Miquéias 2

Miquéias 2

Morgan - After a graphic description of the coming judgment (Mic 1.6-16) the prophet declared the nature of the sin of the nation (Mic 2.1). It will be noticed that the sin was peculiarly the sin of the ruling classes. The period was one of material prosperity, but the power of this was in the hands of the rulers. In view of this power, they planned and plotted in the night, and in the day carried out their plans. Their rule was that of oppression. The note in this charge which reveals the deepest wrong, is that in which the prophet declared that the oppression was not an action of sudden passion, or of swift moral collapse. It was premeditated. Observe the force of the word devise: "Woe to them that devise iniquity." This gives force to the declaration: "Behold against this family do I devise an evil." Men deliberately plot and plan in the darkness, devise iniquity in the night, when their fellow men cannot see, do not know. But God is not deceived, He knows; and over against the devising of wickedness, is set His devising. They devise iniquity against their fellows; but Jehovah devises evil against them. This is ever so, and the evil which God devises against the devising of iniquity is ever the outworking .of that very iniquity in its reaction upon the evil workers. There is no escape from God; and that fact is the reason of confidence, and the secret of peace, in the days most full of the apparent triumph of evil men. Micah 2:4 In that day they will take up against you a taunt and utter a bitter lamentation and say, 'We are completely destroyed! He exchanges the portion of my people; How He removes it from me! To the apostate He apportions our fields.' shall Numbers 23:7,18; 24:3,15; Job 27:1; Isaiah 14:4; Ezekiel 16:44; Habakkuk 2:6; Mark 12:12 and lament 2 Samuel 1:17; 2 Chronicles 35:25; Jeremiah 9:10,17-21; 14:18; Joel 1:8,13; Amos 5:1,17 a doleful lamentation Heb. a lamentation of lamentations. Lamentations 1:1-5; Ezekiel 2:10 We Deuteronomy 28:29; Isaiah 6:11; 24:3; Jeremiah 9:19; 25:9-11; Zephaniah 1:2 he hath changed 10; 1:15; 2 Kings 17:23,24; 2 Chronicles 36:20,21; Isaiah 63:17,18 turning away he or, instead of restoring, he, etc. NIV - In that day men will ridicule you; they will taunt you with this mournful song: 'We are utterly ruined; my people's possession is divided up. He takes it from me! He assigns our fields to traitors.'" NET - In that day people will sing this taunt song to you– they will mock you with this lament: 'We are completely destroyed; they sell off the property of my people. How they remove it from me! They assign our fields to the conqueror.' In that day (Mic 5:10) - Always be alert to expressions of time and ask questions like to what time does this refer, what transpires, etc? This time phrase clearly refers to the day when the LORD brings the calamity to pass. Micah's contemporary Isaiah uses the phrase "in that day" 40 times to either begin or end an oracle. Take up a taunt - "take up a piece of sarcasm against you" (Davis) Taunt - The punished profiteers are made to serve as an example to be shunned, a lesson to others not to travel the broad road that leads to destruction. Gary Smith paraphrases - “Isn’t it too bad! It is so unfortunate, what these rich people had to go through. What they coveted and stole is now being coveted and taken from them. They’re going to end up with nothing. Doesn’t it just break your heart to see them get what they deserve! Allen - The fallen are made to serve as an example to be shunned, a lesson to others not to travel the path that leads to this disastrous end. Taunt (04912)(mashal) in most contexts conveys the idea of a proverb or parable, basically indicating a pithy maxim with a suggestion of special insight and authority. While it can mean something as harmless as a proverb (Pr 1:1; 10:1), n the present context the taunt is delivered in ridicule and scorn. The Lxx translates mashal in this passage with parabole. Mashal - 40v - Num 23:7, 18; 24:3, 15, 20f, 23; Deut 28:37; 1 Sam 10:12; 24:13; 1 Kgs 4:32; 9:7; 2 Chr 7:20; Job 13:12; 27:1; 29:1; Ps 44:14; 49:4; 69:11; 78:2; Pr 1:1, 6; 10:1; 25:1; 26:7, 9; Eccl 12:9; Isa 14:4; Jer 24:9; Ezek 12:22f; 14:8; 17:2; 18:2f; 20:49; 24:3; Joel 2:17; Mic 2:4; Hab 2:6. Usage in NAS: byword(3), discourse(9), parable(3), parables(1), proverb(15), proverbs(6), taunt(2), taunt-song(1). We are completely destroyed! - "Lost, everything is lost." Davis - "The ‘we’ I take to be the former land tycoons of Judah who had amassed their estates by filching the holdings of others." Destroyed (07703)(shadad) means to ravage, to deal violently with, despoil, ruin, lay waste. The primary sense is to devastate or bring to ruin or desolation by violent action and implies the complete ruin of a wide area. Jeremiah depicts the ferocity of shadad in his description of God's judgment on Judah writing that "a wolf of the deserts will destroy (shadad) them," which conveys a picture of pursuit, attack and violent mauling of the victim! Strong language but just desserts for these despicable greedy land grabbers. Shadad - 48 v - Judg 5:27; Job 12:6; 15:21; Ps 17:9; 91:6; 137:8; Pr 11:3; 19:26; 24:15; Isa 15:1; 16:4; 21:2; 23:1, 14; 33:1; Jer 4:13, 20, 30; 5:6; 6:26; 9:19; 10:20; 12:12; 15:8; 25:36; 47:4; 48:1, 8, 15, 18, 20, 32; 49:3, 10, 28; 51:48, 53, 55f; Ezek 32:12; Hos 10:2, 14; Joel 1:10; Obad 1:5; Mic 2:4; Nah 3:7; Zech 11:2f He exchanges the portion of my people; How He removes it from me! - The taunt includes this parody of the powerful who are now powerless "How could God do such a thing as to take away my land?" To the apostate He apportions our fields - "How He doles out our fields to the rebellious!" (Davis) Some feel that "apostate" refers to the Assyrians. Micah 2:5 "Therefore you will have no one stretching a measuring line For you by lot in the assembly of the LORD. cast Deuteronomy 32:8; Joshua 18:4,10; Psalms 16:6; Hosea 9:3 the congregation Deuteronomy 23:2,8; Nehemiah 7:61 NLT - Others will set your boundaries then, and the Lord's people will have no say in how the land is divided. Therefore - term of conclusion - McComiskey - Therefore (lākēn) links the land barons’ loss of land (Mic 2:4) with their additional loss of eternal life, the severest judgment of all. Beyond the loss of land the villains will not be represented in the future assembly of the Lord when he redistributes the land—the basis and symbol for life—after the exile… Because the Lord had promised Abraham the land as an eternal inheritance (Ge 12:1), Micah knew the land must be given back after the Assyrian conquest (Mic 7:20). Those who were removed from the land for their moral turpitude, however, will have no share in it. (Ed Note: The Land is promised to the nation of Israel, not the Church - Ge 13:14-17; Ge 15:1-7; Ge 17:1-8, esp Ge 17:8,Ge 17:15-19; Ge 22:16-18; Ge 26:2-5,24; Ge 28:13-15; Ge 31:13; Ge 35:9-12, Ge 48:4 = to Jacob's descendents as an "everlasting possession.") By lot (Literally “casting (the) rope by lot”) - There were 2 ways of returning land to the original owner - the Year of Jubilee and by lot. The punishment of these men would include even the retraction of the right of drawing lots for the land! See (Nu 26:55–56; 33:54; 34:13; 36:2; Josh. 14:2; 18:11; Josh 19:51) Criswell - The people's (especially those who seize land by exerting power) portion of land was to be removed from them and would not be reallocated to them by lot in the Year of Jubilee (cf. Josh 18:10; Lev. 25:8-9). Ultimately God is the One Who establishes the boundaries of the peoples (Dt 32:8). You will have no say - Micah is referring to the rich previously powerful profiteers. Assembly of the LORD - This refers to the nation as a whole (cf Dt 23:1,8). The idea of assembling Jacob (i.e., Israel, the nation) is repeated in Micah 2:12 and Micah 4:6-7, both passages in which the context supports those who will be assembled are the righteous (believing) remnant of Israel that Messiah gathers together at the beginning of the Messianic Age which follows this present age. MacKay explains the seriousness of God's judgment - "Those who have violated his covenant requirements will then have no representative or descendant in the assembly of the people. Because of their sin the LORD will no longer recognize them as his, and they will have no portion in the restored land." Kaiser - In that eschatological assembly (Ed: In the restoration of righteousness in the Righteous One's Millennial Reign!), the general land reform prescribed in the Sabbatical and Jubilee years would find its consummation. Then it would finally be true of all the poor in Spirit that “The lines have fallen to [us] in pleasant places; Yes, [we] have a good inheritance” (Ps. 16:6-note). Davis - Many Christians would probably admit that this section leaves them cold, since Micah condemns the rich and powerful here and, as few Christians find themselves in that category—well then, this passage has little to say to them. If that is your view, cheer up! Micah nails you after all! You may have neither position nor power to pull off this sort of white-collar crime. But Micah takes you down, down, behind the obvious crimes to their secret root: ‘They covet’ (Mic 2:2). The prophet takes you beneath all the layers to the really ugly stuff. John Guy writes of the surprise people received at the execution of Mary Queen of Scots in 1587. As the executioner lifted up Mary’s head (after clumsily severing it) her auburn curls and white cap became detached from her skull. The executioner was left with a fistful of hair, while Mary’s head fell back to the floor and began rolling like an odd-shaped ball towards the gathered spectators—who saw that it was very grey and nearly bald. Get beneath the wig and you see what the queen really looked like at the age of forty-four. Micah is not sneezing at flagrant sins, but he also strips away those trimmings and takes you to their source, the idolatrous passion of the human heart: ‘They covet.’ Here is a God who can see it—what you ponder in your bedroom (Mic 2:1), the secret plans you make and the raging discontentment at the core of your life that drives it all. The fact that you have done nothing like the thugs in the text does not mean you are virtuous, but only that you may lack opportunity to sin in this way. With that verb ‘covet’ Yahweh opens up the septic tank of your own reeking nature and lets you smell it. Micah 2:6 'Do not speak out,' so they speak out. But if they do not speak out concerning these things, reproaches will not be turned back. Prophesy ye, etc or, Prophesy not as they prophesy. Heb. Drop. etc. Isaiah 30:10; Jeremiah 26:8,9,20-23; Ezekiel 20:46; 21:2; Amos 2:12; 7:13; Acts 4:17; 5:28,40; 7:51; 1 Thessalonians 2:15,16 they shall not prophesy Psalms 74:9; Ezekiel 3:26; Amos 8:11-13 that they Jeremiah 6:14,15; 8:11,12 NLT - "Don't say such things," the people say. "Don't prophesy like that. Such disasters will never come our way!" Note: Micah 2:6-11 is notoriously difficult to interpret dogmatically and there is a considerable variation in interpretations. The following is my best attempt but caveat emptor! Do not speak out, so they speak out - Variously translated = "Stop prophesying, they prophesy"; "Do not prattle, so they prattle." "Do not sputter, thus they sputter!" NET Note - “‘Do not foam at the mouth,’ they foam at the mouth.” The verb נָטַף (nataf) means “to drip.” When used of speech it probably has the nuance “to drivel, to foam at the mouth” (HALOT 694 s.v. נטף). The sinful people tell the LORD’s prophets not to “foam at the mouth,” which probably refers in a derogatory way to their impassioned style of delivery. But the LORD (who is probably still speaking here, see Mic 2:3) sarcastically refers to their (the false prophet's) impassioned exhortation as “foaming at the mouth.” Most commentators ascribe this section (Mic 2:6-11) to false prophets who were "in bed" with the land grabbers. They were attempting to silence Micah's message because it was offensive and countered the messages of the false prophets who said God was for Israel and would not destroy it. It is also worth noting that the verb "do not speak out" is in the plural, which supports the premise that Micah was not alone in his prophesying against the sins of his day. Indeed, Hosea and Isaiah were contemporaries of Micah, but there may have been others, not to mention that there was also a godly remnant of Jews (genuine believers) who would have received and repeated (passed on) the teaching of faithful men like Micah. Beloved, God always has His "seven thousand who have bowed their knee to Baal." (Ro 11:4-note). You man feel like you are alone as you swimming against the tide in America, where the shrill and constant cry is "You must be politically correct!" You are not alone! Matthew