaceful agriculture, and wage no more war; in fact, they will learn war no more, no longer exercise themselves in the use of arms. For the words ‘0 3nF31 compare Joel iv. 10, where the summons to the nations to a decisive conflict with the kingdom of God is described as turning the instruments of agriculture into weapons of war. With the cessation of war, universal peace will ensue, and Israel will have no further enemies to fear, so that every one will have undisturbed enjoyment of the blessings of peace, of which Israel had had a foretaste during the peaceful reign of Solomon. The words “sit under his vine” are taken from 1 Kings v. 5 (ef. Zech. iii. 10), and MN PS from the promise in Ley. xxvi. 6. All this, however incredible it might appear, not only for the Israel of that time, but even now under the Christian dispensation, will assuredly take place, for the mouth of Jehovah the true God has spoken it.

It will not be through any general humanitarian ideas and efforts, however, that the human race will reach this goal, but solely through the omnipotence and faithfulness of the Lord. The reason assigned for the promise points to this. Ver. 5.“ For all nations walk every man in the name of his God, but we walk in the name of Jehovah our God for ever and ever.” This verse does not contain an exhortation, or a resolution to walk in the name of God, which involves an exhortation, in the sense of “if all nations walk, etc., then we will,” etc.; for an admonition or a resolution neither suits the connection, in the midst of simple promises, nor the words themselves, since we should at any rate expect 71393 instead of 2. The sameness in the form of the verbs 120) and 2) requires that they should be understood in the same way. Walking in the name of God does not mean regulating the conduct according to the name of a God, z.e. according to the nature which expresses itself in the name, or worshipping him in a manner corresponding to his nature (Caspari), but walking in the strength of God, in which _. the nature of this God is displayed. This is the meaning of the phrase in-1~Sam. xvii. 45 and Zech. x. 12, where “I strengthen them in Jehovah” forms the basis of “and in His name will they walk” (compare Prov. xviii. 10, “The name of the Lord is a strong tower”). But the gods of all the nations,

1.é. of all the heathen, are worthless beings, without life, without strength. Jehovah, on the contrary, is the only true God, the almighty Creator and Governor of the world. And the heathen, with their worthless gods, can do nothing to Him and the nation which walks in His name, His strength. If, therefore, Israel rejoices for ever and ever in the strength of its God, the heathen nations cannot disturb the peace which He will create for Israel and all who accept His word. In this way is the promise in vers. 3 and 4 explained in ver. 5. But this explanation assumes | that, even at the time when many nations stream to the mountain of the Lord, there will still be nations that do not seek

Jehovah and His word,—a thought which is still further ex— panded in ch. v. 4 sqq., and involves this consolation, that such opponents of the people of God_as shall be still in existence will not be able to interfere with the salvation which has been prepared for it by its God.

Vers. 6, 7. From this salvation even the Israel that may be in misery or scattered abroad will not be excluded. Ver. 6. “ In that day, is the saying of Jehovah, will I assemble that which limps, and gather together that which has been thrust out, and which I have afflicted. Ver. 7. And I will make that which limps into a remnant, and that which is far removed into a strong nation; and Jehovah will rule over them from henceforth, even for ever.” “In that day” points back to the end of the days in ver. 1. At the time when many nations shall go on pilgrimage to the highly exalted mountain of the Lord, and therefore Zion-Jerusalem will not only be restored, but greatly glorified, the Lord will assemble that which limps and is scattered abroad. The feminines nydsn and N33 are neuters, and to be understood collectively. Limping denotes the miserable condition into which the dispersed have been brought (cf. Ps. xxxv. 15, xxxvili. 18). And this misery is inflicted by God. The limping and dispersed are those whom Jehovah has afflicted, whom He has punished for their sins. The gathering together of the nation has already been promised in ch. ii. 12; but there the assembling of all Israel was foretold, whereas here it is merely the assembling of the miserable, and of those who are scattered far and wide. There is no discrepancy in these two promises. The difference may easily be explained from the different tendencies of the two addresses. “ All Jacob” referred to the two separate kingdoms into which the nation was divided in the time of the prophet, viz. Israel and Judah, and it was distinctly mentioned there, because the banishment of both had been foretold. This antithesis falls into the background here; and, on the other hand, prominence is given, in connection with what precedes, to the idea of happiness in the enjoyment of the blessings of the holy land. The gathering together involves reinstatement in the possession and enjoyment of these blessings. Hence only the miserable and dispersed are mentioned, to express the thought that no one is to be excluded from the salvation which the Lord will bestow upon His people in the future, though now he may be pining in the misery of the exile inflicted upon them. But just as the whole of the nation of Israel to be gathered together, according to ch. ii. 12, consists of the remnant of the nation only, so does the gathering together referred to here point only to the restoration of the remnant, which is to become a strong nation, over which Jehovah reigns as King in Zion. 720 is emphatic, expressing the setting up of) the perfected monarchy, as it has never yet existed, either in the " present or the past. This dominion will never be interrupted | again, as it formerly was, by the banishment of the nation into ' exile on account of its sins, but will endure 47YD (henceforth), t.e. from the future, which is regarded as present, even for ever.

So far as the realization of this exceedingly glorious promise is concerned, the expression standing at the head, b°achdrith hayyadmim (at the end of the days), already points to the Messianic times; and the substance of the promise itself points to the times of the completion of the Messianic kingdom, ie. to the establishment of the kingdom of glory (Matt. xix. 28). The temple mountain is a type of the kingdom of God in its New Testament form, which is described by all the prophets

1“ Micah does not mention the descendants of David here, but Jehovah Himself, not to exclude the kingdom of David, but to show that God will prove that He was the author of that kingdom, and that all the power is His. For although God governed the ancient people by the hand of David, and by the hand of Josiah and Hezekiah, yet there was as it were a cloud interposed, so that God then reigned obscurely. The prophet therefore indicates a certain difference here between that shadowy kingdom and the new kingdom which God will openly manifest at the advent of the Messiah.” —CALVIN.

after the forms of the Old Testament kingdom of God. <Accordingly, the going of the nations to the mountain of the house of Jehovah is, as a matter of fact, the entrance of the heathen who have been brought to the faith into the kingdom of Christ. This commenced with the spread of the gospel among the Gentiles, and has been continued through all the ages of the Christian church. But however many nations have hitherto entered into the Christian church, the time has not yet come for them to be so entirely pervaded with the spirit of Christ, as to allow their disputes to be settled by the Lord as, their King, or to renounce war, and live in everlasting peace. ven for Israel the time has not yet come for the limping and exiled to be gathered together and made into a strong nation, however many individual Jews have already found salvation and peace within the bosom of the Christian church. The cessation of war and establishment of eternal peace can only take place after the destruction of all the ungodly powers on earth, at the return of Christ to judgment and for the perfecting of His kingdom. But even then, when, according to Rom. xi. 25 sqq., the pleroma of the Gentiles shall have entered into the kingdom of God, and Israel as a nation (as “Iopajnr = iba apy insich» i. 12) shall have turned to its Redeemer, and shall be assembled or saved, no physical elevation of the sacle of Zion will ensue, nor any restoration of the temple in Jerusalem, or return of the dispersed of Israel to Palestine. The kingdom of glory will be set up on the new earth, in the Jerusalem which was shown to the holy seer on Patmos in the Spirit, on a great and lofty mountain (Rey. xxi. 10). In this holy city of God there will be no temple, “ for the Lord, the Almighty God, and the Lamb, are the temple thereof” (Rev. xxi. 22). The word of the Lord to the Samaritan woman concerning the time when men would neither worship God on this mountain, nor yet in Jerusalem, but worship Him in spirit and in truth (John iy. 21, 23), applies not only to the kingdom of God in its temporal development into the Christian church, but also to the time of the completion of the kingdom of God in glory.

Vers. 8-10. The prophecy turns from the highest glorification of Zion to the throne of Zion, which had been founded by David, and swept away with the destruction of Jerusalem (ch. ili. 12), and predicts its restoration in the future. Consequently the reign of Jehovah upon Mount Zion, promised in ver. 7, is still further defined as effected through the medium of the Davidico-Messianic dominion. Ver. 8. “ And thow flocktower, hill of the daughter Zion, to thee will the former dominion reach and come, the reign over the daughter Jerusalem.” ‘This announcement is attached primarily to vers. 6 and 7. As the remnant of Israel gathered together out of the dispersion will become a strong nation, so shall the reign of the daughter Zion be also restored. The address to the flock-tower, the hill of the daughter Zion, shows that these two notions express the same thing, looked at from two sides, or with two different bearings, so that the flock-tower is more precisely defined as the “ hill of the daughter Zion.” Now, as the daughter Zion is the city of Zion personified as a virgin, the hill of the daughter Zion might be understood as denoting the hill upon which the city stood, ze. Mount Zion. But this is precluded by Isa. xxxii. 14, where hill and watch-tower (‘ophel vabhachan) are mentioned in parallelism with the palace (armon), as places or buildings which are to serve as dens for ever. From this it is obvious that ‘ophel was a place either at the side or at the top of Zion. If we compare with this 2 Chron. xxvii. 3 and xxxill. 14, according to which Jotham built much against the wall of the Ophel (h@‘ophel), and Manasseh encircled the Ophel with a wall, and made it very high, Ophel must have been a hill, possibly a bastion, on the south-eastern border of Zion, the fortification of which was of great importance as a defence to the city of Zion against hostile attacks. Consequently migdal-

1 The opinion that Ophel is the whole of the southern steep rocky promontory of Moriah, from the southern end of the temple ground to its extreme point (Robinson, Schultz, Williams), viz. the Ophla or Ophias of Josephus, as Arnold (Herzog’s Cycl.) and Winer (Bibl. R.W.) suppose, would be in perfect harmony with this. At the same time, all that can be inferred with any certainty from the passages from Josephus which are cited in support of it (viz. Wars of the Jews, v.6, 13 cf. vi. 6, 3 and v. 4, 2) is, that the place called Ophla was in the neighbourhood of the valley of Kidron and of the temple mountain. The question then arises, whether the Ophla of Josephus is identical with the Ophel of the Old Testament, since Josephus does not mention the Ophel in his list of the hills of Jerusalem, but simply mentions Ophia as a special locality (see Reland, Pal. p- 855). And lastly, the situation of the Ophel, upon which the Nethinim dwelt (Neh. iii. 26), is still a matter of dispute, Bertheau supposing it to be the habitable space to the east of the eastern side of the temple area,

‘éder cannot be the flock-tower in the neighbourhood of Bethlehem, which is mentioned in Gen. xxxv. 21, but can only be a (or rather the) tower of the Davidic palace, or royal castle upon Zion, namely the town mentioned in Neh. iii. 25, which stood out against the upper king’s house, by the’court of the prison (cf. ver. 26). For the prison, which also belonged to the king’s house, according to Jer. xxxii. 2, formed a portion of the royal castle, according to the custom of the East. And that it had a lofty tower, is evident from Song of Sol. iv. 4: “Thy neck is like David’s tower, built for an armoury: a thousand shields hang thereon, all heroes’ weapons;” according _ to which the tower of the royal castle was ornamented with the weapons or shields of David’s heroes (1 Chron. xii. 1). And the tower of the king’s castle was so far specially adapted to represent the sovereignty of David, “that by its exaltation above Zion and Jerusalem, by the fact that it ruled the whole city, it symbolized the Davidic family, and its rule over the city and all Israel” (Caspari). This tower, which is most likely the one called bachan (the watch-tower) in Isaiah (J.c.), is called by Micah the flock-tower, probably as a play upon the flock-tower by which the patriarch Jacob once pitched his tent, because David, the ancestor of the divinely-chosen royal house, had been called from being the shepherd of a flock to be the shepherd of the nation of Israel, the flock of Jehovah (Jer. xiii. 17; cf. 2 Sam. vii. 8; Ps. Ixxvili. 70). This epithet was a very natural one for the prophet to employ, as he not only describes the Messiah as a shepherd in ch. v. 3, but also represents Israel as the sheep of Jehovah’s inheritance in ch. vii. 14, and the flocktower is the place where the shepherd takes up his position to see whether any danger threatens his flock (cf. 2 Chron. xxvi. 10, xxvii. 4), AMNSn 7TY, “unto thee shall it come.”* J"7Y affirms more than poy, to thee: expressing the conquest of every obstacle that ake up the way to the goal. MSM is separated from what follows, and exhibited as independent not only by the athnach, but also by the change of tense occurring in 782; “to thee will it come,” sc. what the prophet has in his mind and mentions in the next clause, but brings into special promi-

1 Luther’s rendering, ‘ thy golden rose will come,” arose from his confounding yy (from ty, unto) with 7"4p, thine ornament. 27 seca nence in AN3, MN ‘DN, the former (first) reign, is the splendid rule of David and Solomon. This predicate presupposes that the sovereignty has departed from Zion, 7.e. has been withdrawn from the Davidic family, and points back to the destruction of Jerusalem predicted in ch. iii. 12. This sovereignty is still more precisely defined as kingship over the daughter of Jerusalem (5 before N2 is a periphrasis of the gen. obj.). Jerusalem, the capital of the kingdom, represents as the object sovereignty over the whole kingdom. This is to be restored to the hill of Zion, ¢.e. to the royal castle upon the top of it.

But before this takes place, the daughter Zion will lose her _king, and wander into captivity to Babylon; but there she will be redeemed by the Lord out of the power of her enemies. Ver. 9. “ Now why dost thou cry acry? Is there no king in thee, or is thy counsellor perished, that pangs have seized thee like the woman in labour? Ver. 10. Writhe and break forth, O daughter Zion, like a woman in labour! For how wilt thow go out of the city and dwell in the field, and come to Babel? there wilt thou be rescued; there will Jehovah redeem thee out of the hand of thine enemies.” From this glorious future the prophet now turns his eye to the immediate future, to proclaim to the people what will precede this glorification, viz. first of all, the loss of the royal government, and the deportation of the people to Babylon. If Micah, after announcing the devastation of Zion in ch. ill. 12, has offered to the faithful a firm ground of hope in the approaching calamities, by pointing to the highest glory as awaiting it in the future, he now guards against the abuse which might be made of this view by the careless body of the people, who might either fancy that the threat of punishment was not meant so seriously after all, or that the time of adversity would very speedily give place to a much more glorious state of prosperity, by depicting the grievous times that are still before them. Beholding in spirit the approaching time of distress as already present, he hears a loud cry, like that of a woman in labour, and inquires the cause of this lamentation, and whether it refers to the loss of her king. The words are addressed to the daughter Zion, and the meaning of the rhetorical question is simply this: Zion will lose her king, and be thrown into the deepest mourning in consequence. The loss of the king was a much more painful thing for Israel than for any other nation, because such glorious promises were attached to the throne, the king being the visible representative of the grace of God, and his removal a sign of the wrath of God and of the abolition of all the blessings of salvation which were promised to the nation in his person. Compare Lam. iv. 20, where Israel calls the king its vital breath (Hengstenberg). yi" (counsellor) is also the king; and this epithet simply gives prominence to that which the Davidie king had been to Zion (ef. Isa. ix. 5, where the Messiah is designated as “Counsellor” par excellence). But Zion must experience this pain: writhe and break forth. Gochiis strengthened by chalz, and is used intransitively, to break forth, describing the pain connected with the birth as being as it were a bursting of the whole nature (cf. Jer. iv. 31). It is not used transitively in the sense of “ drive forth,” as Hitzig and others suppose; for the determination that Jerusalem would submit, and the people be carried away, could not properly be represented as a birth or as a reorganization of things. With the words 3) OhY °3 the prophet leaves the figure, and predicts in literal terms the catastrophe awaiting the nation. MAY (now), repeated from ver. 9, is the ideal present, which the prophet sees in spirit, but which is in reality the near or more remote future. "?, without an article, is a kind of proper name, like wrbs for Rome (Caspari). In order to set forth the certainty of the threatened judgment, and at the same time the greatness of the calamity in the most impressive manner, Micah fills up the details of the drama: viz. going cut of the city, dwelling in the field, without shelter, delivered up to all the chances of weather, and coming to Babel, carried thither without delay. Going out of the city presupposes the conquest of the city by the enemy; since going out to surrender themselves to the enemy (2 Kings xxiv. 12; 1 Sam. xi. 3) does not fit in with the prophetic description, which is not a historical description in detail. Nevertheless Israel shall not perish. There (shdm, i.e. even in Babel) will the Lord its God deliver it out of the hand of its foes.

The prediction that the daughter Zion, i.e. the nation of Israel which was governed from Zion, and had its centre in Zion —the covenant nation which, since the destruction of the kingdom of the ten tribes, existed in Judah only—should be carried away to Babylon, and that at a time when Assyria was in the field as the chief enemy of Israel and the representative of the imperial power, goes so far beyond the bounds of the political horizon of Micah’s time, that it cannot be accounted for from any natural presentiment. It is true that it has an analogon in Isa, xxxix. 6, 7, where Isaiah predicts to. king Hezekiah in the most literal terms the carrying away of all his treasures, and of his sons (descendants), to Babylon. At the same time, this analogy is not sufficient to explain the prediction before us; for Isaiah’s prophecy was uttered during the period immediately following the destruction of the Assyrian forces in front of Jerusalem and the arrival of Babylonian ambassadors in Jerusalem, and had a point of connection in these events, which indicated the destruction of the Assyrian empire and the rise of Babylon in its stead, at all events in the germ; whereas no such connecting link exists in the case of Micah’s prophecy, which was unquestionably uttered before these events. It has therefore been thought, that in ch. 11. 12 Micah predicts the destruction of Jerusalem, and here in ver. 10 the carrying away of Judah to Babylon by the Assyrians; and this opinion, that Micah expected the judgment upon Jerusalem and Judah to be executed by the Assyrians, and not by the Babylonians, has been supported partly by such passages as ch. v. 4, 5, and Jer. xxvi. 18, 19, and partly by the circumstance that Micah threatens his own corrupt contemporaries with the judgment which he predicts on account of their sins; whereas in his time the Assyrians were the only possible executors of a judgment upon Israel who were then standing on the stage of history (Caspari). But these arguments are not decisive. All that can be inferred from ch. v. 4, 5, where Asshur is mentioned as the representative of all the enemies of Israel, and of the power of the world in its hostility to the people of God in the Messianic times, is that at the time of Micah the imperial power in its hostility to the kingdom of God was represented by Assyria; but it by no means follows that Assyria would always remain the imperial power, so that it could only be from her that Micah could expect the destruction of Jerusalem, and the carrying away of Judah to Babylon. Again, Jer. xxvi. 18, 19—where the chief men of Judah, in order to defend the prophet Jeremiah, quote Micah’s prophecy, with the remark that king Hezekiah did not put him to death in consequence, but feared the Lord and besought His face, so that the Lord repented of the evil which He had spoken concerning Jerusalem—simply proves that these chief men referred Micah’s words to the Assyrians, and attributed the non-fulfilment of the threatened judgment by the Assyrians to Hezekiah’s penitence and prayer, and that this was favoured by the circumstance that the Lord answered the prayer of the king, by assuring him that the Assyrian army should be destroyed (Isa. xxxvii. 21 sqq.). But whether the opinion of these chief men as to the meaning and fulfilment of Micah’s prophecy (ch. iii. 12) was the correct one or not, cannot be decided from the passage quoted. Its correctness is apparently favoured, indeed, by the circumstance that Micah threatened the people of his own time with the judgment (for your sakes shall Zion be ploughed into a field, etc.). Now, if he had been speaking of a judgment upon Judah through the medium of the Babylonians, “he would (so Caspari thinks) not only have threatened his contemporaries with a judgment which could not fall upon them, since it was not possible till after their time, inasmuch as the Assyrians were on the stage in his day; but he would also have been most incomprehensibly silent as to the approaching Assyrian judgment, of which Isaiah spoke again and again.” ‘This argument falls to the ground with the untenable assumptions upon which it is founded. Micah neither mentions the Assyrians nor the Babylonians as executing the judgment, nor does he say a word concerning the time when the predicted devastation or destruction of Jerusalem will occur. In the expression papa, for your sakes (ch. iil. 12), it is by no means affirmed that it at take place in his time through the medium of the Assyrians. The persons addressed are es scandalous leaders of the house of Israel, i.e. of the covenant nation, and primarily those living in his own time, though by no means those only, but all who share their character and ungedliness, so that the words apply to succeeding generations quite as much as to his contemporaries. ‘he only thing that would warrant our restricting the prophecy to Micah’s own times, would be a precise definition by Micah himself of the period when Jerusalem would be destroyed, or his expressly distinguishing his own contemporaries from their sons and descendants. But as he has done neither the one nor the other, it cannot be said that, inasmuch as the destruction of Jerusalem and the carrying away of the people was not effected by the Assyrians, but — by the Babylonians (Chaldeans), he would have been altogether silent as to the approaching Assyrian judgment, and only threatened them with the Chaldzean catastrophe, which did not take place till a long time afterwards. His words refer to all the judgments, which took place from his own time onwards till the utter destruction of Jerusalem and the carrying away of the people to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar. The onesided reference of the prophecy to the Assyrians is simply based upon an incorrect idea of the nature of prophecy, and its relation to the fulfilment, and involves the prophet Micah in an irreconcilable discrepancy between himself and his contemporary the prophet Isaiah, who does indeed predict the severe oppression of Judah by the Assyrians, but at the same time foretels the failure of the plans of these foes to the people of Jehovah, and the total destruction of their army.