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THE
MINOE PEOPHETS,
WITH A
COMMENTA
EXPLANATORY AND PRACTICAL
AND
INTRODUCTIONS TO THE SEVERAL BOOKS.
THE REV. E."* B^ PUSEY, D. D.
BEOIUS PROFESSOR OF HEBREW, AND CANON OF CHRIST CHURCH.
Vol. II.
MICAH, NAHUM, HABAKKUK, ZEPHANIAH, HAGQAI, ZEOHARiAH AND MALACHI.
Open thou mine eyea^ that I may behold vxmdrout things out qf thy tou;.— Pi. cxix. 18.
NEW YORK:
FUNK & WAGNALLS, Pubushebs,
10 AND 12 Dey Street,
1885.
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1885,
By FUNK A WAGNALLS,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. CL
(
CONTENTS.
I. MICAH.
INTRODUCTION.
His name : a villager : his date : earlier than Isaiah, yet prophesied under Ahaz and in beginning of Hezekiah's reign : divisions of his book : simplicity bat vividness and energy of his style. His extreme tenderness. His use of the Pentateuch, and use of his book by later prophets, .... pp. 5-14
COMMENTARY.— Chaptbrs I.— VII pp. 15-104
11. NAHUM.
INTRODUCTION.
His date : date of the conquest of No, mentioned by him. Strength of Nineveh : its history : its might enlarged, until within 22 years of its fall. Suddenness of its foil. It8 rivers were its strength and weakness. Commerce continued its old course on the opposite side of the river, but itself i>eri8hed. Psendo-crltidsms as to his style, pp. 105-128
CX)MMENTARy.-CHAPTEBa I.— HI i ... pp. 129-164
III. HABAKKUK.
INTRODUCTION.
Prophet of faith : earlier than Zephaniah : pseudo-criticism as to his language. Suddenness of the rise and foil of the strength of Babylon : mistake of Assyria in placing Chaldees there. Magnificence of Habakkuk's style, . . . pp. 165-177
COMMENTARY.-CHAPTEBS I.— Ill pp. 179-223
IV. ZEPHANIAH.
INTRODUCTION.
Correspondence with Habakkuk. His date, use of former prophetA. Distinct prophecies. Myth of critics as to Scythians being formidable to the Jews. Vividness and tenderness, ......... pp. 225-234
COMMENTARY.-<3haptkr8 I.— IH pp. 235-291
Moabite stone, translation of its inscription, ...... pp. 291-292
VOL. II. 3
4 CONTENTS.
V. HAGGAI.
INTRODUCTION.
Lukewarmness of his times ; greatness of the repentance wrought through him.
Enei^y of his style, .......... pp. 293-29T
(X)MM£NTAKY.— Chaptebs I.— II. pp. 280-921
VI. ZECHARIAH.
INTRODUCTION.
Called early to his office. Imaginative richness In both parts of his book: correspondence between them: references in both to prophets before the captivity: correspondence in language and style and rhythm; Captivity spoken of as past In later chapters also : identity of authorship : author of these chapters, had he lived before the captivity, would have been one of the false prophets condemned by Jeremiah. German criticism, qn grround of philology and history, assigns dates varying by nearly 500 years ; alleged grounds of prse- exile date, or of the relation of c. xi. to times of Menahem. Arguments of phil- ology for weightier, allowed to be invalid as to Plato. Table of discrepant dates assigned to Zecharlah by modem Oerman critics, ..... pp. 323-338
COMMENTARY.-Chaptebs I--XIV. . . , pp. 830-450
VII. MALACHL
INTRODUCTION.
His date : characteristics of his call to repentance ; co-opemtcd effectively In Nehemiah's reformation. Poetry would have been misplaced in his prophecy . pp. 461-461
COMMENTARY.— Chapters I.-IV. pp. 465^504
INTEODUOTIOIJ
TO
THE PEOPHET
MICAH.
MiCAH, orMicaiah, this Morasthite, was so called, probably, in order to di^stingiiish him from hiB great predecessor, Mieaiah, son of Imlah, in the reign of Ahab. His name was spoken in its fuller form, by the elders of the land whose words Jeremiah has preserved. And in that fuller form his name is known, where the Greek and Latin translations of the Scriptures are used •. By the Syrians, and by tne Jews ^^ he is still csUled, as by us, Micah. The fullest and original form is Micalahu, " who is like the Lord ? " In this fullest form, it is the name of one of the Levites sent by Jehoshaphat to teach the people °, as also of the mother of king Asa '^, (the same name servinsf sometimes l^th for men and women). Then according to the habit of abridging names, in all countriei}, and especially those of which the proper name of the Lord is a pai-t, it is diversely abridged into Micaihu, Micahu*, whence Micah is readily formed, on the same rule as Micaiah itself from Micalahu. The forms are all found inJiflerently. The idolatrous Levite in the time of the Judges ', and the son of Imlah *, are both called in the same chapter Micaihu and Micah; the father of one of Josiah*B officers is called Micaiah in the book of Kings'^, Micah in the Chron- icles*.
The Prophet's name, like those of Joshua, Elijah,' Elisha, Hosea, Joel, Obadiah, was
• Mixoiaf is used by the LXX. in Jer. xxvi. 18 and Mioah i. 1, as also in tho other places where the name occurs, except Neh. xi. 17, 22, where for K3*0 thev have Mi^a. Josephus calls both prophets Mix<uaff Micah son of Imlah, Ant. 8. 14. 6. and our
Srophet, Ant. 10. 6. 2. The Vulgate uses for both, [ichseas.
^ They substituted HD^D in the Krl in Jeremiah.
significant. Joshua's, we know, was changed of set purpose *. The rest seem to have been
fiven in God's Providence, or taken by the *rophets, in order to enunciate truths con- cerning God, opposed to the idolatries or self- dependence of the people. But the name of Micah or Micaiah, (as the elders of the land * called him on a solemn occasion, some 120 Years afterward) contained more than teach- ing. It was cast into the form of a challenge. Wlu> i8 like the Lord t The form of words had been impressed on Israel by the song of Moses after the deliverance at the Bed se^i ™. In the days of Elijah and that first Micniah, the strife between God and man, the true Prophet and the false, had been ended at the battle of Ramoth-Gilead ; it ceased for a time, in the reigns of Jehu and his suc- cessors, because in coasequence of his partial obedience, God, by Elisha and Jonah, pro- mised them good : it was again resumed, as the promise to Jehu was expiring, and God's prophets had anew to proclaim a message oi woe. Ha^st thou, found fne, 0 mine enemy " ? and, ° / hate Aim, for he doth not prophesy good concerning me, but evil, Ahab's words as to Elijah and Micaiah, were the types of the subsequent contradiction of the false pro- phets to Ilosea and Amos, which closed only with the destruction of Samaria. Now, in the time of the later Micaiah, were the first dawnings of the same strife in Judah, which
• 2Chr. xvii.7. «Ib. xiii. 2. « lb. xviii. 8. Keth.
' ^n"^'?? Jud. xvii. 1, 4 ; HD'P 5, 8, 9, 10.
i^rfj'D 1 Kings xxii. 9,2Chr. xviii. 7; nD*p2
Chr. xviii. 14. h 2 Kings xxii. 12. « 2 Chr. xxxiv. 20.
* Num. xiii. 16. » Jer. xxvi. 17, 18. ■ Ex. XV. 11. > 1 Kings xxi. 20. • lb. xxii. 8, 18.
5
INTRODUCTION TO
hastened and brought about the destruction of Jerusalem under Zedekiah, which re-ap- peared after the Captivity p and was the im- mediate cause of the second destruction under the Komans *!. Micah, as he dwells on the meaning of names generally, so, doubtless, it is in allusion to his own. that, at the close of his prophecy, he ushers m his announcement of Goa's incomparable mercv with the words *", Who is a God like uiUo Thee f Before him, whatever disobedience there was to God's law in Judah, there was no systematic, oi^nized, opposition to Hisprophets. There is i;o token of it in Joel, from the times of Micah it is never missing. We find it in each prophet (however brief the remains of some are), who prophesied directly to Judah, not in Isaiah only, but in Habakkuk ' and Zephaniah K It deepened, as it hastened toward its decision. The nearer God's judg- ments were at hand, the more obstinately the false prophets denied that they would come. The system of false prophecy, which rose to its height in the time of Jeremiah, which met and thwarted him at every step ^, and deceived those who wished to be deceived, was dawning in the time of Micah. False prophe(*y arose in Judah from the self-same cause whence it had arisen in Israel, because Judah's dcepenin<^ corruption drew down the prophecies of God's displeasure, which it was popular to disbelieve. False prophecy was a gainful occupation. The false prophets had men's wislies on their side. They had the people with them. My people love to have it 80 % said Gol. They forbade Micah to pro- phesy y ; prophesied peace ■, when Goxl fore- told evil; prophesied for gain% and pro- claimed war in the Name of Gk>d^ against those who fed them not.
At such a time was Micah called. His name which he himself explains, was no chance name. To the Hebrews, to whom names were so much more significant, parts of the living language, it recalled the name of his great predecessor, his standing alone against all the prophets of Ahab, his pro-
?necy, his suffering, his evidenced truth, 'he truth of prophecy was set upon the issue of the battle before llamoth-Gilead. In the presence of Jelioshaphat, king of Judah, as well as of Ahab, the 400 prophets of Ash- taroth had promised to Anab the prize he longed for. One solitary, discriminating voice was heard amid that clamorous multi- tude, forewarning Ahab that he would perish, his people would be scattered. On the one side, was that loud triumphant chorus of° all the propheUf Oo up to itamoth-Oilead, and
9 Neh. yL 14. 4 See vol. 1. pp. 334-336.
»vii. 18. •!. 6, 11. 1. •!. 12.
• See Jer. v. 13, 31, vl. 13-17, vlil. 10-12, xiv. KMS, XX. 1-6, xxili. 9-eDd, xxvi. 7, 8, 11, xxvil. 14-18, xxviii., xxix. 8, 9, 21-32.
> Jer. ?. 3L 7 ii A. ■ iii. 5. > ill. 11.
prosper ; for the Lord shall deliver U, into the kin^s hand. On the other, one solemn voice, exhibiting before them that sad spectacle which the morrow's sun sliould witnebs *, / taw all Israel seaJUered upon the hUls'y as sheep that hare not a shepherd, and the Lord said, these have no master, Ut them return every man to his house in pea/x, Micaiah was smitten, im- prisoned, and, apparently, ended his ministry, appealing from that small audience of the armies of Israel and Judah to the whole world, which has ever since looked back on that strife with interest and awe ; • Hear ye peoples, each one of them, God, who guided the archer shooting at a venture^, fulfilled the words which He had put into the Prophet's mouth. God's words had found Ahab, although disguised; Jchoshaphat, the im- perilled *, returned home, to relate the issue. The conflict between God's truth and idol falsehood was doubtless long remembered in Judah. And- now when the strife had penetrated into Judah, to be ended some 170** years afterward in the destruction of Jerusalem, another Micaiah arose, his name the old watchword, Who is like the Lord f He prefixed to his prophecy that same sum- mons * to the whole world to behold the issue of the conflict, which God had once accredited and, in that issue, had given an earnest of the victory of His truth, there thenceforth and for ever.
The prophet was born a villager, in More- sheth Gatn, "a village^", S. Jerome says; ("a little village"", in S. Jerome's own days), " East of Eleutheropolis," where what was "* formerly his grave," was "now a church." Since it was his birthplace and his burial-place, it was probably his home also. In the beginning of the reign of Je- hoiakim, the elders of the land " speak of liim with this same title, the Moinsthiie. He lin- gers, in his prophecy, nmon<7 the towns of the maritime plain (the Shephelah) where his birthplace lay. Among the ten places in thjit neighborhood ", which he selects for warning and for example of the universal captivity, is his native village, " the home he loved." But the chief scene of his ministry was Jerusalem. He names it in the begin- ning of his prophecy, as the place where the idolatries, and, with the idolatries, all the other sins of Judah were concentrated. The two capitiils, Samaria and Jerusalem, were the diief objects of the word of God to him, because the corruption of each kingdom streamed forth from them. The sins which he rebukes are chiefly those of the capital. Extreme oppression **, violence
»• liL 6. see note. • 1 Kings xxii. 12.
4 lb. 17. •lb. 28. fM. i:iO-3.
>» from the l'>e^inning of Jotham's reif^n. » Henjfst. Christ, i. 475. J Onom. k Prref. to Mic. » Ep. 86. ftd Eustoch. Epitaph. Paultp 8 14. i. 698. ■ Jer. xxvL 17, 18. ■ i. 11-15. • iU. 2, 3, 11. 2.
MICAH.
among the richP, bribing among jud^, priests, prophets '^ ; building up the capital even by cost of life, or actual bloodshed'; spoliation * ; expulsion of the powerless, wom- en and children from their nomes * ; covet- ousncss*; cheating in dealings ''; pride 7. These, of course, may be manifoldly repeated in lesser places of resort and of judgment. But it is Zion and Jerusalem which are so built lip with blood ' ; Zion and Jerumlemf which are, on that ground, to be plowed as a fieUl ' ; it is ^ city to which the Lords voice crietk • ; whose rich men are full of violence p ; it is the daughter of Zum^, which is to^o forth out of the city and go to Babylon. Especially, they , are the heads and princes of the people ^, whom he upbraids tor perversion of justice and for oppression. Even the good kings of Judah seem to have been powerless to re- strain the general corruption.
Micah, according to the title which he prefixed to his prophecy, was called to the prophetic office somewhat later than Isaiah, iiis ministry began later, and ended earlier. For Uzziah, in whose reign Isaiah began to prophesv, was dead before Micah was called to his office ; and Micah probably wajs called away early in the reign of Ilezekiah, where- as some of the chief public acts of Isaiah's ministry fell in the I7th and 18th years of the reign of Ilezekiah. Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, had doubtless been withdrawn to their rest. Hosea alone, in "grey-haired might,*' was still protesting in vain against the deepening corruptions of Israel.
The contents of Micah's prophecy and his relation to Isaiah agree with the inscription. His prophecv has indications of the times of Jotham, perhaps also of those of Ahaz ; one signal ^rophecy^ we know historically, was uttered in the reign of Hezekiah.
It is now owned, well nigh on all hands, that the great prophecy, three verses of which Isaiah prefixed to his 2d chapter, was originally delivered by Micah. But it ap- pears from the context in Isaiah, that he de- livered the prophecy in that 2d chapter, in the reign of Jotham. Other language of Micah also belongs to that same reign. No one now thinks that Micah adopted that great prophecy from Isaiah. The prophecy, as it stands in Micah, is in close connection with what precedes it. He had said *', the mountain of the Jiouse shall be oa the high places of the forest ; he subjoins instantly God s re- versal of that sentence, in the loiter days, *And in the Uist days it shall be that the moun- tain of the house of the Lord shall be established on the top of the mouTUainSf and peoples shall
p vi. 12. 4 iii. 11 ; jadges and priests, vii. 3.
' iii. lU ; bloodshed alno, Tii. 2. • ii. 8. * ii. 9. ■ii. 2. »vi. 10, 11. yii.3. • iii, 12,
• vi, 9. * iv. 10. • Iii. 1, 0, 11, vi. 12, vii. 3,
*UL12. •Iv.l, fiy.2.
flow unto iL He had said, Zion shall be plowed as a fieldy and Jerusalem shall become neaps ; he adds forthwith, in reversal of this ^, the law shall go forth from Zion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem, The two sentences are joined as closely as th^ can be ; Zion shall be plowed as ajieldj and Jerusalem shall become heapsy and the mountain of the house shall become high places of a forest; and it shall be, in the last days, the m/mntain of the house of the Lord shall be (abidingly) ' establislied on the top of the mountains. Every reader would understand, that the elevation intended, was spiritual, not physical. They could not fail to under- stand the metaphor; or imagine that the Mount Zion, on part of which, (Mount Mo- riah,) the house of the Lord stood, should be physically placed on other hills. But the contrast is marked. The promise is the se- quel of the woe ; the abiding condition is the reversal of the sentence of its desolation. Even the words allude, the one to the other \
In Isaiah, there is no such connection. After the first chapter and its summary of rebuke, warning, threatening, and final weal or woe resting on each class, Isaiah, in his second chapter, begins his prophecy anew with a fresii title ^ ; The wora that Isaiah the son of Amos saw concerning Judah and Jerusa' km; and to this he prefixes three verses from Micah's prophecy. He separates it in a marked way from the preceding summary, and yet connects it with some other prophecy by the word, AiuiK He himself marks tliat it is not in its original place here. So then, in the prophet Micah, the close connection with the foregoing marks that it is in its original place; Isaiah marked purposely that in his prophecy it is not.
But Isaiah's prophecy belongs to a time of prosperity ; such as Judah had not, after the reign of J otham. It was a time of great war- like strength, dififused through the whole land. The land was full \ without end, of gold, silver, chariots, horses, of lofty Icoks and haughtiness. The images which follow ^ are shadows of the Day of Judgment, and extend beyond Judah : but the sins rebuked are the sins of strengtli and might, self-con- fidence, oppression, maniibld female luxury and bravery ™. Isaiah prophesies that God would take away their strength". Then they still had it. Judah trusted not at that time in God nor in foreign alliances, but in self. Yet, from the time of Ahaz, trust in foreign help infected them to the end. Even Ile/.ekiah, when he received the messengers of Merodach-baladan **, fell into the snare; and Josiah probably lost his life, as a vassal
f It is not *:^y but p^3-^''^^
b The TWrV n'b in Iv. l. to the n'3n in iii. 12; the n'TV H'nn. Henget Jii. 1. Jii.2. kis. iL7,ll. » 12-21.
- Ui. 16, 23. • iii. 1-a. •Is. xxzix.
8
INTRODUCTION TO
of Assyria p. This union of inherent strength and unooncemedness about foreign aid is an adequate test of days anterior to Ahaz.
But since Isaiah prefixed to a prophecy in the days of Jothani this great prophecy of Micah, then Micah's prophecy must have been already current. To those same days of strength it belongs, that Miciih oould prophesy as a gift, the cutting of!''* of horf<e8 and chariot% the destruction of cities and stronq towerSf all, in which Judah trusted instead of God. The prophecy is a counterpart of Isaiah's. Isaiah prophesied a day of Judg- ment, in which all these things should be re- moved ; Micah foretold that their removal should be a mercy to those w^ho trust in Christ.
On the other hand, the utter dislocation of society, the bursting of all the most sacred bands which bind man to man together, de- scribed in his last chapter', perhaps belong most to the miserable decay in the reign of Ahaz. The idolatry spoken of also belongs probably to the time of Ahaz. In Jotham's time ', die people sacrificed and burned incense still in the nigh places ; yet, under a king so highly praised \ these are not likely to have been in Jerusalem. But Micah, in the very head of his prophecy, speaks of Jerusalem " as the centre of the idohitries of Judah. The allusion also to child-sacrifioes belongs to the time of Ahaz, who sacrificed sons of his own \ and whose sacrifice others probably imitated. The mention of the special idolatry of the time, y the staiiUes of Onri are kepty and all the works of the house of Ahab, belong to the same reign, it being recorded of Ahaz especially ■, he xoalked in the ways of the kings of Israel and made also molten images for Baalim; the special sin of the house of Ahab. That char- acter too which he describes, that, amid all that idolatiy, practical irreligion, and wick- edness, they leant upon the Lordj and said. Is not the Lord among tis f none evil <XLn come upon us^; was just the character of Ahaz. Not until the end of his reign was he so embit- tered by God's chastisements, that he closed His temple ^ Up to that time, even after he had copied the brazen altar at Damascus, he still kept up a divided allegiance to God. Urijah, the hij^h Priest, at the king's com- mand, offered the sacrifices for the king and the people, while Ahaz used the brazen alinr^ to enquire by ". This was just the half-service whicn God by Micah rejects. It is the old history of man's half-service, faith without love, which provides, that what it believes but loves not, should he done for it, and itself enacts what it prefers. Urijah was to offer the lawful sacrifices for the king and the people ; Ahaz was to obtain knowledge of the
P2 Kings xzffi. 29, 2 Chr. xxxv. 20-22. <Mic.v.lO,ll,U. » vii.fi, 6.
•2 Kings XV. X). « 2 Kings XV. 34, 2 Chr. xxvii. 2, 6. • i. 6.
future, such as he wished in his own way, a lying future, by Iving acts.
Micah renewed under Hezekiah the pro- phecy of the utter destruction of Jerusalem, which he had pronounced under Jotham. The prophets did not heed repeating them- selves. Eloquent as they were, they are the more eloquent because eloquence was not their object. Even our Lord, with Divine wisdom, and the more, probably, because lie had Divine wisdom, repeated in ilis teaching the same words. Those words sank the deeper, because often repeated. So Micah repeatetl doubtless oftentimes those words, which he first uttered in the days of Jotham ; Zion shall be plowed like afield and Jerusalem shall be- come heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high places of the forest. Often, during those perhaps thirty years, he repeated them in vain. At the last, thev wrought a great re- pentance, and delayeo, it may be for 136 years, the destruction which he was con- strained to foretell. Early in the davs of Je- hoiakim, about 120 years afterward, in the public assembly when Jeremiah was on trial for his life, the elders of the land said explic- itly, that the great conversion at the begin- ning of the reign of Hezekiah, nay, of that king himself,' was wrought by the teaching of Micah. * Then rose up, says Jeremiah, certain of the elders of the lana, and spake to all the aS" sembly of the people, saying, Micah the Moras- thite prophesied in the days of Ilezekinh king of Judah, saying, T%us saith the Lord of hotis, Zion shall be plough^ like a field, and Jerusalem shall become henps, and the mountain of the house, as the high places of the forest. Did Heze- kiah king of Judah, and all Judah-, put him at all to deatJi. f Did he not fear the Lord, and be- sought the Lord, and the Lord repented Him of the evil which He had pronounced against them f
It may have been that single prophecy which Micah so delivered ; some have thought that it was his whole book. Jere- miah, at God's command, at one time uttered single prophecies ; at another, the summary of all his prophecies. This only is certain, that the prophecy, whether these words alone or the Dook contiiining them, was de- livered to all Judah, and that God moved the people through them to repentance.
The words, as they occur in Jeremiah, are the same, and in the same order, as they stand in Micah. Only in Jeremiah the com- mon plural termination is substituted for the rarer and poetic form used by Micah ". The elders, then, who quoted them, probably knew them, not from tradition, but from the written book of the Prophet. But those elders speak of Micah, as exercising his pro- phetic office in the days of Hezekiah. They
« 2 Kings X vi. 3, 2 Chr. xxviii. 3. i vi. 16. ■2 Chr. xxviii. 2. • iii. 11, vl. 6.
^ 2 Chr. xxviii. 23-24 • 2 Kings xvi. 15.
« Jer. xxvi. 17-19. • D^'J? for r"J?.
MICAH.
do not say, he prophesied^ which might have been a single act; but he teas prophesying^ hayah nibbah^ a form of speaking which is onij used of an abiding, habitual, action. They say also, " lie was habitually prophesy- ing, and he said," i. e. n.s we should sav, '* in the course of his prophesying in the days of Hezekiah, he said." Still it was to aU the peopU of Judah that he said it. The elders say so, and lay stress upon it by repeating it. IHd Hezekiah king of Judah and au Judah put him at all to death f It must have been then on some of the great festivals^ when aU Judah was gathered together, that Micah so spake to them.
Probably, shortly afterward, in those first years of Hezekiah, Micah's office on earth closed. For, at the outset and in the sum- mary of his prophecy, not incidentally, he speaks of the destruction of Samaria, which took place in the 4th year of Hezekiah, as still to come ; and however practical or par- tial idolatry continued, such idolatry as he throughout describes, did not exist after the reformation by Hezekiah. This conversion, then, of the king and of some considerable part of Judah was probably the closing har- vest of his life, after a long seed-time of tears. So God allowed His servant to depart in neace. The reformation itself, at least in its fullness, took place after the kingdom of Samaria had come to an end, since Ilezekiah's messengers could, unhindered, invite all Israel to join in his great Passover. Probably, then, Alicah lived to see the first dawnings only of the first reformation which God wrought by his words.
At the commencement, then, of Hezekiah's reiffn he collected the substance of what God had taught by him, re-casting it, so to speak, and retaining of his spoken prophecy so much as God willed to remain for us. As it stands, It belongs to that early time of Heze- kiah's reign, in which the sins of Ahaz still lived on. Corruption of manners had been hereditary. In Jotham's reign too, it is said expressly, in contrast with himself, the people were stUl doing corrvptly. Idolatry had, under Ahaz, received a fanatic impulse from the king, who, at last, set himself to close the worship of God *. The strength of Jotham's reign was gone; the longing for its restora- tion led to the wrong and destructive policy, against which Isaiah had to contend. Of this Micah says, such should not be the strength of the future kingdom of God. Idolatry and oppression lived on ; against these, the inheritance of those former reigns, the sole residuum of Jotham's might or Ahaz' policy, the breach of the law of love of God and man, Micah concentrated his written prophecy.
'2 Chr. xxtII. 2. f lb. xxviii. 22-26, xxix. 7.
<« ch. iiUv. and vi. vil. i ii. 12. * iii. 1.
1 HengPt Ghri£t i. 477, 8. • See ab. p. 289. ■iv. 2,7,8. 'iv.!, 2.
This book also has remarkable symmetry. Each of its three divisions is a whole, begin- ning with upbraiding for sin, threatening God's judgments, and ending with promises of future mercy in Christ. The two later divisions begin again with that same charac- teristic, Hear ye^, with which Micah had opened the whole. The three divisions are also connected, as well by lesser references of the later to the former, as also by the advance of the prophecy. Judah could not be trusted now with any simple declaration of God's future mercy. They supposed themselves, impenitent as they were and with no pur- pose of repentance, to be the objects of God's care, and secure from evil. Unmixed prom- ise of good would but foment this irreligious apathy. Hence on the promises at the end of the first portion |, and their king shall pass before them and the Lord at the heaaofthemy he turns abruptly *, And I said, Hear, J pray vou, h it not for you to know judgment f I'he promise had been to Jacob and tlie remnant of Israel^, He renews his summons to the* heads of Jacob and the princes of the house of Israel. In like way, the last section, opening with that wonderful pleading of God with His people, follows upon that unbroken declaration of God's mercies, which itself issues out of the promised Birth at Bethle- hem.
There is also a sort of progress in the promises of the three parts*. In the first, it is of deliverance generally, in language taken from that first deliverance from E^'pt. The 2d is objective, the Birth of the Redeemer, the conversion of the Gentiles, the restora- tion cf the Jews, the establishment and nature of His kingdom. The third is mainly suljective, man's repentance, waiting upon God, and God's forgiveness of his sins.
Throughout, the metropolis is chiefly ad- dressed, as the main seat of present evil ^ and as the centre of the future blessings ; where the reign of the long-promised Ruler should be " ; whence tiie revelation of God should go forth to the heathen**; whither the scattered and dispersed people should be gathered p.
Throughout the prophecy also, Micah up- braids tlie same class of sins, wrong dealing of man to man, oppression of the poor by the rich °*. Throughout, their future captivity and dispersion are either predicted \ or as- sumed as the basis of the prediction of good *". Throughout, we see the contemporary of the prophet Isaiah. Beside that great predic- tion, which Isaiah inserted verbally from Micah, we see them, as it were, side by side, in that city of God's visitation and of His mercy, prophesying the same respite, the same place of captivity and deliverance from
Plv.Cs7, vii. 11,12.
q i. 11, 14-16. ii. 4, 5, 10, (utter abiding destruction of Jerusalem) iii. 12, iv. 10, v. 3. ' ii. 12, 13, iv. 6, 7, 10, vii. 11, 12, 16.
10
INTRODUCrriON TO
it, the same ulterior mercies in Christ. "■The more to establish the faith, God willed that Isaiah and Micah should speak together, as with one mouth, and use such agreement as might the more convict all rebels." Assyria was then the monarchy of the world ; yet both prophets promise deliv- erance from it'; both foretell the captivity in the then subordinate Babylon " ; both, the deliverance from it ^. Both speak in the like way of the gathering together of God's peo- ple from lands 3^, to some of which they were not yet dispersed. Isaiah prophesied the Virgin-Birth of Immaniiel"j Micah, the Birth at Bethlehem of Him Whose goings forth have been of old^ from, everlasting *. Both speak in the like way of the reverence for tne Gentiles thereafter for her**, by reason of the presence of her God. Even, in out- ward manner, Micah, representing himself, as one yfhow&nl Tnoumin^and wailing^ stripped and naked% is a sort of forerunner of the symbolic acts of Isaiah^. Micah had this also common with Isaiah, that he has a pre- dominance of comfort. He is brief in up- braiding*, indignant in casting back tne pleas of the false prophets ', concise in his threatenings of woe ', save where he lingers mournfully over the desolation'*, large and ilowing in his descriptions of mercy to corned He sees and pronounces the coming punish- ment, as absolutely certain ; he does not call to repentance to avert it; he knows that ultimately it will not be averted ; he sees it irrespectively of time, and says that it will be. Time is an accident to the link of cause and efiect. Sin consummated would be thp cause; punishment, the eflfect. He spoke to those who knew that God pardoned on repentance, who had lately had oefore them that marvelous instance in Nineveh. He dashes to the ground their false security, by reason of their descent from Jacob *, of God's Presence among them in the Temple ^ ; the multitude of their offerincis amid the multi- tude of their sins™. He rejects in God's name, their false, outward, impenitent, peni- tence; and thereby the more implies that He would accept a true repentance. They knew this, and were, for a time, scared into i)enitence. But in his book, as God willed It to remain, he is rather the prophet of God's dealings, than the direct preacher of repentance to individuals. Yet he is the more an evangelic preacher, in that he speaks of repentance, only as the gift of God. He
• Carpz. In trod. p. 3G5. in HSv. ii. 864.
« Is. X. 24-34, xiv. 25, xxx. 31, xxxi. 8, 9, xzxrii. 6, 7, 21-36, Mic. V 6, 6. o Is. xxxix. 6, Mio. iv. 10. « Is. xlviii. 20, Mic. ib.
J Is. xi. 11 sqq. Mic. viL 12. ■ ylL 14.
•y. 2Eng. (I Heb.)
• Is. xlix. 23, Mic. vii. 17. HSv. ib.
• i. 8. see note. * Is. xx. 2, 3.
• L 6, li. 1, 2, »-ll. t ii. 7, 11, iii. 5-7.
does not ignore that man myst accept the £p*ace of Grod ; but, as Isaiah foretells of the days of the Gospel, tite idols He shall utterly abolish^j so Micah first foretells that God would abolish all wherein man relied out of God, all wherein he prided himself**, every form of idolatry p, and subsequently describe the future evangelic repentance, submission to, and waiting upon Ghxl and His righteous- ness *> ; and God's free plenary forgiveness *".
Micah's rapid unprepared transitions from each of his main themes to another, from upbraiding to threatening, from threatening to mercy and then back again to upbraiding, is probably a part of that same vivid percep- tion of the connection of sin, chastisement, forgiveness, in the will and mind of Grod. He sees them and speaks of them in the natural sequence in which they were exhibited to him. He connects most commonly the sin with the punishment by the one word, therefore ■, because it was an object with him to shew the connection. The mercies to come he subjoins either suddenly without any conjunction *, or with the simple and. An English reader loses some of the ibrce of this simplicity by the paraphrase, which, for the simple copula, substitutes the inference or contrast, thereforey then^ but, notwitltstajfiding ", which lie in the subjects themselves. An English reader might have been puzzled, at first sight, by the monotonous simplicity of the, anc?, and^ joining together the mention of events, which stand, either as the contrast or the conse-
3iuence of those which precede them. The i^nglish version accordingly has consulted for the reader or hearer, by drawing out for him the contrast or consequence wTiich lay be- neath the surface. But this gain of clearness involved givii^ up so far the majestic sim- plicity of the Prophet, who at times speaks of things as they lay in the Divine Mind, and as, one by one, they would be unfolded to man, without explaining the relation in which they stood to one another. Micah knew that sufferings were, in God^s purpose, travail- pains. And BO, immediately after the de- nunciation of punishment, he adds so calmly, ^'^ATid in the last days it shall be; " " And thou, Bethlehem Ephratah." Or in the midst of his descriptions of mercies, he speaks of the intervening troubles, as the way to them. Now^ why dost thou cry aloud f — pan^s have taken Mee, as a tooman in travail — be in pain — thou shall go even unto Babylon; there shall thou be delivered: or, ^Therefore wiU He
f ii. 3, 10, iii. 4, 12, vi. 13-16, vii. 4, 13.
^ i. 10-16, li. 4, 6. t iv., v., vii. 7-20. » ii. 7.
1 iii. 11. »vi.6,7. nl8.ii. 18. • v. 9,10.
P V. 11-13. <i vii. 8, 9. » lb. 18, 19.
• Not I. 6, vi. 13. but L 14, li. 3, 6, iii. 6, 12.
« ii. 12, iv. 13.
« Therefore, i. 6, vi. 13, vii. 7 : then, iii. 7, vii. W ; but^ iii. 8, iv. 1, 4, 12, V. 2, vi. 16; /or, iv. 6; notunthstand- iw/, vii. 13. « iv. 1, V. 2 (1 Heb.), add vii. 7.
1riv.9. -v. 3. [2 Heb.]
MICAH.
11
aioe thee up until the timey dtc. i. e. because He has these good things in store for thee, He viU give thee up, tntiil the time comes.
With this great simplicity Micah unites ffreat vividness and energy. TIius in pre- dicting jpnnishment, he uses the form of com- mand, bidding them, as it were, execute it on themselves*; Arise, depart : us, in the Great Day, our Lord shall say, Depart, ye cursed. And since God does in us or by us what He commands to be done, he uses the imperative to Zion, alike as to her victories over God's enemies ^ or her state of anxious fear ^
To that same vividness belong his rapid chan^ of person or gender; nis sudden questions*^; his unmarked dialogues. The changes of person and gender occur in all Hebrew poetiy; all have their emphasis. He addresses the people or place as a whole (/em.), then all the individuals in her® ; or turns away and speaks of it ^j or contrariwise, having spoken of the whole in the third per- son, he turns round and drives the warning home to individuals*^. The variations in the last verse of ch. vi. are unexampled for rapidity even in Hebrew.
And yet the flow of his words is smooth and measured. Without departing from the conciseness of Hebrew poetry, his cadence, for the most part, is of the more prolonged sort, as far as any can be called prolonged, when all is so concise. In some 8 verses, out of 104, he is markedly brief, where conciseness corres- ponds with his subject, as in an abrupt ap- peal as to their sins ^, or an energetic an- nouncement of judgment* or of mercy*, or in that remarkable prophecy of both *, how God would, in mercy, cut off' all grounds of human trust Else, whereas in Nahum and Habakkuk, not quite J, and in the eleven last Chapters of Hosea much less than i, of
• ii. 10, ndd i. 11, L% iv. 10. » iv. 13.
• T.l. (iv. 14Heb.)
« L 6, ii. 7, iii. 1, iv. 9, tL 3, 6, 10, 11, viL 18.
• i. 11. twice.
»i. 2. twice ; in i. 13. he returns to the 2d pers.
t ii. 3. ^ iii. 10 (5 words), vi. 11 (6 words).
I V. 8, and vii. 13, (7 words).
k vii. 11 (7 words), vii. 15 (6 words).
1 V. 13 Heb. (5 words), y. 10 (6 words), v. 11 (7 words).
• Out of the 157 verses in Hosea's 11 last chapters, 111 contain fewer than 14 words each, 46 only 14 words or upwards; out of 4r,, of which the book of Nahum consists (oxcludine the title) 14 only have more than 13 words ; out or 65 of Habakkuk, 17 only have more than 13.
« In Micah, 4« out of 104; in Joel, 30 out of 72 ; in Obftdiah, lo out of SJl.
•There is less difference between a verse of 14 words, distributed 43, 43 and one of 11, distributed 32. 42, than in a verse whose 10 words were dis- tributed 32,32 or 323,2L
p The followine summary of these lesser divisions, which are mostly markea by the Hebrew accents, may perhaps give some little idea of the rhythm. Only the degree of subdivision must often be a matter of opinion or taste or ear. Thus, of 5 words which grammatically belong together, one might think that the cadence separated them into 3 and 2; another might take them altogether. But this is A matter of detail only; the principle is unmis-
the verses contain more than 13. words ™, in Micah above f (as, in Joel, nearly f ) exceed that number °. The verses are also distri- buted in that ever-varying cadence, whereby, in Hebrew poetry, portions of their short sentences being grouped together, the har- mony of the whole is produced by the varied dispositions of these lesser groups of 2, 3, 4, ana but rarely 5 words; scarcely any two verses exactly corresponding, but all being united by the blending of similar cadences. In Mican, as in all Hebrew poetiy, the com- bination of 3 words is the most frequent, and this, sometimes by itself, sometimes in union with the number 4, making the sacred num- ber 7 ; or, with 2, making a number which we find in the taoemacle, but which dwells more in the hearts' of the disciples of the Crucified. The same exact rhythm seldom recurs, and that, naturally, chlefiy in the shorter verses, the longer admitting or re- quiring more combinations. Wherever also tnere is more than one pause in the verse, a further and very considerable variety of rhythm may be produced, even when the sev- eral clauses of two verses contain the same number of words in the same order. The diflTerenoe of cadence is far more influenced by the place, where the verse is divided, than by the exact number of words contained in it. The rhetorical force of the distribution of the words into the several clauses depends mainly upon the place of the Athnach or semi- colon °. Tne same exact rhythm, (in which both the same number of words occur in the verse, and the verse is divided in the same place) recurs only seven times in Micah, in verses capable of a variation. The other four cases of repetition occur in short verses which have one division only p according to the place where the main division of the verse falls.
takablo. Again, words which have been artificially Joined together in Hebrew by the Makkeph, I have considered as 2 words, if each had a distinct idea. Thus PK, when the mere sign of the object, I have not counted ; when it is the preposition, •* with," I have counted it. In the following list, the verses are ranged according to the number of the words contained in each verse, beginning with the high- est. The numbers on the right hand indicate the lesser divisions into which each verse may be dis- tributed. The comma in each set of numbers marks the place of the Athnach or semicolon. The Roman numerals indicate how often any cadence is repeated.
NuMBEB OF Words in Each Lesssb Divisiok. Fbnte. 24 333422,43 432,3264 22 46,534 14333,44 21 221,423232 4433,34 20 23333,33 333,3134 ^333,44 4333,322 1» 344,44 34,2253 32,4424 18 43,3233 342,423 3232,44 17 444,32 3433,22 3,4343 2223,832 16 222,433 3433,3 .33,4222 44,44 16 32,325 31)33,3 432,33 43,233 43,323 (ii) 134,133
43^332 3223,32 14 33,53 (ii) 34,34 23122,22 43,43 432,32 333,23
.33,323 4.3,52 332,33 13,334 43,34 22,3313
2222,33 2222,51
12
INTRODUCTION TO
His description of the destruction of the cities or villages of Jiidah corresponds in vividness to Isaiah's ideal march of h^cnna- cherib**. The flame of war spreads from place to place ; bat Micah relieves the same- ness of the description of misery by every variety which language allows. He speaks of them in his own person *", or to them ; he describes the calamity in jjast ■ or in future '. or by use of the imperative \ The verbal allusions are crowded together in a way un- exampled elsewhere. Modems have spoken of them, as not after their taste, or have apologized for them. The mighty Prophet, who wrought a repentance greater than his great contemporary Isaiah, knew well what would impress the people to whom he spoke. The Hebrew names had definite meanings.
13 12 11
10
0 8 7 6 5
43^3 3,442 332^2 1322,5 222,322 432,4 43,33
322,42 32,322 422,22 143,22 224,4 23,34 63,22 24,24
43,23 32,33 42,32 (ii) 33^12 23,33 (ii) 24,32 33,23 (if)
4322 22,43 32,42 5,5 33,4 32,32 (ii) 323,2 32,23 (il) 22,33 2222,2
43,3 43,2 4,32 3,33 42,3 22,32 33,3 132,2 33,2 4,3 (Ii) 3, 4 (ii) 3,22 3,3 (ii) 22,2 3,2 (ii)
To facilitate comparison, I flubjoin a like analysis of the other prophets mentionea.
HOSEA.
Eleven last chapters.
22 422253,4 3214,54
21 4433,34 5,242224
20 32,3.'»24 3333,44
19 43^i;i,32 34*23,:i4
18 4,4«4 332,2:W2 2232,423 44,3223
17 43,:»'22 33.32,33 23,43*23 3223,223 333,323 8223,43
3442,4 16 2323,24 32,34*22 233,3*23 21214,24 3223,33 3232,33
33,253 42,4.33 15 344,4 2:i'23,23 3332,4 (ii) 223,242 a33,33 14 43,43 44,33 5,432 41,42 43,232 324,32 422,42 .33,2222 33,44 3224,3 33,63 4,442 32,333 14,- 33;J 33,4,3 (iii) 34,42 43,33 (ii) 4,333 4,54 34,33 323.32
22:i,:« 22,234 :}3,34 4,44 4:32,21 :»,3;i (ii) 222,222 32,34 42,42 222,33
223,32 43,1-22 43,23 43,32 32,43 24,32 3*2:1,3 32,.33 233,12 :j:i,*2:i 42,23 132,14 32,-
42 3"2,:W XL32 4,4;< •23,'222 43,3 (ii) ri.3,4(ii) 3,34 3232 (ii) 44,2 24,4 222,22
4,:j.3 3:4,22 322,3 5,13 25,2 3,33 (ii) :«,3(iii) 232,2 2,322 32,22 (ii) 32,4 '22,*23 •2*2,32 (Ii) 4,:V2 i;V32 2,34 6,4 24,3 32,3(11) 23,3 (iv) 22*22 224 (ii) 13,3 (iii) 4,3 (lii) 3,4 (ii) 2,23 22,3 2,32 23,2 31,3 33,1 14,2
13 12 11 10 9
8
7
6 5
25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15
4,2 (ii) 3,3 [Hi) 13,2 (ii) 3,i(\r
(vii) 2111 113
Joel. a34,3534 322,144332 3544,2-23 4*23,4423 54-22,422 3335,43 16,4i£n3 34,3433 2*24,413
22,44:» 33,435
3332,42 245,33 863,33 1422,35 334,42 2242,6 44,44
22*23:),3 2432,22 22222,32 344,4 23,2323 333, 33 34,35
We can well imagine how, as name after name passed from the Prophet*s mouth, con- nected with -some note of woe, all around awaited anxiouslv, to know upon what place the fire of the t*rophet's word would next fall ; and as at last it had fallen upon little and mighty round about Jerusalem, the names of the places would ring in their ears as heralds of the coming woe ; they would be like so many monuments, inscribed before- hand with the titles of departed greatness, reminding Jerusalem itself of its portion of the prophecy, that * evil should conie from the Lord unto the gate of Jerusalem,
Wonderful must have been his lightning- flash of indignation, as, when the false pro- phet or the people had forbidden God's word to be spoken, ne burst upon them, ^ TAou,
|
14 |
63,33 334,4 36,23 1432,4 3332,3 |
|
13 |
34,33 3,55 33,:)4 |
|
12 |
44,4 34,23 22*22,4 5,34 24,33 43,32 32,223 |
|
11 |
2'2,:i22(ii) 2-23,*22 •2-222,3(ii) 32,33 3,224 32,42 |
|
2*22,5 4,331 44,3 223,22 2222,3 |
|
|
10 |
32,32 2*22,*22 22,42 231,4 |
|
9 |
3*2,22 (iii) 2,43 5,22 |
|
8 |
3,2:i 22,22 4,22 |
|
7 |
133 3,4 (ii) 3,22 22y3 |
|
6 |
3,3 (iv) |
|
Obadiah. |
|
|
21 |
4333,323 |
|
19 |
432:^,43 |
|
18 |
3:^32,133 34,344 4252,32 |
|
17 |
4242,32 |
|
16 |
5434 32422,3 |
|
15 |
3:m,23 |
|
14 |
43,43 |
|
13 |
332,23 42,34 4232,2 |
|
12 |
3.->,22 |
|
11 |
3*2,:i3 42,32 |
|
10 |
4;i,3 |
|
9 |
3,33 |
|
7 |
4,3 32,2 |
|
6 |
32 |
|
Nahum. |
|
|
21 |
32232,72 |
|
19 |
2333.:k3 3233,44 |
|
18 |
32,:«7 |
|
16 |
34,-2;i*22 23,42131 |
|
15 |
32:i,43 33,r>22 2*2222,32 14123,4 |
|
14 |
44,;« (ii) 3'2221,13 3,2234 234,32 |
|
13 |
42,223 3:i;i2,2 3*23,32 |
|
12 |
33;i3 32,34 322;J2 (ii) 414,3 42,2*22 22->,2*22 |
|
11 |
43,4 3'2,*222 2*2,:U3 42,32 23,24 322,22 |
|
10 |
42,13 1*2,223 3,*2*23 32,32 |
|
9 |
3*A22 (ii) 23,22 |
|
8 |
23,3 (ii) 24,2 2-2,22 |
|
7 |
2*2,21 |
|
6 |
13,2 31,2 |
|
6 |
3.'-^ |
24 20 19 18 17 16
14 13 12 11 10
9
8
7
6
« Ib. X ■9,10, «i. 12.
I
I
Habakkxtk. 44,4444 4334.33 a33,l423 43,254 3332,43 45;« 4*22,2'2:V2 54,44 333V53 34,44 332,322 33,234 34,233 43,44 13143,3 3333,3
333,42 43,3*22 :tJ2,33 33,44 32,4*22 33,4:3 -^3,44 3*23,'22 (ii) 33,:« (ii) 2-2'2;B2 3*2,42 32,:» 322,4 42,14 3'2*2,3 3y31 4^3 33,3 (ii) 4,5 24,3 42,3 23,4 311,3 22,4 3,32 3,4 (ii) 4,3 (Ii) 3,3 [iv]
. 28-32. r 1. 8, 10. see note.
11,12. «8. •11,13,16.
711.7.
MICABL
13
eoMed houue of Jacob, shortejied is God's Spirit f Orihate His doin^f And then follow the plaintive descriptions of the wrongs done to the poor, the pejiceful ■, the mothers of his people and their little ones. And then again the instantaneous dismissal \ Arise and dsparU But, therewith, wonderful also is his tenderness. Burning as are his denuncia- tions against the oppressions of the rich \ (words less vehement will not pierce hearts of stone) there is an under-current of tender- ness. Ills rebukes evince not indignation only against sin, but a tender sympathy with the sufferers. ® He is afflicted in the afflic- tions which he has to denounce. He yearns for his people * ; nay, until our Lord's Com- ing, there is scarcely an expression of such yearning longing : he hungers and thirsts for their good ®.
God's individual care of His people, and of each soul in it, had, since David s time ^ and even since Jacob ', been likened to the care of the shepherd for each single sheep. The Psalm of Asaph ^ must have familiar- ised the people to the image, as relating to themselves as a whole, and David's deep Ftolm had united it with (iod's tender care of His own in, and over, death. Yet the predomi- nance of this image in Micah is a part of the tenderness of the Prophet. He adopts it, as expressing, more than any other natural imase, the helplessness of the creature, the tender individual care of the Creator. He forestalls our Lord's words, I am the qood- shepherdy in his description of the Messiah, gathering M€ remnant of farad together, as the sheep of Bozrah * ; His people are as a flock, Uxme anddespised^ whom God would assem- ble ; His royal seat, the tower of theftock^ ; the Buler of Israel should stand unresting, and feed them ™ ; those whom He should employ against the enemies of His people, are shep- Mrds "*, under Him, the true shepherd. He sums up his prayer for his people to Grod as their Shepherd •» ; Feed Thy people with Thy rod, thefhek of Thine heritage.
Directly, he was a Prophet for Judah only. At the beginning of his book, he condemns the idolatries of both capitals, as the central sin of the two kingdoms. The destniction of Samaria he pronounces at once, as future, absolutely certain, abiding i*. There he leaves her, declares her vxmnd incurable, and passes forthwith to Judah, to whom, he says, that wound should pass, whom that same enemy should reach <>. Thereafter, he men- tions incidentally the infection of Israel's sin
.8,9. "lo.
»► H.* 1, 2, ill. 1-8, 9-11, vi 10-12, vii. 2, 3.
• L 8, 9, H. 1, 2, vii. 6, 6. * i. 8-10, 16, iv. 9, 10.
• ▼iL'l.' 'Pb. xxili. «Gen. xlix.24.
h P8. Ixxir. 1, IxxTiii. 52, Ixxix. 13, Ixxx. 1. i if. 12. k iv. 6. » lb. 8. ■ v. 4. [Eng. 3 Heb.l ■ Ib.6.[4Heb.] -" ^'
»L6^7. 4L9. 'L13.
ovii. li • 1.6.
Spreading to Judah '. Else, after that first sentence on Samaria, the names of Jacob (which he had given to the ten tribes') and Israel are appropriated to the kingdom of Judah ^ : Judah is mentioned no more, only her capital " ; even her kin^ are called the kings of Israel *. The ten tribes are only in- cluded in the general restoration of the whole y. The luture remnant of the two tribes, to be restored after the captivity of Babylon, are called by themselves the rem- nant of Jacob « : the Messiah to be bom at Bethlehem is foretold as the ruler in Israel*: the ten tribes are caUed the remnant of His brethren, who were to return to the children of Israel **, i. e. Judah.
This the more illustrates the genuineness of the inscription. A later hand would have been unlikely to have mentioned either Sa- maria or those earlier kings of Judah. £ach part of the title corresponds to something in the prophecy ; the name JlfwaA is alluded to at its close ; his birthplace, the Morasthite, at its beginning ; the indications of those earlier reigns lie there, although not on its surface °. The mention of the two capitals, followed by the immediate sentence on Samaria, and then by the fuller expansion of the sins and pun- ishment of Jerusalem, culminating in its sentence*, in Micah, corresponds to tiie brief mention of the punishment of Judah in Amos the Prophet of Israel, and then the fuller expansion of the sins and punishments of Israel. Further, the capitals, as the foun- tains of idolatry, are the primary object of God's displeasure. They are both specially denounced in the course of the prophecnr; their special overthrow is foretold •. The title corresponds with the contents of th^ prophecy, yet the objections of modem critics shew that the correspondence does not lie on the surface.
The taunt of the false priest Amaziah ' to Amos may in itself suggest that prophets at Jerusalem did prophesy against Samaria. Amaziah, anyhow, thought it natural that they should. Both Isaiah and Micah, while exercising their oflice at Jerusalem, had re- gard also to Samaria. Divided as Israel and Judah were, Israel was not yet cut off. Is- rael and Judah were still, together, the one people of God. The prophets in each had a care for the other.
Micah joins himself on to the men of God before him, as Isaiah at the time, and Jere- miah, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Ezekiel, sub- sequently, employed words or thoughts of
* Jacob, li. 7, iii. 1, 8, 9; l8rael, 1. 14, 16, iil. 1, 8, 9, v. 1, 3, vi. 2.
" See ab. p. 6. « L 14.
7 Jacob, all of thee. ii. 12 ; the remnant of Israel, ib. ■ V. 7, 8, [8, 9 Heb.] • v. 2. (1 Heb.)
« Ib. 3. (2 Heb.) • See ab. p. &
* iii. 12.
* i. 6, 9, 12, iil. 10-12, iv. 10. 'See vol. i. p. 321.
14
MICAH.
Micah '. Micah alludes to the history, the laws, the promises, the threatenings of the Penta- teuch ; and that in such wise, that it is plain that he had, not traditional laws or traditional history, but the Pentateuch itself before him \ Nor were those books before himself only. His book implies not an acquaintance only, but a familiar acquaintance with it on the part of the people. Tlie title, the land of Mmrod ^ iJ^e house of bondage ^, for Egypt, the allusions to the miraculous deliverance from Egypt ', the history of Balaam ; the whole summary of the mercies of God from the Exodus to Gilgal", the faithfulness pledged to Abra- ham and Jacob '', would be unintelligible without the knowledge of the Pentateuch. Even single expressions are taken from ^ the Pentateuch •. Especially, the whole sixth chapter is grounded upon it. Thence is the appeal to inanimate nature to hear the con- troversy; thence the mercies alleged on God's part ; the offerings on man's part to atone to God (except the one dreadful super- stition of Ahaz) are from the law; the an- swer on God's part is almost verbally from the law; the sins upbraided are sins forbid- den in the law ; the penalties pronounced are also those of the law. There are two allu- sions also to the history of Joshua i*, to Da- vid's ele^ over Saul and Jonathan ^. and, as before said, to tlie history of Micaian son of Imlah in the book of Kings. Single expres- sions are also taken from the Psalms ' and the Proverbs '. In the descriptions of the peace of the kingdom ot Christ ^ he appears purposely to have reversed God's description of the animosity of the nations against God's people °. He has also two characteristic ex- pressions of Amos. Perhaps, in the image of the darkness which should come on the false prophets ^, he applied anew the image
(See Caspftri Micha, 448-465.
k See At length, in Caspar!, pp. 420-7, and below on the places. * t. 6, (5 Heb.) from Gen. x. 8-12.
kvi. 4, comp. Deut. vii. 8, xiii. 6, Ex. xiii. 3, 14, XX. 2. Else only in Josh. zxiv. 17, and Jadg. vi. 8, also from the Pent. Gasp.
1 See on ii. 13, vl. 4, vil. 15. ■ See on tL 4, 5.
> See on vii. 30.
•As nhj; ii. 13, nSj;n yi 4, ^jdS nSer ib. ^jjbt •naS vii. i4» pK 'hr\} vii. n casp.
of Amo6y adding the ideas of spiritual dark- ness and perplexity to that of calamity.
The lignt and shadows of the prophetic life fell deeply on the soul of Micali. The cap- tivity of Judah too had been foretold before him. Moses had foretold the end from the beginning, had set before them the captivity and the dispersion, as a punishment which the sins of the people would certainly bring upon them. Hosea presupposed it 7; Amos foretold that Jerusalem, like the cities of its heathen enemies, should be burned with fire '. Micah haa to declare its lasting deso- lation*. Even when God wrought repent- ance through him, he knew that it was but for a time ; for he foresaw and foretold that the deliverance would be, not in Jerusa- lem, but at Babylon ^, in captivity. His pro- phecy sank 80 deep, that, above a century afterward, just when it was about to have its fulfillment, it was the prophecy which was remembered. But the sufferings of time disappeared in the light of eternal truth. Above seven centuries rolled by, and Micah re-appears as the herald, not now of sorrow but of salvation. Wise men from afar, in the nobility of their simple belief asked, Where is he thai is bom King of the Jews f A king, jealous for his temporal empire, gath- ered all those learned in Holy Scripture, and echoed the question. The answer was given, unhesitatingly, as a well-known truth of God, in the words of Micah. For thus it is loritten in the Prophet, Glorious peerage of the two contemporary prophets of Judah. Ere Jesus was born, the Angel announced the birth of the Virgin's Son, Goa with us, in the words of Isaiah. When He was bom. He was ^inted out as the Object of worship to the first converts from the heathen, on the au- thority of God, through Micah.
pSee on if. 4, vi. 5. < 1. 10.
» Caap. 42&-30; see on ii. 1, iil. 2, 3, tIL 2, 7, 8, 10. > Casp. 430-2; see on vi. 9, 11.
» Iv. 3, Joel iii. 10.
• K'n nj;n n;; o ii. 2, Am. v. 13, and e^^on ii. 6,
11, Am. Tii. 16. Casp. 443.
* Mlc. iii. 6, Am. viii. 9.
7 See on Hos. vi. 11. vol. L pp. 09, 70. ■ ii. 5.
• iii. 12. kiy.lO.
MICAH.
Before CHRIST cir. 758-726.
» Jer. 26. 18.
CHAPTER I.
1 Mieah sheweth the wrath of Ood against Jacob for tdoUi' try. 10 He exhorteth to mourning.
THE word of the Lord
that came to *Micah
the Morasthite in the days
of Jotham, Ahaz, and
Chap. I. Veb. 1. The vxtrd of the Lord that came to Mieah — which he saw. No two of the prophets authenticate their prophecy in exactly the same way. They, one and all, have the same simple statement to make, that this which they sav is from God, ana throuah them. A later hand, had it added the titles, would have formed all upon one model. The title was an essential part of the prophetic hook, as indicating to the people afterward, that it was not written after the event. It was a witness, not to the prophet whose name it bears, but to God. Tne pro- phet bare witness to God, that what he de- livered came from Him. The event bare witness to the prophet, that he said this truly, in that he Knew what God alone could know, — ^futurity. Mieah blends in one the fiicts, that he related in words given him by God, what he had seen spread before him in prophetic vision. His prophecy was, in one, the teord of the Lord which came to him, and a sight which he saw.
Aiicah omits all mention of his father. His great predecessor was known as Micaiah son of Imiah. Mieah, a villager, would be known only by the name of his native village. So Nahum names himself the ElkoshUe ; Jonah is related to be a native of Oath-h^her ; Eli- jah, the TLshbite, a sojourner in the despised Gilead ^ ; Elisha, of Abelmeholah ; Jeremiah, of Anathoth ; forerunners of Him, and tau^bt by His Spirit Who willed to be bom at Bethlehem, and, since this, although too liule to he counted among the thousands of Jvdah, was yet a royal city and was to be the birth- place of the Christ, w^as known onlv as Jesus of Nazareihy the Nazarene. No propnet speaks of himself, or is spoken of, as bom at Jeru- salem, the holy city. They speak of themselves with titles of lowliness, not of greatness.
1 1 Kgs xTii. 1.
s In the two pansages quoted for the contrary, Jer. TiiL 16, Ezek. xii. 19, the context shews that V"1K
Is and can only be, land, not, earth, Jer. The snort' vng of his horses is heard from Dan, and they came and deooured the land and the fullness thereof; where the iemd to which they came could plainly be Judea
Hezekiah, kings of Judah, ^ which he saw conceming Samaria and Jerusalem.
2 t Hear, all ye people; •hearken, O earth, and fall that therein is; and let the Lord God * be wit- ness against you, the Lord from ' his holy temple.
Before CHRIST cir. 758-726.
*Amos 1.1. tHeb. Hear, ye
people, aU of
them. e Deut. 32. 1.
Is. 1. 2. t Heb. thefullr
ness thereof. * Ps. 60. 7.
Mai. 3. 6. oPs. 11.4.
Jonah 2. 7.
Hab. 2. 20.
Mieah dates his prophetic office from kings of Judah only, as the only kings of the line appointed by God. Kings of Israel are mentioned in addition, only by prophets of Israel. He names Samaria first, because, its iniquity being most nearly full, its punish- ment was the nearest.
2. Hear, all ye people^ lit Aeaf, ye peoples, all of them Some 140, or 150 years had flowed by, since Micaiah, son of Imlah, had closed his prophecy in these words. And now they bursl out anew. From age to age the word of God holds its course, ever receiving new fulfillments, never dying out, until the end shall come. The signal fulfillment of the pro- phecy, to which the lormer Micaiah had called attention in these words, was an earnest of the fulfillment of this present message of God.
Hearken, 0 earth, and aU that therein is. The peoples or nations are never Judah and Israel onfy : the earth and the fullness thereof is the well-known title of the whole earth ^ and all its inhabitants. Moses ', Asaph \ leaiah '^, call heaven and earth as witnesses against God's people. Jeremiah*, as Mieah here, summons the nations and the ear^A. Theoont^t between good and evil, sin and holiness, the kingdom of God and the kingdom of Satan, ever^Tiere, but most cliiefly where God's Presence is nearest, is a spectacle to the world, to angels and to men \ The nations are witnesses of God against His own people, so that these should not say, that it was for want of faithfulness or justice or power ®, but in His righteous judgment, that He cast off whom He had chosen. So shall the Day of Judgment revectZ His righteousness^. Hearken, 0 earth. The lifeless earth '^ trembles at the Presence of God, and so reproaches the dullness of man. By it he summons man to listen with great rever- ence to the Voice of Grod.
only. In Eseklel it is not even the land, but h«r land. Say unto tfie people of the lartd ; Thus saith the Lord Ood of the land of Israel,— that her land may be desolate from all the fullness thereof.
•Deuixxxii. 1. *P8. 1. 7. »1.2. •vl.l9.
T 1 Oor. iv. 9.
•Ex. xxxli. 12, Num. xiv. IR, Joeh. vii. 8, 9.
• Rom. ii 6. 10 Ps. exiy. 7, xcvii. 6.
15
16
MICAH.
CHRIST ^ ^^^' behold, 'the
cir. 758-726. LoRD comcth forth out of
'Is. 26. 21. i_« » 1 J "ii
IPs. 115.3. his * place, and will come
And lei the Lord Chd be witness against you. Not in words, but in deeds ye shall know, that I speak not of myself but God in me, when, what 1 declare. He shall by His Pres- ence fulfilL But the nations are appealed to, not merely because the judgments of God on Israel should be made known to them by the Prophets. He had not yet spoken of Israel or Judah, whereas he had spoken to the nations ; Aeor, ye peoples. It seems then most likely that here too he is speaking to them. Every judfraent is an earnest, a forerunner, a part, of the final judgment and an en sample of its principles. It is but " the last great link in the chain," which unites God's deal- ings in time with eternity. God's judgments on one imply a judgment on all. His judg- ments in time imply a Judgment beyond time. Each sinner feels in his own heart a response to God's visible judgments on another. Each sinful nation muy read its. own doom in the sentence on each other nation. God judges each according to liis own meas- ure of light and grace, accepted or refused. The Heathen shall be judged by the law writ- ten in their heart ^ ; the Jew, by the law of Moses and the light of the prophets ; Chris- tians, by the law of Christ. The word, Christ saith ', thai I have spoken, the same shall judge him at the last Day. God Himself foretold, that the heathen should know the ground of His judgments against His peopled AU nations shaU say, wherefore hath the Lord done thvs wnto this Uindf What Tneaneih the heat of this great anger f Then men shaU say, Because they have forsaken the covenant of the Lord God of their fathers which He made with them, when Me brought them forth out of the land of Egypt, &e. But in that the heathen knew why God so punished His people, they came 80 far to know the mind of God ; and God, Who at no time * left Himself without witness, bore fresh witness to them, and, so far us they neglected it, against them. A Jew, wherever he is seen throughout the world, is a witness to the world of God's judgments against sin.
" * Christ, the faithful Witness, shall wit- ness against those who do ill, for those who do ! well."
The Lord from His holy temple. Either that at Jerusalem, where God shewed and revealed Himself, or Heaven of which it was the image. As David says *, Tfie Lord is in His holy temple ; the Lord^s throne is in heaven ; and
1 Rom. ii. 12-15. s Beut. zxlx. 24, 5. •Ps. xi.4.
SS. John zii. 48. *Actflxlv. 17. »Dion. T Ps. xviii. 9.
down, and tread upon chr^jIt the *'high places of the c^r. 758-726.
^„ xt k Dent 32. 13.
earth. & 33. 29.
Amos 4. 13.
contrasts His dwelling in heaven and His coming down upon earth. ^ He bowed the heavens also and came down ; and Isaiah, in like words'*. Behold, the Lord cometh out of His pkLce to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity.
3. Fo}', behold, the Lord cometh forth, i. e. (as we now say,) is coming forth. Each day of judgment, and the last also, are ever drawing nigh, noiselessly as the nightfall, but unceas- ingly. Out of His PUux. "'God is hidden from us, except when He sheweth Himself by His Wisdom or Power of Justice or Grace, as Isaiah saith ", Verily, Thou art a Ood Who hidest ITiyself." He seemeth to be absent, when He doth not visibly work either in the heart within, or in judgments without ; to the ungodly and unbelieving He is absent ^\ far above out of their sight, when He does not avenge their scofis, their sins, their irrever- ence. Again He seemeth to go forth, when His Power is felt. "'Whence it is riaidi*, Bow Thy heavens, 0 Lord, and come down; and the Lord saith of Sodom ^, I will go dawn now and see, whether they have done aUogether a/ccording to the cry of it. which is come unto Me. Or, the Place of the Infinite God is God Him- self. For the Infinite sustaineth Itself, nor doth anything out of Itself contain It. God dwelleth also in light unapproojchahie ". When then Almighty God doth not manifest Him- self, He abideth, as it were, in His own Place. When He manifests His Power or Wisdom or Justice by their effects, He is said to go forth out of His Place, i. e. out of His hidi^nness. Again, since the Nature of God is Goodness, it is proper and co-natural to Him, to be pro- pitious, have mercy and spare. In this way, the Place of God is His mercy. When then He passctli from the sweetness of pity to the rigor of equity, and, on account of our sins, sheweth Himself severe (which is, as it were, alien from Him) He goeth forth out of His Place." "i*For He Who is gentle and gracious^ and Whose Nature it is to have mercy, is constrained, on your account, to take the seeming of hardness, which is not His,"
He comes invisibly now, in that it is He Who punisheth, through whatever power or will of man He useth ; He shews forth His Holiness through the punishment of u.iholi- ness. But the words, which are imag»' -lan- guage now, shall be most exactly fulfille.il in the end, when, in the Person of our Lord, He
«xxyi.2l. 11 Ps. x. 5. MGeii.X7lii.21.
•Dion. Wxlv. 15.
" Ph. cxliv. 6, Is. Ixiv. 1. "iTim. vi. 16. "S. Jer.
CHAPTEB L
17
chrTst ^ -^^ **'^® mountains cir. 758-726. ghall be molten under him,
'^^%'"t and the valleys shaU be
Is. 64. 1, 2, 3. Amoe 9. 6. Hab. 3. 6, 10.
shall come visibly to judge the world. " * In the Day of Judgment-, Christ sheUl come down, acGordinj^ to that Nature which He took, from His Place, the highest heavens, and shall cast down the proud things of this world."
And wiU come doum ; not by change of place, or in Himself, but as felt in the punishment of sin; and tread upon the high pkuxs of the earth; to bring down the pride oi those ' who *' ' being lifted up in their own conceit and lofty, sinning through pride and proud through sin, were yet created out of earth. For * why is earth and ashes proud f " What seems mightiest and most firm, is unto God less than is to man the dust under his feet. The high places were also the special scenes of an unceasing idolatry. " God treadeth in the good and humble, in that He dwelleth, walketh, feasteth in their hearts ^. But He treadeth upon the proud and the evil, in that He castetn them down, despiseth, condemneth them."
4. And the mountains shall be molten under Him. It has been thought that this is imagery, taken from volcanic eruptions'; but, although there is a very remarkable vol- canic district just outside of Gilead ^, it is < not thought to have been active at times so late as these ; nor were the people to whom the words were said, familiar with it. Fire, the real agent at the end of the world, is, meanwhile, the symbol of God's anger, as being the most terrible of His instruments of destruction : whence God revealed Himself as a consuming fire % and, at this same time said by Isaiah ^ ; For behold, the Lord mill come with fire — to render His anger with fury, and His re- buke with flames of fire.
And the valleys shaU be deft as wax before the fire. It seems natural that the mountains should be cleft; but the valleys*^, so low
» 8, Jer. Theoph. « See Am. iv. 13, Job ix. 8.
» Rup. * Ecclus. X. 9.
* 2 Cor. TL 16, Rev. iii 20. * HenderaoD here.
» See vol. L p. 425. « Dent iv. 24.
»lxvi.l6.
>o Hence some M&S. mentioned in De Rorai's cod. 319, have (as a conjecture) riU*3Jni "the hills."
" Sanch. " See Ps. xcvii. 6.
"See 8. Hil. in Ps. Ivii. 3 4. 000 is used, as to natural objects, onlv of sucn melting whereby the substance is wasted, as of manna (Ex. xvi. 21), wax (Ps. Ixviii. 3, Ac), or the body through disease (1 Ham. XXV. 37) ; then, morally, chiefly of fear.
M See Ges. Thes. sub v. from the Punic, Monum. Phcsn. p. 418. "There are many waterfalls in Lebanon, one very near and to the N. of the Damas- cus road. I have also seen one in Anti-libanus on \he river Barada, a little above Abll. The stream, n&med Sheba, which springs from the perpetual mows of Mount Hermon is extremelv rapid and has A Tdry steep fall to the Hasbeia which it Joins
2
cleft, as wax before the fire, ^ hrTs t and as the waters that are c'f- 758-726.
poured down f a steep place, t Heb. a descent
already I This speaks of a yet deeper disso- lution ; of lower depths beyond our sight or knowledge, into the very heart of the earth. " *^ Tins should they fear, who will to be so low ; who, so far from lifting them- selves to heavenly things, pour out their affections on things of earth, meditate on and love earthly things, and forgetful of the heavenly, choose to fix their eyes on earth. These the wide gaping of the earth which they loved, shall swallow : to them the deft valleys shall open an everlasting sepulchre, and, having received them, shall never part with them."
Highest and lowest, first and last, shall perish before Him. The pride of the highest, kings and princes, priests and judges, shall sink and melt away ber^eaih the weight and Majesty of His glory ; the hardness of the lowest, which would not open itself to Him, shall be cleft in twain before Him.
As wax before the fire ", melting away be- fore Him by Whom they were not softened, vanishing mto nothingness. Metals melt, changing their form only ; wax, so as to cease to be^".
As the waters poured down (as a stream or cataract, so the word means ^*) a steep plaee, Down to the very edge, it is borne along, one strong, smooth, unbroken current; then, .at once, it seems to gather its strength, for one great effort. But to what end ? To fall, with the greater force, headlong, scattered in spray, foam and froth; dissipated, at times, into vapor, or reeling in giddy eddies, never to return. In Judeea, where the autumn rains set in with great vehemence", the waters must have been often seen pouring in their little tumultuous brooklets down the moun- tain side '^, hastening to disappear, and dis^ appearing the faster, the more vehemently they rolled along ^^. Both images exhibit
in Meij-el-Hnloh. The Jordan is a continual cataract between el-Huleh and the Lake of Gennesareth ;" (Rev. G. Williams, MS. letter) "a fall of GOO feet in about 10 miles. On the Western bank, high above the rocky bed of the torrent, the water was running rapidly down the steep incline toward the river, which could hardly be less than 150 feet below us.'' (Id. Col. Church Chron. 18J30. Jan. p. 30.^. Porter describes the fall of the river Adonis (Five years, ii. 205.) From the height at which the streams rise in the Lebanon chain, there must be many greater or lesser falls.
>* Hence the Hebrew name DB^J, ** heavy rain," for which we have no one word, is used of the autumn and winter rain. Cant. ii. 11.
w I have seen this effect for above half an hour fl5 miles) on the mountain country near the lakes in a thunderstorm.
17 •* The decrease of the waters fswollen by the rains in the mountains) is usually as rapid as tlieir rise.** Burckhardt, Syria, p. 161.
18
Mia^H.
CH rTst ^ ^^^ *^® transgression cir. 758-726. of Jacob is all this, and
for the sins of the house of Israel. What is the trans- gression of Jacob? is U
the inward emptiness of sinners, man's utter helplessness before God. They need no out- wam impulse to their destruction. " ^ Wax endureth not the nearness of the fire, and the waters are carried headlong. So all of the ungodly, when the Lord cometh, shall be dissolved and disappear." At the end of the world, they shall b^ gathered into bundles, and cast away.
5. For the iranaffression of J(Ui6b is aU this. Not for any change of purpose in God ; nor, arain, as the effect of man's lust of conquest. iNone could have any power against God's people, unless it had been given him by God. Those mighty Monarchies of old existed but as God's instruments, especially toward His own people. God said at this time of Assy- ria, ^AMniury rod c^ Mine angtry and the staff in his hajui is Mine indignation ; and ', Now nave I brought il to pas8, that thou shotddnst be to hy w%ste a^enced cities into ruinous heaps. Each scourge of GK)d chastised just those nations, which God willed him to chasten ; but the especial object for which each was raised up was his minion against that people, in whom Gk) 1 mo.^t shewed His mercies and His judg- ments. * I wHl send him against an ungodly naiion and aaainsi the penple of My wraih wiU l give him a charge, Jacob and Isrady in this place, comprise alike the ten tribes and the two. They still bare the name of their father, who, wrestlinsr with the Angel, became a prince with Oody Whom they forgat. The name of Jacob then, as of Christian now, stamped as deserters, those who did not the deeds of their father. Whal^ [rather Who *J is the trawigression of Jacob f W{io)b its cause ? In whom does it lie? Is it not Samaria f The metropolis must, in its own nature, be the source of. good or evil to the land. It is the heart who^se pulses beat throughout the wh >le system. As the seat of power, the res- idence of justice or injustice, the place of counsel, the concentration uf wealtn, which all the most influential of the land visit for their several occasions, its manners penetrate in a degree the utmost comers of Uie land. Corrupted, it becomes a focus of corruption. The blood parses through it, not to be puri- fied, but to be disea^. Samaria, being founded on apostasy, owing its being to rebel- lion against God, the home of that policy
* 8. Jer. « l8. X. fl. • lb. xxxvH. 26. * lb. x. 6.
*'0 always relates to a personal objeetj and appa- rent exoeptioa8 may be reduced to this. So AE. Kim. Tanch. Poc.
not Samaria? and what chr^Fst are the high places of Ju- cir tss-t^s. dah? are they not Jerusa- lem?
6 Therefore I will make
which set up a rival system of worship to Hisy forbidden by Uim, beomie a fountain of evil, whence the stream of ungodliness over- ilowed the land. It became thd imperson- ation of the people's sin, *' the heart and the head of the bod^ of sin."
And wluii [lit. )(^^n are the high places of Judah t are they not Jerusalem t Jerusalem God had formed to be a centre of unity in holiness ; thiiher the tribes of the Lord were to go up to the testimony of Israel ; there was the unceasing worship of God, the morning and evening sacrifice ; the Feasts, the memorials of past miraculous mercies, the foreshadow- ings of redemption. But there too 8atan placed his throne. Ahaz brought thither that most hateful idolatry, the burning chil- dren to Moloch in the vaUey of the scm of Hin- nofm\ There, ''he made htm altars in every comer cf Jerusalem, Thence, he extended the idolatry to all Judah. * And in every several city of Judah he made high places to bum incense unto other gods, and provoked to anger the Lord God of his fathers, Hezekiah, in his reforma- tion, with cUl Israelf ^went out to the cities of Judahy and brake the images in pieces and hewed down the stalues of Asherah, and threw down the high places and the aUars ovt of all Judah and Benjaminy as much as out of Eph- raim and Manasseh, Nay, by a perverse interchange, Ahaz took the brazen aUary con- secrated to God, for his own divinations, and assigned to the worship of God the altar copied from the idol-altar at Dani.vcus. whose fashion pleased his taste ^^ Since dod and mammon cannot be served together, Jerusalem was become one great' idol-temple, in which Judah brought its sin into the verv face of God and of His Worahip. The Iffoly City had itself become sin, and the fountain of unholiness. The one temple of God was the single protest against the idolatries which encompassed and besieged it ; the incense went up to God, morning and evening, from it ; from every head of every street of the city^\ and (since Ahaz had brought in the worship of Baalim '*, and the rites of idol- atry continued the same,) from the roofi of all their hou9es ", went up the incense to JBaal ; a worship which, denying the Unity, denied the Being of God.
6. Therefore [lit. And] IvoiU make Samaria
• 2 Chr. xxviil. 3. T p>. 24. « lb. 25.
• lb. xxxl. I. w 2 Kings xvL 10-16. 11 Ezek. xvi. 31, 2 Chr. xxvUi. 24. m ib. 2. u Jer. xxxiL 29.
CHAPTER L
19
c hrTs t Samaria ^ as an heap of the
cir. 768-726. field, and as plantings of a
k2 Kinss 19. 26. yineyard : and I will pour
e]|L3.12L *
down the stones thereof into the valley, and I will i.Esek. 13. 14. * discover the foundations thereof
08 an hetxp of the field, and as planimga of a vine- yanL " ' The order of the sin was the order of the punishment.'' Samaria's sins were the earliest, the most obstinate, the most un- broken, bound up with its being as a state. On it then God's judgments should first fall. It was o crown of pride\ resting on the head of the rich vaUevB, out of which it rose. Its soil is still rich *. " The whole is now cultivated in terraces V "to the summits*." Prob- ably, since the sides of hills, open to the sun, were chosen for vineyards, it had been a vine- yard, before Shemer sold it to Omri*. What It had been, that it was again to be. Its inhabitants cast forth, its houses and gorgeous palaces were to become heaps of stones, gaih- ered out ^ to make way for cultivation, or to become the fences of the vegetation, which should succeed to man. There is scarce a sadder natural sight than the fragments of human habitation, tokens of man's labor or his luxury, amid the rich beauty of nature when man himself is gone. For they are tracks of sin and punishment, man's rebellion and Grod's judgment, man's unworthiness of the good natural gifts of God. A century or two ago, travelers "® speak of the ground [the site of Samaria] as strewed with masses of ruins." Now these too are gone. "'The stones of the temples and palaces of Samaria have been carefully removed from the rich soil, thrown together in heaps, built up in the rude walls of terraces, and rolled down into the valley below." "'About midway of the ascent, the hill is surrounded by a nar- row terrace of woodland like a belt. Higher up too are the marks of slighter terraces, once occupied perhaps by the streets of the ancient city." Terrace-cultivation has suc- ceeded to the terraced streets once thronged by the busy, luxurious, sinful, population.
And I mil pour down tJie stones thereof into the raUeyj of which it was the crest, and which it now proudly surveyed. God Himself would cause it to be poured down (he uses the word which he had iust u^ of the vehemence of the cataract ^® ). " " The whole fiioe of this part of the hill suggests the idea
* 8. Jer. » Is. xxviil. 1. » Porter, Hdbook, p. 346. * lb. 344. » Rob. ii. 304. 307. '1 Kings xvi. 24. ' Is. v, 2.
• "Cotovicus in the 16th, and Von Troilo in the 17th century.*' Rob. ii 307. note 1.
7 And all the graven chrTbt images thereof shall be cir. 768-728. beaten to pieces, and all the "hires thereof shall ■Ho8.2.5,i2. be burned with the fire, and all the idols thereof will I lay desolate : for she
that the buildings of the ancient city had been thrown down from the brow of the hill. Ascending to the top, we went round the whole summit, and found marks of the same process everywhere."
And I mUl discover the foundations thereof The desolation is entire; not one stone left upon another. Yet the very words of threat- ening contain hope. - It was to be not a heap only, but the plantings of a vineyard. The heaps betoken ruin ; the vineyard^ fruitfulness cared for bv Grod. Destroyed, as what it was, and tumea upside down, as a vineyard by the share, it should become again what God madf it and willed it to be. It should again become a rich vaUej/y but in outward desola- tion. Its splendid palaces, its idol teniple& its houses of joy, should be but heaps ana ruins, which are cleared away out of a vine- yard, as only choking it. It was built in rebellion and sciiism, loose and not held together, like a heap of stones, having no cement of love, rent and torn in itself, having been torn both from God and His worship. It could be remade only by being wholly unmade. Then should thev who believed be branches grafted in Him Who said, "/ am the Vine, ye are the branches.
7. And all the graven images thereof shall be beaten to pieces. Its idols in whom she trusts, so far from protecting her, shall themselves go into captivity, broken up for the gold and silver whereof they were made. The wars of the Assyrians being religious wars ^', the idolatry of Assyria destroyed the idolatry and idols of Israel.
And all the hires thereof shall be burned toith fire. All forsaking of God being spiritual fornication from Him Who made His crea- tures for Himself, the hires are all which man would gain by that desertion of his God, emploved in man's intercourse with his idols, whether as bribing his idols to give him what are the gifts of God, or as himself bribed by them. For there is no pure ser- vice, save that of the love of God. God alone can be loved purely, for Himself; offer- ings to Him Alone are the creature's pure
•Rob. 11.304. »ver.4.
11 Nnrrative of Scottish Mission, pp.293, 4. in Hen- derson. " 8. John XV. 6. usee below Introd. to Nahum.
20
MICAH.
c hbTs t ga^l^^r^d it of the hire of cir. 7ft»-726. an harlot and they shall
return to the hire of an
harlot
homage to the Creator, going out of itself, not lookinfi: back to itself, not seeking itself, but stretching forth to llim and seeking Him for Himself. Whatever man gives to or hopes from his idols, man himself is alike his object in both. The hire then is, alike what he gives to his idols, the gold whereof he makes his Baal \ the offerings which the heathen used to lay up in their temples, and what, as he thought, he him- self received back. For he gave onlv earthly things, in order to receive back things of earth. He hired their service to him, and his earthly gains were his hire. It is a strong mockery in the mouth of God, that they had these things from their idols. He speaks to them after their thoughts. Yet it is true that, lUthough God overrules all, man does receive from Satan ', the god (^ thU uorld^j all which he gains amiss. It i« the
Erice for which he sells his soul and profanes imself. Yet herein were the heathen more religious than the Christian worldling. The heathen did offer an ignorant service to they knew not what. Our idolatiy of mam- mon, as being less abstract, is more evident self-worship, a more visible ignoring and so a more open dethroning of God, a worship of a material prosperity, of which we seem our- selves to be the authors, aud to which we habitually immolate the souls of men, so habitually that we have ceased to be con- scious of it.
And all the idoU thereof vnU J lay desolate, lit. maks a desolation. They, now thronged by their worshipers, should be deserted ; tlieir place and temple, a waste. He thrice repeats aU; all her graven imagesy all her hires, all her idols; all Bhould be destroyed. He subjoins a threefold destruction which should over- take them : so that, while the Assyrian broke and carried off the more precious, or burned what could be burned, and, what could not be burned, nor was worth transporting, should be left desolate, all should come to an end. He sets the whole the more vividly before the mind, exhibiting to uh so many separate pictures of the mode of destruction.
For from the hire of a harlot she gathered them, and to the hire of a harlot they shall return. "*The wealth and manifold provision which (as she thought) were gainea by fornication
1 See Hos. IL 8. vol. i. p. .%. »2Cor. iv. 4. «S. Jer.
*S. Mattiv. 9. • Rom. i. 23.
• HeHiod. 'E. k. • H. .354. L.
7 Pindar Isthm. vll. 67, 8. L. • Herod, i. 199.
• vi. 43. ^ Strabo, z vi. 1. 20.
8 Therefore » I will wail ^ ^^^"^H ^
and howl/ 1 will go strip- ^-'f- 75fr-728.
ped and naked: **I will "^22. 4**
make a wailing like the •ia^io^i^i,^
»Job30. 29. Pa. 102. ft.
with her idols, shall go to another harlot, Nineveh ; so that, as they went a whoring in their own land, they should go to another land of idols and fornication, the Assyrians." They * turned their glory iiUo shame, changing the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like unto eorruutible man; and so it should turn to them into shame. It sprung out of their shame, and should turn to it again. " III got, ill spent." Evil gain, cursed in its origin, has the curse of God upon it, and makes its gainer a curse, and ends ac- cursedly. " Make not ill gains," says even a Heathen •, "ill gains are equal to losses;" and another^, "Unlawful sweetness a most bitter end awaiteth."
Probably, the most literal sense is not to be excluded. The degrading idolatrous cus- tom, related of Babylon and Cyprus '', still continued among the Babylonians at the date of the hook of Baruch •, and to the Christian era ^^. S. Augustine 8|)eaks of it as having existed ^^ among the Phoenicians, and Theo- dorct" says that it was still practiced by some in Syria. The existence of the idola- trous custom is presup|)08ed by the prohibi- tion by Mo^es ^' ; and, in the time of Hosea self-desecration was an idolatrous rite in Israel ". In the day of Judgment, when the foundation of those who build their house upon the sand, shall be laid bare, the riches wnich they gained unlawfully shall be burned up ; all the idols, which they set up instead of God, "*^the vain thoughts, and useless fancies, and hurtful forms and images which they picture in their mind, defiling it, and hindering it from the steadfast contem- plation of divine things, will be punished. They were the hire of the soul which went astray from God, and they who conceived them will, with them, become the' prey again of that infernal host which is unceas- ingly turned from Gtxl."
8. Therefore I will [wovld'^^ tpail [properly beat ", i. e. on the breast], ana howl. " Let me alone," he would say, " that I may vent my sorrow in all ways of expressing sorrow, beat- ing on the breast and wailing, using all acts and sounds of grief." It is a.s we would say, " Let me mourn on" a mourning inexhaust- ible, because the woe too and the cause of
n dftbant. de Civ. Del lit. 10. u on thin place. M Dout. xxiii. 18. " See on Hos. iv. 14, p. 31.
»I)ion. , ,
" He thrice repeats the optative H^'^-W mi3DK
CHAPTER I.
21
Before CHRIST cir. 758-72«.
dragons, and mourning as the t owls.
9 For 1 1 her wound is
t Ueb.daugMers oftheowL
'yriSo^wc* incurable; for *>it
of her wounds. 4 2 Kings 18. 13. Is. 1. 6, 7, 8.
18
grief was unceasiDg. The Prophet becomes in words, probably in acts too, an image of his people, doing as they should do her^ter. He mourns, because ana as they woald have to mourn, beuring chastisement, bereft of all outward comeliness, an example also of re- pentance, since what he did were the chief outward tokens of mourning.
/ wiU [would] go stripped [despoiled ^] and naked, lie explains tne acts, that they represented no mere voluntary mourning. Not only would he, representing them, go bared of all garments of beauty, as we say " half-naked * '* but despoiled also, the proper term of those plundei^d and stripped by an enemy. He npeaks of his doing, what we know that Isaiah did, by God's command, representing in act what his people should thereafter do. "' Wouldest thou that I should weep, thou must thyself grieve the first.'' Micali doubtless went about, not speaking only of grief, but grieving, in the habit of one mourning and bereit of all. He pro- longs in these words the voice of wailing, choosing unwonted forms of words, to carry on the sound of grief ^
/ will make a waiUng like the dragons t jack- als^'] and mourning as the owls [ostriches^]. The cry of both, as heard at night, is very piteous. Both are doUful creatures, dwelling in desert and lonely places. ** The ^ jackals make a lamentable howling noise, so that travelers unacquainted with them would think that a company of people, women or children, were howling, one to another.''
> Barrfoot is exprossed in Hebrew by HIT. Since
tiien Micah does not U8e the receiTod term for bare- foot, and does use the word expressing " stripped/* * despoiled," the E. V. is doubtless right, agreeing with the Latin against the LXX. and S3rr.
*See on Amos ii. IC. p. 178. n. (i. Seneca says: ** Some things, though not fexactly] true, are com- prised under the same word, for their likeness. So we call illiterate, one not altogether uninstructed, bat who has not been advanced to higher knowledge. So he who has seen one inhabited and in rags, says that he had seen one * naked.' *^ de benef. v. 13. Sanch.
sUor.A.P.102,8.
*SS'B^ and noS"!* carry on the sound of
nS^S'l«. hh'*Vf% the textual reading, is doubtless
right, although without example; HOTK has anal- ogy with other words, but, common as the word is, stands alone in the word itself. Each bears out the other. • The jru which occurs only in the plural D'JHt
is distinct fh)m the r^n, plur. 00^31% although
they touch on each other, in that rjH sing, is
written D^ Ji\ £zek. xxix. 3, and the poetic plur. of
come unto Judah; he is come unto the gate of. my people, even to Jeru- salem.
Before CHRIST cir. 768-726.
^' Its howV says an Arabic natural histor- ian *, " is like the crying of an infant." " We heaid them," says another ', " through the night, wandering around the villages, with a continual, prolonged, mournful cry/' The ostrich, forsaking its young ^*^, is an image of bereavement. " " As the ostrich forgets her eggs and leaves than as though they were not l^Sf to be trampled by the feet of wild beasts, so too shall I go childless, spoiled and naked." Its screech is spoken of by travel- ers as ""fearful, affrighting." "" Dur- ing the lonesome part of the night they often make a doleful and piteous noise. I have often heard them groan, as if they were in the greatest agonies.
" ** I will grieve from the heart over those who perish, mourning for the hardness of the ungodly, as the Apostle had ^ great heaviness and coniirituil sorrow in his lieart for his breth- ren, the impenitent and unbelieving Jews. Again he saith ^', who is weak and J am not weak t Who is offended, and I bum not t For by how much the soul is nobler than the body, and by how much eternal damnation is heavier than any temporal punishment, so much more vehemently should we grieve and weep for the peril and perpetual damna- tion of souls, than for bodily sickness or any temporal evil."
9. For her [Samaria's] wound^'^, [lit. her wounds, or strokes, (the word is used especially of those inflicted by God^®,) each, one by one,] is incurable. The idiom is used of inflictions on the body politic^' or the
jn» rjn occurs in the text^ Lam. iv. 3. The Syr.
(and Chaldee, properly) and Tanchum oftentimes render it "jackal." Pococke first, of moderns, brought out this me-aning. See his note here.
•The njj?' D2 "female ostrich" (the DOnH
probably being the male ostrich) may be so called
from Tj;', (Syr. yitttton, like its Arabic name na*am)
or from its shrill cry, HJJ?.
^ Pococke, who had heard them in Syria, Ac.
• Demiri, in Bochart. iii. 12. T. iiL p. 181. ed. Leips. "It howls by night only." Id.
•Olearius, Itin. Mosc. et Pera. It. 17. Boch. lb. p. 183.
w Job xxxl X. 16. " S. Jer.
w Sandys' Travels, L. ii. fin.
w Shaw, Travels, T. ii. p. 349. M Dion.
w Rom. ix. 1. » 2 C!or, xi. 29.
" The construction of the E. V. is beyond ques- tion preferable that of the E. M. It is the common emphatic idiom, in which the plural subject and singular predicate are joined to express, that the thing asserted is true not only of all generally but of each individually.
M Lev. xxvi. 21. Nu. xi. 33, Deut xxTiiL 69, 61, Ac.
u Nah. iii. ult Jer. xxx. 12, 16.
22
MICAH.
chrTst ^^ ir'I>eclare ye it not cir. 758-726. at Gath, wccp JB TLot at all :
'2 8am. I. 21).
in the house of ||Aphrah chbTst ■ roll thyself in the dust.
I That is, ditft
cir. 758-726. • Jer. 6. 2&
mind \ for which there is no remedy. The wounds were very nckf or incurable, not in themselves or on God's part, but on Israel's. The day of grace passes awav at last, when man hus so steeled himself against grace, as to be morally dead, having deadened himself to all capacity of repentance.
For it is come unto Iquite up to* Judah ; he, [the enemyj is come [lit. hath reachtd, touched,] to [^itite up to'] ths gate of my peo- ple, even to Iquite up to '] Jei-usaJem. "' The same sin, yea, the same punishment for sin, which overthrew Samaria, shall even come unto, quite up to Judah, Then the Prophet suddenly changes the gender, and, as Scrip- ture so often does, speaks of the one agent, the centre and impersonation of the coming 4 evil, as sweeping on over Judah, mate up to the gate of his people, quite up to Jerusalem, He does not say nere, whetner Jerusalem would be taken ^; and so, it seems likely that he speaks of a calamitv short of ex- cision. Of Israel's wounds only he here says, that they are iricurable; he describes the wasting of even lesser places near or beyond Jerusalem, the flight of their inhabitants. Of the capital itself he is silent, except that the enemy rea/ihed, touched, struck against it, quite up to iL Probably, then, he is here de- scribing the first visitation of God, when ^Sennacherib came up against all the fenced cities of Judah and took Uiem, but Jerusalem was spared. God's judgments come step by step, leaving time for repentance. The same enemy, although not tlie same king, came against Jerusalem who had wasted Samaria. Samaria was probably as strong as Jenisalem. Hezekiah praved ; God heard, the Assyrian army perished by miracle ; Jerusalem was respited for 124 years.
10. TeUiinqtin Gath. Gath had probably now ceased to be ; at least, to be ot any ac- count ^ It shows how David's elegy lived
1 Jer. X. 19, XV. 18. H /HJ in Nahum and Jer. xxx. 15. is exactly equivalent to the tS^UK in Micah. In
Jer. xxx. 12, ']*iatBf^ V/)2H Btands parallel with it
Isaiah (xvii. 11) ha^i tsnjK 3K3. •ij; m each of the three placed. »S. Jer.
*'\^ includes the whole country, (jutte up to. It
does not necessarily include the place, quite up to whir'h it reaches. It does not, probably, 2 Kings xviii. 8. See on Am. L vol. L p. 245.
»2 Kinf^s xviii. 13.
•See on Am. vl. 2. vol. 1. p. 80B.
' Parallel with Anhkolon.
•Ps. XXV. 2. •Rs. xlli. 10. »P8.1xxxix. 42,50.
"The conjecture of Keland (Pal. p. SW) "in Acco weep not," as if }22 were for OJ^D, is against the
Hebrew idiom, and one of the many abuses of Hebrew parallelinm, as if Hebrew writers were tied down to exactness of parallelism, and becauHO the Prophet mentions the name of a city in two clauses.
in the hearts of Judah, that his words are used as a proverb, ( just as we do now, in whose ears it is yearly read), when, as with us, its original application was probably lost. True, Gath, reduced itself, might rejoice the more maliciously over the suHerings of Ju- dah. But David mentions it as a chief seat of Philistine strength ^; now its strength was gone.
The blaspheming of the enemies of God is the sorest part of His chastisements. Whence David prays ^ let not mine enemies er- ult over me ; and the sons of Korah, ' With a sword in my bones, mine enemies rqnvaeh me, while they say daily unto me, where is thy God f and Ethan ^" ; Thou hast made all his enemies to rejoice, Memiember, Lord, the reproach of Thy servant — wherewith Thine enemies have reproached, O Lord, wherewith they have reproached the footsteps of Thine anointecL It is hard to part with home, with country, to see all de- solate, which one ever loved. But far, far above all, is it, if, in the disgrace and deso- lation, Gi)d*s honor seems to be injured. The Jewish people was then God's only home on earth. If H could be extinguished, who re- mained to honor Him ? Victories over them seemed to their heathen neighbors to be vic- tories over Him. He seemed to be dishon- ored without, because they had ^rst dishon- ored Him within. Sore is it to the Christian, to see God's cause hindered, His kingdom narrowed, the Empire of Infidelity advanced. Sorer in one way, because he knows the price of souls, for whom Jesus died. But the world is now the Church's home. "The holy Church throughout all the world doth acknowledge Thee ! " Then, it was girt in within a few miles of territory, and sad in- deed it must have been to the Prophet, to see this too hemmed in. Tell it not in Gath, to the sons of those who, of old, defied God.
Weep not at all [lit. weeping ", we^p not"],
he must in the third. The Prophet never would have used one of the commonest idioms in Hebrew, the emphatic use of the Inf. Abs. with the finite verb, unless he had meant it to be understood, as any one must understand the three Hebrew words,
lD3n 7K OD. The sacred writers wrote to be understood. It is contrary to all principles of lan- eiiage^not to take a plain idi«)m in its plain sense. The \orss. Vulg. Aq. flymm. so rt'nder it The LXX. (from a readinfc in which, oi 'EvoKtifi or oi cr *Ax*Lfif Keland made his ot iv 'Ax«o) is full of blun- ders. They rendor also 133D as if it were ^}2i\,
ayotMoiofitlrt i Jl^^S, i^ oIkov ; n*^£)V 7 'at* yiKttra. The J? is but seldom omitted in Hebrew. (Of the instances given by Ge.*<enius, p. 978, 73 for 7j/'3 i» the Chaldee name of the idol ; ^3 for ^j,»3, uncer- tain, at most; ID 7 for 1DJr*7 (Ps. xxvii. 8) wrong. There remains then in, Hebrew, only the single
CHAPTER I.
23
c hrYs t ^^ ^"^ y® away, 1 1 thou eir.7&fr-7a8. f inhabitant of Saphir,
d»eiuatfair(y. having thy ^ shame naked : tH^b. inUit^ ^j^^ inhabitant of || Zaanan
« Is. 20. 4. A 47. 2, 3. Jer. 13. 22. Nah. 3. 5. ^
I Or, the cotMtry of flocks.
Weeping is the stillest expression of grief. We spetJc of " weeping in silence." Yet this also was too visible a token of grief. Their weeping would be the joy and laughter of God 8 enemies.
In the house of Aphrahy [probably, In Beth- leaphnUi] roll thyself in the dust [better, as the text, I roll myself in dust *]. The Prophet chose unusual names, such as would associate themselves with the meanings which he wished to oonvev, so that thenceforth the name itself might recall the prophecy. As if we were to say, " In Ashe I roll myself in ashes." — ^There was an Aphrah near Jerusa- lem'. It is more likely that Micah should refer to this, than to the Ophrah in Benja- min '. lie shewed them, in his own person, how they should mourn, retired out oi sight and hidden, as it were, in the dust. " * What- ever grief your heart may have, let your face have no tears * go not forth, out, in the house of dustf sprinkle thyself with the ashes of its ruins.''
All the places thenceforth spoken of were in Judah, whose sorrow and desolation are re- peated in all. It is one varied history of sor- row. The names of her cities, whether in themselves called from some gifts of God, as Shaphir, (beautiful; we have i^airford, Fair- field, ^atrbum, i^atrlight,) or contrariwise from some detect, Maroth, Bitterness (probably from brackish water) Achzib^ lying^ (doubt- less from a winter-torrent which in summer fidled) suggest, either in contrast or by them-
pronnnciation of Amos HptB^J for T^J^pJff} viii. 8.
See ab. p. 216. Robinsoii obserreff, '* The' Semitic letter ]^ in particular, so unpronounceable by other
nationjt, has a remarkable tenacity. Of the very many Hebrew name^, containing tHia letter, which Btill survive in Arabic, our list^ exhibit only two or three in which it has been dropped ; and perhaps none in which it has been exchanged for another letter." (i. 25fl. n. 2.) His only instances are Jib for Oibeon (where the whole syllable has been dropped) i. 456 ; Jelbon for Gilboa (ii. 316) ; Yafa for Taphia Josh. xix. 12, (donbtfhl) ii. M2: and Endor (which I doubt) ii. 360. Anyhow they are but throe names, in which, in the transfer into another though cognate language, y has been dropped at
the end, and one at the beginning of a word, none in the middle. In fact also Acco (Acre) was proba- bly never in the poRsession of Israel. It is only mentioned in the Old Testament, to say that Agher did not drive out its inhabitants (Judg. i. ^l). This interpretation which has become popular, 1) violates the Hebrew idiom; 2) implies a very improbable omission of a "tenacious letter;** 3) Is historically unnatural. In that the Prophet would thus forbid Judah to weep in a city where there were none even of Israel. Yet of late, it has been
came not forth in the chrTst
mourning of |[ Beth-ezel ; cJr- 7^)8-726.
he shall receive of you his | or, a place standing.
near.
selves, some note of evil and woe. It is Ju- dah^s history in all, given in different traits ; her ^^ beauty '* turn^ into shame ; herself free neither to go forth nor to "abide;" looking for good and finding evil ; the strong (Lachish) strong only to nee ; like a brook that fails and deceives; her inheritance (Mareshah) inherited ; herself, taking refuge in dens and caves of the earth, yet even there found, and bereft of her glory. Whence, in the end, without naming Judah, the Pro- phet sums up her sorrows with one call to mourning.
1 1. Pass ye away [lit. Pass thou (fem.) away to or for yourselves^ disregarded by God and despised by man] pass the bounds of your lana into captivity, thou inhabiiani of Ska- phir, having thy shame nakedy [better, in naked' nessy and shame ^"j. Shaphir [fair^ was a village in Judah, between Eleutheropolis and Ashkelbn ^. There are still, in the 8hephe- lah, two villages called Sawafir^ It, once fav'f should now go forth in the disgrace and dishonor with which (sptives were led away.
The inJiabiiants of Zianan came not forth. 2kianan {abounding tn flocks) was probably the same as Zenan of Judah, whicn lay in the Shephelah'. It, which formerly went forth ^ in pastoral gladness with the multitude of its flocks, shall now shrink into itself for fear.
The mourning of Beth-Esd [lit. house of rooty firmly rooted] shaU take from you tts standing ^K It too cannot help itself, much less be a stay to others. They who have
followed by Hitz. Maur. Umbreit, Ewald, thought probable by Gesenius and Winer, and adopted even by Dr. Henderson. ,
1 The Kethib ^niS^ vfiDH is, as usual, to be pre- ferred to the correction, the Kri, ^B^SfiDn.
« R. Tanchum of Jerusalem, here.
•Josh, xviii. 23, 1 Sara, xiii 17. ,
4S.Jer. Rup. •037 ^3;^.
•The construction, nB^3 Ti^'^^t is like TV^p piy fneckncsa, righteousness^ Ps. xlr. 6. ilK?3 is the
quality, shame. ^ Onom.
• Schols, Reiscn, p. i.'tS. Robinson, ii. U, says, •* There are three villages of this name near each other." "There is yet a village Snaphir, two hours 8. E.of Ashdod." Schwartz (of Jerusalem) Das Heil. Land. p. 87. " a Sapheria one hour N. W. of Lod." [Lvdda] (lb. p. KV).)
• Jo8h. XV. 27, coll. Xi. "There is a village Zana- bra, 1. hour 8. E. of Moresha." Schwartz, 74.
^^]H^t whence pK^, is itself probably con- nected with KV\
" I have preferred the division of the Syr. and Vulg. because, if joined as in the E. V. the last clsuf«e has no definit<» 8ubject, and there is no allu- sion to the meaning of Beth haezel.
24
MICAH.
c hrTs t 12 For the inhabitant of
cir- 7fi^>- Maroth || waited carefuUy
\ Ot.uxu grieved, tor good : buf" cvil came down from the Lord unto the gate of Jerusalem. 13 O thou inhabitant of
Before
been wont to go forth in fullness, shall not go forth then, and they who abide, strong though the^ be, shall not furnish an abiding place. Neither in going out nor in remain- ing, shall anything be secure then.
12. For the inkabilarU of Maroth [^bUlemess] wailed car^uUyfor good. She waited carefuUy^ for the good which God gives, not for the Good which God is. She looked, longed for, ' good, as men do ; but therewith her longing ended. She longed for it, amid her own evil, which brought GbJ's judgments upon her. Maroth is mentioned here only in iioly Scripture, and has not been identified. It too wiis probably selected for its meaning. 2%e inhabUarU of bUtemesses, she, to whom bUter- nessesj or, it may be, rebellions *, were as the home in inrhich she dwelt, which ever encir- cled her, in which she reposed, wherein she spent her life, wailed for good ! Strange con- tradiction! yet a contradiction, which the whole un-Christian world is continually en- acting; nay, from which Christians have often to be awakened, to look for good to themselves, nay, to pray for temporal good, while living in bitternesses, bitter ways, dis- pleasing to Grod. The words are calculated* to be a religious proverb. " Living in sin," as we say, dwelling in biUemeesee, she looked for aoodf Bitternesses I for it is ' an evil thing and biller, that thou hast forsaken the Lord thy Ood, and thai My fear is not in thee.
But {^For] evil came down from the Lord unto the gale of Jerusalem, It came, like the brim- stone and lire which God rained upon Sodom and Gomorrah, but as yet to the gale of Jeru- salem, not upon itself. ^* * Evil came down m)on them from the Lord, i.e. /was grieved, i chastenel, / brought the Assyrian upon them, and from My anger came this affliction
* 7in is u»^<i in the bciibc of iX\*% Gen. viii. 10, And in Hif. Jtid. iii. 'iTi^ in Pil. Job xxvi. 16, and in Hithpal. Ps. xxxvii. 7. Here too it has the con- struction of 7n^ with 7, as it has in Job xxvi, and as it has not in the sense of the E. M . " was grieved."
Such an idiom as 3107 7in, "to be in pain for
Sost) good," does not occur in Hebrew, and would a equivocal, since the idiom u used for *' longed
for (expected) good." 7in also, " grieved." occurs only Jer. v. 3. Used of the "writhing" of the birth-pangs, it is Joined with no preposition; in the
sense ** feared." it is joined only with the 'Jfi 7D1 ID. ' JDD, of the object of fear. ' •D^ri"^0 ft'om mo occurs Jer. 1. 21. «Jer. li. 19. ^S. Cyr. , "S-ll.
• fh>m the Arab. The bilitteral root *|7 seems to
* Lachish, bind the chariot c h r i a t to the swift beast: she in cJr.'Tao.
the beginning of the sin to s2 Kings is. the daughter of Zion : for the transgressions of Israel were found in thee.
upon them. But it was removed, My Hand prevailing and marvelously rescuing those who worsniped My Majesty. For tlie trouble shall come ta the gale. But we know that Rabshakeh, with manv horsemen, came to Jerusalem and ail-but touched the gates. But he took it not. For in one night the Assyrian was consumed.'' The two for^s are seemingly co-ordinate, and assign the reasons of the foreannounced evils*, on man's part and on God's. On man's, in that he looked for what could not so come, good : on God's, in that evil, which alone could be looked for, which, amid man's evil, could alone be good for man, came from Him. Losing the true Good, man lost all other good, and dwelling in the bitterness of sin and provocation, he dwelt indeed in bitterness of trouble.
0 thou inhabitant of Lachish, bind the chariot to the swift beast [s/cee/.] Lachish was always a strong city, as its name probably denoted, (probably "compact*.") It was one of the royal cities of the Amorites, and its king one of the five, who went out to battle with Joshua '', It lay in the low country, Shep- heluh, of Judah **, between Adoraim and Azekah* 7 Roman miles S. of Eleuther- opoUs "*, and so, probably, close to the h ill- country, although on the plain; partaking perhaps of the advantages of both. Keho- lx)am fortified it. Amaziah fled to it from the conspiracy at Jerusalem *^, as a place of strength. It, with Azekah, alone remained, when Nebuchadnezzar had taken the rest, just before the capture of Jerusalem^. When Sennacherib took all the drfeneed cities of Judaky it seems to have been his last and proudest conquest, for from it he sent his contemptuous message to Ilczekiah ". The whole power of the great king seems to have
have been an onomato-poet. In Arabic the sense
of " striking '' occurs in ?3^, y2\ jr^S, 03^.
P^, lOS, r\2\ noS, I3S. Thence the idea of parts ** impinging on one another " " cleaving cIoAe
to," in KdS, HdS, IoS, [griping, oS,] 'jS; •* cleaving close together," *• compact," in lO*?, J?3^, 107. These senses account for all the Arabic words, beginning with 17. The only Hebrew roote, so beginning, are U7, took, and B^O^.
7 .Tosh. X. 3. • lb. XV. 33. 30. * 2 Chr. xi. 9.
M Onom. ^» 2 Kgs xi v. 19.
M Jer. xxxiv. 7. >» Is. xxxvi. 1, 2.
CHAPTER I.
25
14 Therefore shalt thou
Before CHRIST
cir. 750. _y give 'presents ||to More-
2 Kings 16. sheth-gath : the houses
li, 15, 1& I Or, /or.
been called forth to take this stronghold. The Assyrian bas-reliefe, the record of the conquests of Sennacherib, if (as the accom- panying inscription is deciphered}, they rep- resent the taking of Lacliish, exhibit it as "*a city of great extent and importance, de- fended by double walls with battlements and towers, and by fortified out- works, in no otiier sculptures were so many armed warriors drawn up in array agi^inst a besieged city. Against the fortifications had been tiirown up as many as ten banks or mounts compactly built, — and seven battering-rams had already been rolled up against the walls." Its situa- tion, on the extremity probably of the plain, fitted it for a d^p6t of cavalry. The swift steeds ', to which it was bidden to bind the chariot, are mentioned as part of the magnifi- cence of Solomon, as distinct from his ordi- nary horses '. They were used by the posts of the king of Persia *. They were doubt- less part of the strength of the kings of Jndah, the cavalry in which their statesmen trusted, instead of God. Now, its swift horses in which it prided itself should avail but to flee. Probably, it is an ideal picture. Lachish is bidden to bind its chariots to horses of the utmost sjieed, which should carry them far away, if their strength were equal to their swiftness. It had great need ; for it was subjected under Sennacherib to the conse(]uences of Assyrian ' conquest. If the Assyrian accounts relate to its capture, im- palement and flaying alive ^ were among the tortures of the captive-people ; and awfully did Sennacherib, in his pride, avenge the sins ag.iinst God Whom he dLsbelieved.
She is the heffinning of the sin to the daughter qf Zwn, "'She was at the gate through which the transgremons of Israel flooded Judah.'' How she came first to apostatise and to be the infectress of Judah, Scripture does not tell us^. She scarcely bordered on Phillstia; Jerusalem lay between her and Israel. But the course of sin follows no geographical lines. It was the greater sin to Lachish that she, locally so far removed
1 Lajard, NiD. And Bab. p. 149.
« The \ff2'^ was undoubtedly a swift horse, proba- bly from its\ rapid striking of the earth. (Arab.) The word i» used of riding horses in Syr. Chald. Talm. Nasor. see Ges. ** horses of good breed and young," R. Jonah in Kim. lb.
< 1 Kks iv. 28. Ene. (v. 8. Heb.)
* R»ther viii. 10, U.
* Lavard, lb. and 150. «S. 5er.
' Bosenm. and others f^om him, by mistake, attribute it to a supposed situation of Lachish, " lying on the frontier of" Israel ; whereas it was
of ll'Achzib shall be a lie to the kings of Israel.
Before
CHRIST
oir. ino.
I That is, a /t«. ■Josh. 15.44.
from Israel's sin, was the first to import into Judah the idolatries of Israel. Scripture does not say, what seduced Lachish herself, whether the pride of military strength, or her importance, or commercial intercourse, for her swift steeds, with Egypt, the common parent of Israers and her sin. Scripture does not give the genealogpr of her sin, but stamps her as the heresiarch of Judah. We know the fact from this place only, that she, apparently so removed from tiie occasion of sin, became, like the propagators of heresy, the authoress of evil, the cause of countless loss of souls. Be^nning of sin to—, what a world of evil lies in the three ® words !
14. Therefore shalt thou give [bridall presents to Moresheth Oath. Therefore / since Judah had so become a partaker of Israel's sins, she had broken the covenant, whereby God had given her the land of the Ileuthcn, and she should part with it to aliens. The bridal presents, lit. the diemissals, were tlie dowry* with which the father seiit away *° his daugh- ter, to belong to another, her lord " or hus- band, never more to return. Moresheth, [lit. inheritance,] theinheritanceyfhich God gave her. was to be parted with ; she was to be laden *^ with gifts to the enemy. Judah should part with her, and her own treasure also.
The houses of Achzib shaU be a lie, Achzib, so called probably from a winter brook (achzab) was to become what its name imiwrted, a re- source which should fail just in the time of need, as the winter brooks in the drought of summer. *' Wilt Thou be unto me as a failing brook, vxiters which are not sure f This Achzib. which is recounted between Keilah ana Mareshah ", was probably one of the oldest towns of Palestine, being mentioned in the history of the Patriarcli Judah ^. After hav- ing survived about 1000 years, it should, in time of need, fail. The kings of Israel are here the kings of Judah. When tnis prophecy was to be accomplished, the ten tribes would have ceased to have any political existence, the remnant in tiieir own land would have no head to look to, except the line of David,
part of the chain of fortifled cities furthest removed
from Israel on the 8. W. » ^ riKOn n'iy«"1.
» 1 Kgs ix. 10. M Jud. xii. 9. u ^;?3.
"nj HBTIID S;? D'mSiy Ilt "bndal presents on Moresheth Oath." Hltzlj? thinks that in niy^lD there is an allusion to Pfi/n^O, "espoused;" but this would be a contradictory image, since the bridal-presents were given in espousing, not to one already espoused, and they were to be given not to Gath but to the invader.
" Jer. XV. 18. M Josh. xv. 44.
u in the unlengthened form y^^ Gen. xxxviii. 5.
26
MICAH.
cir. 7:x». an heir unto thee, O
lor.the glory of mh&Dit&nt 01 ^Mare- e^i<;. shah: ||he shall come
whose good kings had a care for them. Micah tnen, having prophesied the utter de- struction of Samaria, speaks in accordance with the state of things which he foresaw and foretold ^
15. Yet will I briny an heir [^ihe heir\ him whom God had appointed to bd the heir, Sen- nacherib] unto theCj 0 inhabitant of Mareshah, Mare&hahj (as the original form of its name denotes',) lay on the summit of a hill. '* Its ruins only were still 6een,'' in the time of Eusehius and S. Jerome, " in the second mile from EleutheropolisV "* Foundations still remain on the south-eastern part of the re- markable Tell, south of Beth-Jibrin." Keho- boam fortified it also ^ Zerah the Ethiopian had Gome to'' it, probably to besiege it, when Asa met him, and Ood smote tfte .Ethiopians before him, in tlie valley of Zephathah thereat. In the wars of the Maccabees, it was in the hands of the Edomitcs'*. Its capture and that of Adora are mentioned * as the last act of the war, before the Edomites submitted to John Hvrcanus, and were incorporated in Israel. It was a powerful city *", when the Parthians took it. As Mii'ah writes the name, it looked nearer to the word " inheritance *^" Mareshih {inherit. inee) shall yet have the heir of God's appointment, the enemy. It shall not inherit the land, as promised to the faith- ful, but shall itself be inherited, its people disposs^se.l. While it, (and so also the soul now) held fast to God, they were the heritage of the Lord, by Ills gifts and grace ; when, of their own free-will, those, once God's herit- age, become slaves of sin, they passed and still pass, against their will, into the posses- don of another m:ister, the Assyrian or Satan.
He [i. e. the heir, the enemy] shall come unto AdiUlam, the glory of Israel ^"^ ; i. e. he who shall dispossess Mareshah, shaU come quite unto AduUamj where, as in a place of safety, the alory of Israel, all in which she gloried, should be laid up. Adullam was a very ancient city, being mentioned in the history of the patriarch Juduh", a royal city**. It too lay in the Shephelah**; it was said to be 10^' or 12^^ miles £a8t of Eleutheropolis;
1 See ab. Introd. p. 6. « B^ITl.
•niB'WTD (from \ffH'^) Jos. xv. 44.- *Ononi.
» Rob. ii. «7, a. • -2 Chr. xi. 8. ^ ib. xiv. 9. aqq.
• Jos. Ant. xiJ. 8. 6. • Ib. xili. 9. 1. w Ib. xiv. 1.3. 9.
" TWff'yO like njy"))D. In the Chron. it is spelled Bn in Micah.
"The Enic. Marjc. has, In the same Roneral sense, unto Adullam nhall come the glory of Israel.
" Gen. xxxviii. 1. 12. 20. " Jos. xii. 15.
» Ib. XV. 35. w Eus. " 8. Jer. " 2 Chr. xi. 7.
Before
CHRIST
cir. 7.W.
unto ^Adullam the gbry of Israel.
16 Make thee *bald, •jobLao.* and poll thee for thy * deli- i*^; vi ^
' Lam. 4. 5. Jer. 7. 29. ft 16. 6. k 47. 6. A 48. 37.
but for this, there seems to be scarcely place in the Shephelah. It was one of the 15 cities fortified by Kehoboam '^ ; one of the 16 towns, in which (with their dependent vil- lages) Judah settled after the captivity **. It contained the whole army of Judas MaCs cabsBUs **. Like Laehlsh, it had probably the double advantages of the neighborhood of the hills and of the plain, seated perhaps at the roots of the hill», since near it doubtless was the large cai^e of Adullam named from it. The line of caves, tit for human habitation, which extended from Eleutheropolis to Petra", began Westward of it. ""The valley which runs up from Eleutheropolis Eastward, is full of large caves ; some would hold thousands of men. They are very ex- tensive, and some of them had evidently been inhabited.'' " ** The outer chaml)er of one cavern was 270 feet long by 120 wide ; and behind this were recesses and galleries, probably leading to other chambers which we oould not explore. The massive roof was supported by misshaped pieces of the native limestone left for that purpose, and at some places was domed quite through to the sur- face, admitting both light and air by the roof." The nume of Adullam suggested the memoiy of that cave, the refuge of the Patri- arch David, the first of their line of kings, in extreme isolation and peril of his life. Thither, the refuge now of the remaining glory of Israel, its wealth, its trust, its boast, — the foe should come. And so there only re- mained one common dirge for all.
16. Make thee bald, j^l [lit. shear ^] thee for thy delicate children. Some special ways of cutting the hair were forbidden to the Israelites, as l)eing idolatrous customs, such as the rounding the hair in front, cutting it away from the temples**, or between the eyes *. All shearing of the hair was not for- bidden**; indeed to the Nazarite it was com- manded, at the close of his vow. The re- moval of that chief ornament of the counte- nance was a natural expression of grief, which revolts at all personal appearance. It be- longed, not to idolatry, but to nature*^. Thy
w Neh. xi. 30. » Maco. xlL 38.
« see S. Jer. ah. p. 235.
BRcT. O. Williams, MS. letter.
«8ee on .\m. viil. lu. vol. 1. p. 327. '
•* Lev. xix. 27. againnt Arab idolatry. See Herod, ili. 8. • Dout. xiv. I. *a.s Hltzig Bays.
*See Job i. 2i), early Greeoo, (II. 2:^, 44i, i:v» ^qq. Aloestis 4U9. non-EKVpiian nations, (Horod. ii. 30.) Persians, (Ib. ix. 24.)' Scythians (lb. iv. 7L) ThesBfr- iiaos, Macedonians (Plut^ Poiop. M,)
CHAPTER L
27
c H rTs t ^^ children ; enlarge thy
cir. 750.
baldness as the eagle; for
ddieaU chUdrtn, The change was the more bitter for those tended and brought up deli- cately. Moses from the first spake of special miseries which should Ml on the tender and very delicate. Eidarae thy baldness ; outdo in grief what otheis do ; for the cause of thy grief is more than that of others. Tiie point of comparison in the Eagle might either be the actual baldness of the head, or its moult- ing. If it were the baldness of the head, the word translated eaale ', although mostly used of the Eagle itseli, might here comprehend the Vulture ^ For entire baldness is so marked a feature in the vulture, whereas the "bald-headed Eagle'' was probably not a bird of Palestine '. On the other hand, David, who lived so long among the rocks of Pales- tine, and Isaiah seem to have known of efiects
iThe etymology, (Arab, nasara "tore with the beak,") belongs rather to the eugle with its sharp, than to the vulture with its long, piercing beak. (The Kamoos, Freytag'n authority for. rendering ruur vulture, onlv says **a bird," adding that it is the name of "the constellation," i.e. Aquila. In Ulug Begh Tab. Stell. 49, 5(). the okab and the nasr both occur as names of the constellation. Kazwini in Ideler [Sternkunde p. ;i8.'>] says tiiat the *okah is three stars of the form of the flying nasr.) Leo Afr. [Desor. Afr. ix. 66.^ says that "tl'ie largest species of eagle is called Nesir." 2) Unless neither be the golden Eagle, there ip no Hebrew name for it, whereas it is still a bird of Palestine, and smaller eagles are mentioned in the same verse, Lev. xi. 13; viz. the owifragty QlDt and the black eagle, T}^}]^, so called
from its strength, like the Valeria, of which Pliny says, "the melanoetos or Valeria, least in size, remarkable for strength, blackish in color." x. 3. The same list of unclean birds contains also the vulture^ nn, Deut. xiv. i:i, (as it must be, being a gregarious bird, Ls. xxxiv. 15.) in its different species ; (Deut ib.) the gier-ea<ile, (i. e. Geyer) fvul- ture] eagle, gypaetos, or Vnltur percnopterus, (Has- selquist, Forskal, Shaw, Bruce in Savigny p. 77.) part4iking of the character of both, (OH*^ Lev. xi. is. Deut xiv. 17.) together with the falcon (HHl Lev. xi. 14.) and hawk, with its subordinate species,
Onj'oS |*J) Lev. xL 18. Deut xiv. 16.
« In this case, nesher, being a name taken from a quality common to birds of prey, might at once be a generic terra, corresponding to the mmlern term, (aves) rapaees, and mi^ht also designate what all account the king of birds. Its Greek name atrbt is doubtless the Hebrew, 0'>% (Bochart ii. 2. p. 170.)
a generic name for birds of prey. The Gypaetos forms a link between the vu ture and the eagle. Seeing the prey afar, lofty tiijcht out of human sight, strength of pinion, building nests in the rocks, attributed in H. Scr. to the nesher. belong also to the vulture. The feeding on dead )x>dies belongs especially to the vulture, although affirmed of eagles also if the body lie not decayed. The Arabic nasr seems to comprise the vulture also. See in Boch. ii. 27. T. iil. p. 79 sqq. Leipz. Savigny says, **Nisr is a generic name which has always been translated Aquila, but now the people and Arabic naturalists use it fo designate the great vul- ture.'* (Descr. de I'Eg. i. 73.) and of 'Okab, " 'Okab is a generic name, but it becomes specific for the urnali black eacrle which, properly speaking, is the 'Okflb." (Ib. 85.) s " The only ' bald-headed Eagle * is an American
Before
they are gone into captivity c h r i s t from thee. c'''- '^^-
of moultins upon the Eagle in producing, (idthough m a less degree than in other birds.) a temporary diminution of strength, which have not in modem times been com- monly observed. For David says*. Thou shall renew, like the eagle, thy youth, which speaks of fresh strength alter temporary weakness ; and Isaiah ^, T/iey thai trust in the Lord shall put forth • fresh strength ; they shall put forth pinum- fealhers'' like eagles, comparing the fresh strength which should succeed to that which was gone, to the eagle's recovering its strong pinion-feathers. Bochart however says un- hesitatingly, "®At the beginning of spring, the rapacious birds are subject to sliedding of their feathers which we call moulting." If this be so, the comparison is yet more vivid, For the baldness of the vulture belongs to
rather than an European species. Though it is not exclusively of the new world^ it is yet rarely seen in the old, and then chiefiv in the Northern lati- tudes." Dr. Rolleston, MS. letter, who kindly guided me to the modern authorities Quoted above. * Ps. ciii. 6. » xl. 31.
•HD 1fl"'Sn\ «)Sn to succeed to (as in Arab.
whence Chaliph) is used of the f^esh shoots of grass, (Ph. xc. 5, 6.) of the stump of a felled tree, put- ting forth fresh suckers, Job xiv. 7. then, causa- tively, of the putting forth fresh strength, in contrast with the exhaustion ancT utt-er stumbling of the young and strong. In Arab. conj. iv. one of its many special meanings is '* put forth fresh feathers" after moulting.
7 Bochart ii. 1. T. 11. p. 745. So the LXX wrtpwbvi^ aovaiy. S. Jer. assument pennas. So also Syr.
Saad. n 7j7n is used of bringing flesh on the
bones, (Ez. xxxvli. 6.) putting on the figures of Cherubim on the veil, (2 Chr. iil. 14.) gold on « shield, (1 Kp x. 17.) dress, 2 Sam. 1. 24. Am. viii. 10. The E. V. (lit "they shall ascend a pinion fi. e. with a pinion] like eagles,") would Hot be too bold, but for the correspondence of Ps. cili. 6. The word "^IKi rendered wings E. V., is, in Esek. xvil. 3, dis- tinguished from the wing itself and the plumage ; as is n^DK Job xxxix. 13. In Ps. Ixviii. 14. nn3K must be the pinion-feathers, not the pinions; and 8o n^DH in Ps. xci. 4. In Job xxxix. 26, the de- nom. UK* might mean the same, (Boch. Ib.) the first hemistich describing the acouiring the new feathers, the 2d the emigration of tne hawks. The radical meaning of IDK is strength.
* Bochart, Hieroz. ii. 1. p. 744, 6. The Kamoos quotes, among the 10 characteristics of the A nook, (the Rachma, Heb. Ori"^), " It flies in the tinio of shedding it^ feathers and is not imperilled in its young plumage, Ac." Boch. ii. 26. T. lii. p. 57. De- metrius Const, iu his 'Icpaxoo-o^. gives remedies for making fresh feathers put forth fast, (c. 17.) and grow quick, (c. 18.) and against diseases in moulting, (c. 32.) showing that birds erf prey are liable to the same law as other birds. (See Buffon^ Hist Nat 1. 44, 6. 69, 70.) Cuvier says, " In certain states of moulting, you see in the plumage [of the royal eagle] the white at the base of the feathers. It is then called Faleo Canadensis." (Rdgne Animal.) To this Grey add.t. that the names Melanaetos and Mogilnik (in Gmelin) only describe it when moult- ing. (Cuvier Anim. Kingd. vi. 33.) So then the change at moulting is so great, that the royal eagle, when moulting, has been thought to be four diner- ent species.
28
MICAH.
Before
CHRIST
cir. 730.
CHAPTER n.
1 AgaiivBl oppression, 4 A hm- entatioiL 7 A reproof of inr juBtiee and idolcUry. 12 A promise of restoring Jacob.
H ^OE to them Mhat de- cHR^'faT vise iniquity, and c^r. 730.
its matured strength, and oould only be an external likeness. The moulting of the eagle involves some degree of weakness, with which he compares Judah's mournful and weak con- dition amid the loss of their children, gone into captivity *.
Thus closes the first general portion of the propliecy. The people had cast aside its own Glory, God ; now its sons, its pride and its trust, shall go away from it.
" * The eagle, laying aside its old feathers and taking new, is a symbol of penitence and of the penitents who lay aside their former evil habits, and become other and new men. True, but rare form of penitence I" S. Gregory the Great thus a))plies this to the siege of Rome by the Lombards. '"'That happened to her which we know to have been foretold of Judea by the Prophet, en- large thy baldness like the eagk. For baldness bemlls man in the head only, but the eagle in its whole bod^ ; for, when it is verv old, its feathers and pmions fall from all its lx)dy. 8he lost her feathers, who lost her people. Her pinions too fell out, with which sne vib^ wont to fly to the prey ; for all her mighty men, through whom she plundered others, perished. Rut this which we speak of, the oreaking to pieces of the city of Rome, we know has been done in all the cities of the world. Some were desolated by pestilence, others devoured by the swonl, others racked by famine, others swallowed by earthquakes. Despise we them with our whole heart, at least, when brought to nought ; at least with the end of the world, let us end our eager- ness after the world. Follow we, wherein we can, the deeds of the gtxxi." One whose commentaries S. Jerome had read, thus ap- plies this verse to the whole human race. " O soul of man I O city, once the mother of saints, which wast formerly in Paradise, and didst enjoy the delights of different trees, and wast adorned most beautifully, now being cast down from thy place aloft, and brought down unto Babylon, and come into a place of captivity, and having lost thy glory, make thee balil and take the habit of a penitent ; and thou who didst fly aloft like an eagle, mourn thy sons, thy offspring, which from thee is kvl captive."
1 In Greek alao the loes of wealth by pillasce is compared to moulting, not in Aristopii. Av. 284-0. onlv, but in Philosti-atua, **he moults as to the wealth," p. 273.
> Lap. s in Ezek. Horn. 18, fin. L.
«DioiL ftBup.Rib.
**work evil upon their •Hoe.v.e. beds! when the morning is light, they practise it, be-
Chap. II. The Prophet had declared that evil should come down on Samaria and Je- rusalem for their sins. He had pronounced them sinners against God ; he now speaks of their hard unlovingness toward man, as our Blessed Lord in the Grospel speaks of sins against Himself in His members, as the ground of the condemnation of the wicked. The time of warning is past. He s])eaks as in the person of the Judge, declaring the righteous judgments of God, pronouncing sentence on the hardened, but blessing on those who follow Christ. The sins thus vis- ited were done with a high hand ; first, with forethought :
1. WoCy all woe, woe from God; "*the woe of temporal captivity ; and, unless ye re- pent, the woe of eternal damnation, hangeth over you." Woe to them that devise iniauity. They devise it, "*they are not led into it by others, but invent it out of their own hearts." They plot and forecast and fulfill it even in thought, before it comes to act. And work evil upon their beds. Thoughts and imagina- tions of evil are works of the soul •. l^pon their beds'', which ought to be the place of holy thought, and of communing with their own hearts and with God"*. Stillness must be filled with thought, good or bad ; if not with good, then with bad. The chamber, if not the sanctuary of holy thoughts, is fiU^ with unholy purposes and imaginations. Man's last and first thoughts, if not of good, are es- pecially of vanity and evil. The Psalmist says •, Lordf have I not ixmembered Thee in my bedj and thought upon Thee when I was waking f These men thought of sin on their bed, and did it on waking. When the morning is light, lit. in the light of the morning^ i. e, instantly, shamelessly, not shrinking from the light of day, not ignorantly, but knowingly, deliber- ately, in full light. Nor again through in- firmity, but in the wantonness of might, be- cause it is in the power of their hand *®, as, of old, God said ^\ This they begin to do, and now noth- ing will be restrained from them which they haoe wiagined to do. ""Impiously mighty, and mighty in impiety."
*^ ISee the need of the daily prayer, " Vouch- safe, O Lord, to keep us this day without sin ; " and " Almighty God, Who hast brought
• Ps. Iviii. 2. y See Ps. xxxvi. 4.
Mb. iv.4. 'Ixiii. 6.
10 This phrase can have no other meaning. Gen. xxxi. 29. rrov. iii. 27; nor the corresponding phrase with the negative, Deut. xxviiL 32. Neh. v. 5.
u Gen. XL d. » Rup. u from lap.
CHAPTER 11.
29
^c H R^fs T ^^^"^ "it is in the power of
c^'"- 730. their hand. •Gen. 81. 20. 2 And they covet * fields,
and take them by violence ;
and houses, and take them I Or, dflfraud. away : so they || oppress a
us to the beginning of this day, defend us in the same by Thy mi«fhty power, that we may fall into no sin, &c. The illusions of the night, if such be permitted, have no power against the prayer of the morning.
2. And they covet fields and take them by viokruxy [rend them auxiy] and houses, and take them away. Still, first they sin in heart, then in act. And yet, with them, to covet and to rob, to desire and to take, are the same. They were prompt, instantaneous, without a scruple, in violence. So soon as they coveted, they took *. Desired, acquired ! Ooveted, robbed I " They saw, they coveted, they took," had been their past history. They did violence, not to one only, but, touched with no mercy, to whole families, their little ones also ; they oppressed a man and his house. They spoiled not goods only, but life, a man and his inherilanee ; destroying him by false accusations or violence and so seizing upon his inheritance'. Thus Ahab first coveted Kaboth's vineyard, then, through Jezebel, slew him ; and " * they who devoured widow's houses, did at the last plot by night against Him of Whom they saia, Qrnie, let us kill Hifn, and the inherUanee shall be ou?s ; and in the morning^ they m-acticed ity leading Him away to Pilate." ***Who of us desires not the villas of this world, forgetful of the posses- sions of* Paradise 7 You see men join field to field, and fence to fence. Whole places suffice not to the tiny frame of one man." " * Such is the fire of concupiscence, raging within, that, as those seized by burning fevers cannot rest, no bed suffices them, so no houi^es or fields content these. Yet no more than seven feet of earth will suffice them soon. 'Death only owns, how small the frame of man."
3. Such had been their habitual doings. They had done all this, he says, as one con- tinuous act, up to that time. They were habitually devisers o^ iniquitifj doers of evif. It was ever-renewed. By night they sinned in heart and thought ; by day, in act. And so he speaks of it in the present. They do it ^ But, although renewed in fresh acts, it was one unbroken course of acting. And so
1 The force of iSlJ) HDH.
s Comp. the woes, Is. v. 7. on oppression ; 8 covetoas- ness.
» Theoph. * 8. Jer. » Rib.
• Jut. 8at.x. 172, 3. » p^ 'Sj^fl, jW OiyP.
man and his house, even a ^ hIITs t
man and his heritage. <^'''- '^^'
3 Therefore thus saith the Lord ; Behold, against
* this family do I devise an 'Jer. 8. s. evil, from which ye shall
he also uses the form, in which the Hebrews spoke of uninterrupted habits. They have cov- eted, they have robbed, they have, laken^. Now came God^s part.
Therefore, thus saith the Lord, since they op- press whole families, behold I will set Myself a^nst this whole family ^^ ; since they devise iniquity, behold I too, Myself, by Myself, in My own Person, am devising. Very awful is it, that Almighty God sets His own Infin- ite Wisdom against the devices of man and employs it fittingly to punish. " I am devis- ing no common punishment, but one to bow them down without escape ; an evil from which — He turns suddenly to them, ye shall not re^ move your necks, neither shall ye go haughtily, " "* Pride then was the source of that bound- less covetousness," since it was ^ pride which was to be bowed down in punishment. The punishment is |)roportionea to the sin. They nad done all this in pride ; they should have the liberty and self-will wherein they had wantoned, tamed or taken from them. Like animals with a heavy yoke upon them, they should live in disgraced slavery. The ten tribes were never able to withdraw their necks from the yoke. From the two tribes God re- moved it after the 70 rears. But the same sins against the love of (jrod and man brought on the same punishment. Our Lord again spake the woe against their covetousness ^\ It still shut them out from the service of God, or from receiving Him, their Redeemer. They still spoiled the goods ^' of their breth- ren. In the last dreadful siege, ""there were insatiable longings for plunder, search- ing-out of the houses of the nch ; murder of men and insults of women were enacted as sports; they drank down what they had spoiled, with blood." And so the prophecy was for the third time fulfilled. They who withdraw from Christ's easy yoke of obedi- ence shall not remove from the yoke of pun- ishment ; they who, through pride, will not bow down their necks, but make them stiff, shall be bent low, that they go not upright or haughtily anv more. ^* The Lord alone shall be exalted m that Day, For it is an evil time. Perhaps he gives a more special meaning to
Was in Am. iii. 1. vol. 1. p. 270. n S. Luke xvi. 13, 14. xi. 38. S. Matt xxlii. 14, 23, 25. S. Mark xii. 40. w Heb. X. 34. M Jos. B. J. It. 9. 10. add ▼. 1. m Is. li. 11.
30
MICAH.
chrTst ^^^ remove your necks; c^*"- '^^- neither shall ye go haught-
f Amos 5. 13. £ph. 5. 16.
ily : ' for this time m evil. 4 ^In that day shall cHab.2.6. one 'take up a parable
>»2Sam. 1. 17. . , vi
iHeh.witha agaiust you, and '^lament
lamentation of /^ , . y a t» t i
latnentations. J With a dolenil lamenta-
»v. 13.
« Deut xxviiL 37. 1 Kings ix. 7. 2 Chr. vii. 20. Ps. xliv. 15. Ixix. 12. Jer. xxir. 9. Ezek. xiv. 8.
» Is. xiv. 4. 4 Hab. ii. 6. » Jer. 1. c.
• Rib. ' Ps. Hi. 6, 7» Is. Ixvl. 24.
■ r\^r\} 'm nnj from the sounds, ^in passim, in in Am. T. 16. 'n Eaek. ii. 10. nn, i. q. 7V1H Ezek. xzx. 2.
• Jer. xxxL 16. » Ea. xxxiL 18. u Am. V. 16. Jer. ix. 17, 19.
M 1 Sam. vii. 2. Jer. ix. 18.
• n' jr]f FQret 8. T. "ni3Tn id.
1* There Is no plea for separating n^HJ in the sense, "it has been," like "fuit Ilium." Bv itself n^nj would mther be. "it came to pass." IDH also, which follows, explains what the proverb and
tion, and say, We be utter- ^ hr^is t ly spoiled: 'he hath eir. 730.
the words of Amos *, that a time of moral evil will be, or will end in, a Hme, full oievil, i. e. of sorest calamity.
4. In that day shaU one take up a parable against you. The mashal or likeness may, in itself be any speech in which one thing is likened to another ; 1) " figured speech, " 2) "proverb," and, since such proverbs were often sharp sayings against others, 3) " taunt- ing figurative speech.'' But of the person himself it is always Kiid, he is made, becomes a proverb \ To take up or utter such a speech against one, is, elsewhere, followed by the speech itself; ' Thou shall take up this parable O/gainsl the king of Babylon, and say, &e. * Shall not ail these take up a parable against him, and say, <!te. Although then the name of the Jews has passed into a proverb of reproach \ this is not contained here. The paraole here must be the same as the dol^U lamenlaHon, or dirge, which follows. No mockery is more cujtting or fiendish, than to repeat in jest words by which one bemoans himself. The dirge which Israel should use of themselves in sorrow, the enemy shall take up in de- rision, as Satan does doubtless the self-con- demnation of the damned. " • Men do any evil, undergo any peril, to avoid shame. Grod brings before us that deepest and eternal shame," the shame and everlasting contempt, in presence of Himself and angels and devils and the good ^, that we may avoid shame by avoiding evil.
And limenVwiih a ddeful Umientaiion, The words in Hebrew are varied inflections of a word imitating the sounds of woe. It is the voice of woe in all languages, because the voice of nature. Shall wail a wail of woe ®, It is the funeral dirge over the dead •, or of the living doomed to die^^; it is sometimes the
changed the portion of my tch. 1. 16. people: how hath he re- moved it from me I II turn- 1 o^ vMtead of ing away he hath divided our fields.
measured mourning of those employed to call forth sorrow", or mourning ^nerally**. Among such elegies, are still Zion-songs ^', (elegies over the ruin of Zion,) and mourn- ings for the dead ^*. The word woe is thrice ** repeated in Hebrew, in different forms, ac- cording to that solemn way, in which the extremest good or evil is spoken of; the threefold blessing, morning and evening, with the thrice-repeated name of God *•, impressing upon them the mystery which developed itself, as the Divinity of the Messiah and the personal agency of the Holy Spirit were unfolded to them. The dii^e wliich follows is purposely in abrupt brief words, as those in trouble speak, with scarce breath for utterance. First, in two words^ with perhaps a softened inflection", they express the uttemess of their desolation. Then, in a threefold sentence, each clause consisting of three short words, they say what God had done, but name Him not, because they are angry with Him. God's chastise- ments irritate those whom they do not subdue **. The portion of my people He changeth ; How removeth He (it) as to me / To a rebel *'our fields He divideth. They act the patriot. They, the rich, mourn over " the portion of my people " (they say) which they had themselves aespoiled : they speak, (as men do,) as if things were what they ought to be : they hold to the theory and ignore the facts. As if, because God ha^ divided it to His people, therefore it so re- mained ! as if, because the poor were in theory and by G<xi's law provided for, they were so in fact ! Then they are enra.fired at God's dealings. He removeth the portion as to m« / and to whom giveth He our fields ?
dirge is, as in Isaiah and Habakkuk. The single word n*n3i actum est, is no dirjce. The feminmo and masculine together make up a whole as in Is. iii. 1 ; or it might stand as a superlative, as in the Eng. Marg. w Num. vl. 24-26.
"^12^3 IXVO The ^ for the 1 repeating the sound 00.
w See ab. on Am. vi. 10. p. 207.
'• T\22W% *' backsliding, o<!cnrs Jer. xxxl. 22. and, of Aibmon, xlix. 4. This rendering is favored by
the contrast between the ^S and the 231tS^ 7i and
gives an adequate meanina; to the 7 in the 331Br7; whereas, as part of tho infinitiye, it is auperflaoua, and unusual as superfluous.
CHAPTER II.
31
5 Therefore thou shalt
Before CHRIST
cir. 730. have none that shall * cast
k Deut 32. 8, 9.
To a rebel ! the Assyrian, or the Chaldee. They had deprived the poor of their portion of Oie Lord 9 landK And now they marvel that God resumes the possession of Hb own, and requires from them, not the fourfold''^ only of their spoil, hut His whole heritage. Well might Assyrian or Chaldee, as they did, jeer at the word, renegade. They had not for- saken their gods ; — but Israel, what was its whole histozy but a turning back ? ' Hath a nation changed their gods, whioh yet are no godsf Bid My people have changed their ghryfor that which doth not profit.
Such was the meaning in their lips. The word dindeth had the more bitterness, because it was the reversal of that first division at tlie entrance into Canaan. Then, with the use of this same word \ the division of the land of the heathen was appointed to them. Ezekiel, in his great symbolic vision, afterward pro- phesied the restoration of Israel, with the use of this same term^ Joel spoke of the parting of their land, under this same term, as a sin ot the heathen ^ Now, they say, God divideth our fields, not to us, but to the Heathen, whose lands He gave us. It was a change of act : in impenitence, they think it a change of purpose or will. But what lies in that, we be utterly despoiled f Despoiled of everything ; of what they felt, temporal things; and of what they did not feel, spiritual things. Despoiled of the land of promise, the good things of this life, but also of the Presence of (rod in His Temple, the grace of the Lord, the image of God and ererlasting glory. Their 'portion was changed,, as to themselves and with others. As to themselves, riches, honor, pleasure,' their own hind, were changed into want, disgrace, suffering, captivity; and yet more bitter was it to see others gain what they by their own fault had forfeited. As time went on, and their transgression deepened, the exchange of the portion of that former people of God be- came more complete. The casting-off of the Jews was the grafting-in of the Gentiles. "^ Seeing ye judge yourselves unworthy of ever- lasting Ufej lo I we turn to the Gentiles. And so they who were ® no people, became the people of God, and they who were His people, became, for the time, ' not My people : and ^^ the adaption of sons, and the glory, and the cove- nants, and the lawgiving, and the service of God, and the promises, came to us Gentiles, since to
' 8ee on Hos. Ir. 3. vol. I. p. 88. s Ex. XX ii. 1. 2 Sam. xli. 6. 8. Lake xix. 8. • Jer. ii. 11.
^Num. xxvi. 63, 66, G. Josh. xiii. 7. xiv. 5. xviii. 2, 6, 10. xix. 61. * xlvii. 21. « iv. 2. [ill. 3. Eng.] T Acts xiil. 46. • Rom. x. 19. • Hos. i. 0.
a cord by lot in the congre- ^ h rTI t gation of the Lord. ^^^' '^'
us Christ Himself our God blessed for ever came, and made us His.
How hath He removed. The words do not say what He removed. They thought of His gifts, the words include Himself ^^. They say Howl in amazement. The change is so great and bitter, it cannot be said. Time, yea eternity cannot utter it. He hath divided our fields. The land was but the outward symbol of the inward heritage. Unjust gain, kept back, is restored with usury ; ^' it taketh away the life of the owners thereof The vineyard whereof the Jews said, the inherir tance shall be ours, was taken from them and ^iven to others, even to Christians. So now IS that awful change begun, when Christians, leaving God, their only unchanging Good, turn to earthly vanities, and, for the grace of God which He withdraws, have these only for their fleeting portion, until it shall be finally exchanged m the Day of Juc^^ent. *^ Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise iJazarus evil things; but now he is comforted and thou art tormented,
Israel defended himself in impenitence and self-righteousness. He was already the Pharisee. The doom of such was hopeless. The prophet breaks in with a renewed, Ther^ore. He had already prophesied that they should lose the lands which they had unjustly gotten, the land which they had pi-oianed. He- had described it in their own impenitent words. Now on the impenitence he pronounces the judgment which im- penitence entails, that Sey should not be restored
5. Therefore thou shall have none that shall cast a cord by lot in the congregation of the Lord. Thoti, in the first instance, is the impenitent Jew of that day. God had promised by Hosea ** to restore Judah ; shortly after, the Prophet himself foretells it **. Now he fore- warns these and such as these, that thev would have no portion in it. They had " neither part nor lot in this matter. They, the not-Israel then, were the images and en- samples of the not-Israel afterward, those who seem to be God's people and are not ; members of the body, not of the soul of the Church ; who have a sort of faith, but have not love. Such was afterward t)ie Israel after the flesh, which was broken off, while the true Israel was restored, passing out of them- selves into Christ Such, at the end, shall be
w Rom. Ix. 4, 5.
11 Bf'O^ is mostly transitive; it was intransitive ii. 3, and is so (if not Kal) Prov. xvii. 13. w Prov. i. 19. " 8. Luke xvi. 26.
M See on Hos. v. 11. vol. i. p. 60, i»ii.l2. MActsvill.21.
32
MICAH.
c H rTs t 6 II f Propheey ye not, cir. 7:»). ^y tJi^ tQ them that proph-
fiJif <u i^ esy : they shall not prophe- t^e?. ih^, Ac sy to them, thai they shall
Ezek. 21. i. X J. 1 1-
1 if>Ai. 30. 10. not take sbame.
1 Rib. « Rot. xxI. 27. » S, Luke xi. 52.
«Poc. ^ives this distribution of the words from Abulwahd v. RCSJ.
*See on Am. vii. 16. toI. L p. 322. • Ezok. ii. 10. 7 1 Kinwi xxii. 18.
» Acta Iv. 18. V. 40. » lb. t. 28. w lb. vi. 13.
u nS)-0\ M Ezek. ii. 6. 7. " xxviii. »-14. 22.
named the house of Jacob, ^ hIus t is the spirit of the Lord g^r- 73o.
those, who, being admitted by Christ into Meir portion, renounce the world in word not in deed. Such shall have " * no portion for ever in the eonffregalion of the Lord, For' nothing defiled shall enter there, nor whatsoever toorkeih abomination or a lie, but they which are written in the Lambda book of life"
The ground of their condemnation is their resistance to light and known truth. These not onlv' entered not in, themselves, but, being hinderers of God's word, them thai were entering in, they hindered,
6. Prophesy ye not, say they to them that prophesy ; they Ihall not prophesy to them, thai they shall not take shame. The words are very emphatic in Hebrew, from their briefness, Pronhesy not ; they shaU, indeed prophesy ; they shall not prophesy to these; shame maU not depart *. The people, the false prophets, the politicians, forbade God and Micah to pro- phesy ; Prophesy not, God, by Micah, recites their prohibition to themselves, and fore- warns them of the consequences.
Prophesy ye not, lit. drop noL Amaziah and tne (rod-opposing party had already given an unorodly meaning to the word *. " Drop not," "distill not," thus unceasingly, these same words, ever warning, ever telling of • lamenlatlon and mourning and woe ; prophesu- ing not good concerning us, but evil^. So their descendants commanded the Apostles** not to speak at all or to teach in the Name of Jesus, ^ Did we 7iot straitly command you, that ye should not teach in this Namet *° This man ceaseth not to speak blasphemous words against this holy nla/x and the law, God answers; They shall certainlv prophesy. The Hebrew word ia emphatic ". The Prophets had their commission from God, and Him they must obey, whether Israel ** would hear or whether they would forbear, • So must Micah and Isaiah *' now, or Jeremiah **, Ezekiel, and the rest afterward. They shall not prophesy to these. He does not say only, They shall not prophesy to them, but, to these ; i, e. they shall prophesy to others wbo would receive their words: God's word would not be stayed; they who would hearken shall never be de-
II straitened ? are these his I or, shortawit doings? do not my words do good to him that walk-
eth t uprightly ? f Heb. upright f
prived of their portion ; but to these who de- spise, they shall not prophesy. It shall be all one, as though they did not prophesy ; the soft rain shall not l)edew them. The bam- fl(X)r shall be dr^', while the fleece is moist". So God says by Isaiah " ; I will (dso command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it The dew of God's word shall be transferred to others. But so shame [lit. shames '^, manifold shame,] sAaU not depart, but sludl rest upon them for ever. God would have turned away the shame from them ; but they, despising His warnings, drew it to themselves. It was the natural fruit of their doings ; it was in its natural home with them. God snake to them, that they might be freed from it. They silenced His Propliets ; deafened them- selves to His words ; so it departed noL So our Lord says **, Now ye say, we see ; therefore your sin renmineth; and S.John Baptist*', The wrath of God abideih on him. It hath not now first to come. It is not some new thing to be avoided, turned aside. The sinner has but to remain as he is ; the shame encom- passeth him already; and only departcth not. The wrath of God is already upon him, and abideih on him.
7. 0 thou that art named the house of Jacob ; as Isaiah says *, Hear ye this, 0 house of Jwxb, which are called by the name of Israel— ^hich make mention of the God of Israel, not in truth, nor in righteousness. For they call themselves of the holy city, and stay themselves upon the God of IsrheL They lx)asted of what convicted them of faithlessness. They relied on being what in spirit they had ceased to be, what in deeds they denied, children of a believing forefather. It is the same temper which we see more at large in their descendants ; '^ We be Abraham^ s seed and were never in bondage to any man; how aayest Thou, ye shall be made freef ^Abraham is our Father, It is the same which S. John Baptist and our Lord and S. Paul reproved. ** Think not to say within yoursdves, we haxe Abraham to out father. **If ye were Abraham^ s elnldrcTi, ye would do the works of Abraham. Now ye seek to kill Me-, a Man tlioi hath told you the truth — This did not
M !. 7. 17. xxvi 10-15. w Judg. vi. 37.
"Is. V. 6.
'^ niD^Z) as IWJ^W^f omnigensB salutes, mani- fold 5>alTation. " S. John ix. 41. i» lb. ill. 36. » xl viii. 1.
ns. John viii.33. ^Ib. 39.
» S. Matt. iii. 9. »* S. John viii. 30, 40.
CHAPTER IL
33
chrTst ^ Even tof late my peo- cir. 730. pie ia risen up as an enemy :
iHlh!"^^^' ye puU off the robe f with
againtt a garment.
Abraham. ' He is not a Jew which is (me out- wardly j neither is thai eirewmcision which is out- ward in the flesh. — Behold thou art called a JeWj and restest in the law and makesi thy boast oj God^ and knowest His Will and approvest the things thai are more excellent — &c. The Pro- phet answers the unexpressed objections of those who forbade to prophesy evu. " Such could not be of God," these said ; " for God was pledged by His promises to the house of Jacob. It would imply change in God, if He were to cast off those whom He had chosen." Micah answers; ^'not God is changed, but you." God's promise was to Jacob, not to those who were but nctmed Jacob, who called themselves after the name of their father, but did not his deeds. The Spirit of the Lord was not straitened^ so that He was less long- suffering than heretofore. These, which He threatened and of which they complained, were not His doings, not what He of His own Nature did, not what He loved to do, not His, as the Author or Cause of them, but theirs. God is Good, but to those who can receive good, the upright in hearth God is only Loving unto IsraeL He is all Love; nothing but * Love : all His ways are Love ; but it follows, unto what Israel, the true Israel, the pure of heart. * All the paths of the Lord are mercy and trvJth ; but to wnom ? unio such ajs keep Mis cownant and His testimonies. • The mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting ; hut unto them that fear Him. But, they becoming evil, His good became to them evil. Light, wholesome and gladdening to the healthful, hurts weak eyes. That which is straight cannot suit or fit with the crooked. Amend your crookedness, and God's ways will be stniight to you. Vo not My words do good f He doth speak ^ good words and camfortr able words. They are not only good, but do good. ^His word is with power. Still it is
1 Rom. ii. 17-28.
*nn ^]fpf (03 In part Zech. zi. 8,) as opposed to
DliJK 1*1K (Ex- xxziv. 6. &c. longanimis, longsof-
fering,) and 1. q. D'flH 1]f p Pro v. xx. 17, coll. 29.
• Ps. 1 xxiii. 1. * The force of •]«.
* Pb. XXV. 10, « Ps. ciii. 17. 8. Luke 1. fiO. 7 Zech. i. 13. 'S. Luke iv. 32. • Jer. vi. 14. » Rom. xL 22.
n '71Dn« is L q. S^DflK, in Is. xxx. 33.
«S.Jer.
" DD1p% in Isaiah (xllv. 28. Ivill. 12. Ixi. 4.) transi- tive, but only of the raising up, rebuilding of ruins. The use of DDlp actively in that one sense is no
ground for taking It so, where the idea is different. To raise up an adversary, is expressed by D^pil
3
Before
the garment from them qhrist that pass by secxirely aa cir. 730. men averse from war.
with those who walk uprightly; whether those who forsake not, or those who return to, the way of righteousness. God flattereth not, deceiveth not, promiseth not what He will not do. He cannot • speaJc peace where there is no peace. As He saith, ^^ Behold the goodness ana severity of God; on them which fell, severity, but toward thee, aoodness, if thou continue in His goodness. God Himself could not make a heaven for the proud or envious. Heaven would be to them a hell.
8. Even of late [lit. yesterday ^l"] ""He imputeth not past sins, out those recent and, as it were, of yesterday." Mi; people is risen up vehemently ". God upbraideth them ten- derly b^ the title, Mine own people, as S. John complaineth '*, He came unto His men, and His own received Him not. God became not their enemy, but they arose as one man, — is risen up, the whole of it, as His. In Him they might have had peace and joy and assured
fladness, but they arose in rebellion against lim, requiting Him evil for good, (as bad Christians do to Christ,) and brought war upon their own heads. This they did by their sins against their brethren. Casting on the love of man, they alienated themselves from the love of God.
Ye pull off \^8trip off violently "] the robe with the garment, lit. over against the cloak. The sahmh ^^ is the large enveloping cloak, which was worn loosely over the other dress, and served by night for a covering*'. Eder^^, translatea robe, is probably not any one gar- ment, but the remaining dress, the comely, becoming *•, array of the person. These they stripped violently off from persons, peaceable, unofiending, ofl* their guard, passing by se- curely, men averse from war ^ and strife. These they stripped of their raiment by day, leav- ing them half-naked, and of their covering for the night So making war against God's
Mic. y. 4. Am. vl. 14. 1 Kings zi. 14. and so raising up evil also.
Ml. 11.
u pDtfi^fln. This is intensive, as in Arabic
"HdSb^ here and Ex. xxiL 8. 1. q. nSoB^, else- where.
" Deut. xxll. 17.
M 11K occurs here only. There* is no ground to identify it with the well-known P'^IK. It is not likely that the common garment should have been called, this once, by a different name ; nor that the PIIM, a wide enfolding garment, (see on Jonah ill. 6. vol. i. p. 416,) should have been worn together
with the noSfe^.
wThis meaning seems to lie In the root; comp. <rToA^, array, apparel, dress.
»01l? is doubtless an adjective form, distinct ft-om the participle ^2lff, (Is. lix. 20.) like n)D Jer. 11.21.
34
MICAH.
chrTst ^ "^^ llwomen of my dr. 730. people have ye cast out
from their pleasant housee ; from their chUdren have
I Or, wives.
peacefulpeople, they, as it were^ made war against Uod.
9. The women of my people haxie ye ead out from their plea&arU hovies, [lit. from her pleasant house,'] each from her home. These were probably the widows of those whom they had stripped. Since the houses were their's, they were widows ; and 80 their spoilers were at war with those whom Grod had committed to their special love, whom He had declared the objects of His own tender care, the widows and the fatherless. The widows they drove vehemently forth\ as having no portion in the inheritance which God had given them, as God had driven oat their enemies before them, each/?*oin her pleasant houaey the home where she had liv^ with her husband and cliildren in delight and joy.
From lqff"\ their [young ^^ children have ye taken away my glory, Ftimarily, the glory, comeliness, was t*he fitting apparel which Goa hod given them *, and laid upon them *, and which these oppressors stripped offhom them. But it includes all the gif^ of God, where- with God would array tliem. Instead of the holy home of parental care, the children grew up in want and neglect, away from all the ordinances of God, it may be, in a strange land. Forever. They never repented, never made restitution ; but so they incurred the special woe of those who ill-used the unpro- tected, the widow, and the fatherless. The words for ever anticipate the punishment. The punishment is according to the sin. They never ceased their oppression. They, with the generation who should oome after them, should be deprived of GK)d'8 glory, and cast out of His land forever.
10. Arise ye and depart Gk> your way, as being cast out of GK>d'8 care and land. It matters not whither they went. For this is not your resL As ye have done, so shall it be done unto you. As ye cast out the widow and the fatherless, so ohaM ye be cast out ; as
^ ptsnjn ia doubly intensive, as the intenaiye
form with the emphatic |. It is the word used of
God's driving out the nations before Israel, (Ex. Jud. Ac.) or of man being driven out of Paradise, fGen. iii. 24,) Hagar being cast out. (Gen. xxi. 10.) The word itself, by its rough sound, exproiises the more of harshnesfl ; and that as opposed to soft- ness, n^JlJirn. This is the same word as that ren- dered deUeate^ i. 16.
• as Hoe. VL 11. ' J Jl I. H. Mich.
« Ez. xvi 14. Id. » Rev. xilL la
• Deut xii. 9. 10. add 1 Kings yML 66.
• nm JDH h% the same word. • TVyTi.
ye taken away my glory chrTst
cir. 780.
for ever.
10 Arise ye, and depart; for this ta not ytmr ^ rest : "Deat is. 9.
ye gave no rest to those averse from war, so shall ye have none. ^ He that leadeth into captivity shaU go into eaptimty ; he that killeth With the sword must be killed with the sword. The land was given to them as a temporary rest, a symbol and earnest of the everlasting rest to the obedient. So Moses spake ^ ye are not as yet come to the rest ^ and the inhenr tanee which the Lord your God giveth you. But when ye go over Jordan, and dwell in Ute land which the Lord your Qod giveth you to inheritj and when He giveth you rest^from your enemies round about, so that ye dwell in safety, dte. And Joshua ', Remember the word v^ieh Moses com- manded you, saying, T%e Lord your God giveth you rest^^. But the Psalmist had warned them, that, if they hardened their hearts like their forefathers, they too would not enter into His rest ".
Because it is polluted [lit because of its poUtb' tion^*'] by idolatry, by violence, by unclean- ness. So Moises (uHing the same wonl) says, the land is defiled " by the abominations of the heathen ; and warns them, that the land spue you not out, when you defile it, as it spued out the nations which were before you. Ezekiel speaks of that defilement '^, as the ground why God expelled Israel ^^ It shall destroy you, even with a sore [lit. shcurp] destruction"^*. It is a sore thing to abuse the creatures of God to sin, and it is unfit that we should use what we have abused. Hence Holy Scripture speaks, as though even the inanimate crea- tion took part with Grod, made subject to tntir ibj, not willingly, and could not endure those who emploved it against His Will.
The wor^ Arise, depart ye, for this is tiqt your rest, beoune a sort of sacred proverb, spoken anew to the soul, whenever it would find rest out of God. *^" We are bidden to think of no rest for ourselves in any things of the world ; but, as it were, arising from the dead, to stretch upwards, and walk after the Lord our God, and say, My soul deaveth hard
•1.13. "n^JD.
nPs. xev. 11. oomp. nnmJD? Ps- cxxxii. 8.
IS as pointed in most accurate copies, without Metheg. " «DOn Lev. x viii. 27. D JKO 03 28.
M Eaok. xxxvi. 17.
M Ezek. XXX vL 18. add Jer. ii. 7. ,
w This is the common renderins^ of 73n. Othen*, with Sal. B. Mel. have understood it of traTall-painM, (Cant viii. 6. Ps. rii. 15.) but this would liave the opposite sense of bringing forth, re-blrth, not of ejection. (See Is. Ixvi. 8.) The sharp bitter pang would exprera the pains of travail, not its fhiitless- ness or that they were cast out any whither. Fruit- lessness of trarail-pangs is expressed, if intended, (as in Is. zxYl. 18.) uaJer.
CHAPTER n.
35
CHRIST I'^^^^^se it is "polluted, it cir. 730. shall destroy you, even with
■Lev. 18. 2S, 28. a sore destruction.
lo/,'waUcwith 11 If a man || "* walking
liefSSdy. in the spirit and falsehood
• Eiek. 13. 3. ^^ 2j^^ saying, I will proph-
et Thee, This if we neglect, and will not hear Him Who saith, Awake thou that deepegty cmd arise from the deadj and Christ shaU give thee light, we shall indeed slumher, but shall be deceived and shall not find rest; for where Christ enlighteneth not the risen sooly what seemeth to be rest, is trotible.'' All rest is wearisome which is not in Thee,0 our God.
11. ^ a man walking in the spirit and faJse- hood, lit. in spirit [not Mij Spirit] and falsc' hoody i. e. in a lying spirit ; such as they, whose woe Ezekiel pronounces ^, Woeuntothe foolish prophets who walk after their own spirit and wmU they have not seen '; prophets out of their own hearts, who ' prophesied a vision of falsehood, and a destruction and nothingness * ; prophesid falsehood ; yea, prophets of the deceit of their hearts. These, like tne true prophets, walked in spirit; as Isaiah speaks of walking in righteousness ^, and Solomon of one walking in thefrowardness of the mouth ^, Their habitual converse was in a spirit, but of falsehood. If such an one do lie, saying, I will prophesy unto thee of wine and strong drink, Man's conscience must needs have some plea in speaking falsely of God. The fidse prophets had to please the rich men, to embolden ^hem in their self-indulgence, to tell them that God would not puniui. They doubtless spoke of God's temporal promises to His people, the land,^oiom^ with milk and honey. His promises of abundant harvest and vintage, and assured them, that God would not withdraw these, ' that He was not so precise about His law. Micah tells them in plain words, what it all came to ; it was a prophesying of ia»e and strong drink.
mOaUevm be a* pn>phet(^thupe>yple, lit and shall be bedewing this people. He uses the same words^ which scomers of Israel and Judah employed in forbidding to prophesy. They said, drop not ; forbidding God's word as a wearisome dropping. It wore away their patience, not their nearts of stone. He tells them, who might speak to them without wearying, of whose words they would never tire, who might do habitually^ what they
JEzek. xiil. 3. « lb. 2. 17.
• Jer. xiv. 14, IpBT JITH, as here npB^I nn.
*Ib. xxiiL 26. add IDJff D'WJ xxviL 10, 14,
16. or IpM Jer. xxix. 9. ')T)tff moSn '«3J lb. xxiH.32.i , r
•xxxiiLie. ni^T3f-'7n.
esy unto thee of wine and ^ hrTs t of strong drink ; he shall ^^^- 73o- even be the prophet of this people.
12 ^'I will surely as- pch.4.6,7. semble, O Jacob, all of
forbade to God,— one who. in the Name of Grod, set them at ease in tneir sensual indul- gences. This is the seci'et of the success of everything opposed to Grod and Christ. Man wants a God. God has made it a necessity of our nature to crave ader Him. Spiritual, like natural, hunger, debarred from or loath- ing wholesome food, must be stilled, stifled, with what will appease its gnawing. Our natural intellect lon^ for Him ; for it cannot understand itself without Him. Our rest- lessness longs for Him ; to rest upon. Our helplessness longs for Him, to escape from the unbearable pressure of our unknown fu- turity. Our imagination craves for Him ; for, being made for the Infinite, it cannot be content with the finite. Aching aflections long for Him ; for no creature can soothe them. Our dissatisfied conscience longs for Him, to teach it and make it one witli itself. But man does not want to be responsible, nor to owe duty ; still less to be liable to penalties for disobeying. The Christian, not the natural man, longs that his wliole being should tend to God. The natural man wishes to be well-rid of what sets him ill at ease, not to belong to God. .And the horrible subtlety of false teaching, in each age or country, is to meet its own iavo- rite requirements without calling for self- sacrifice or self-oolation, to give it a god, such as it would have, sueh as mieht conteni it. " * The people willeth to be deceived, be it deceived,*' is a true proverb. 3£en turn away their ears from the truth • which thev dislike ; and so are turned unto fables whicli they like. They who receive not the love of the truth, — believe a lie *®. If men xvill not retain God in their knowledge, God giveth them over to an undistinguishing mind *^ They who would not receive our Lord, coming in His Father's Name, have ever since, as He said, received them who came in their own ". Men teach their teachers how they wish to be mistaught, and receive the eclio of their wishes as*the Voice of God.
1 2. lunll surely assemble, 0 Jaeob, all of thee ; I will sLrely gather the remTumt of Israel. God's
•nfl fXWpp ^Sin Pr. vl. 12. elsewhere with 3.
» The force of rj'DD HTI.
> Pqpulas valt decipl, deciplatur. »2Tira. Iv. 4.
»2The88.ii. 11.12. UBom.L28.
iss. JohDT. 48.
36
MICAH.
c H rTI t ^^ » ^ ^^ surely gather cir. 730. the remnant of Israel; I
«Jer. 31. 10.
will put them together "> as the sheep of Bozrah, as the
mercy on the penitent and belieying being the end of all His threatenings, the mention of it often bursts in abruptly. Christ is ever the Hope as the End of prophecy, ever before the Prophets' mind. The earthquake and fire precede the still small voice of peace in Uim. What seems then sudden to us, is connected in truth. The Prophet had said *. where was not their rest and how they should be cast forth ; he saith at once how they should be gathered to their everlasting rest. He had said, what promises of the false pro-
£het8 would noi be fulfilled '. But, despair 3ing the most deadly enemy of the soul, he does not take away their false hopes, without shewing them the true mercies in store for them. " » Think not," he would say, " that I am only 'a prophet of ill. The captivity foretold will indeed now come, and God's mercies will alK) come, although not in the way, which these speak of." The false prophets spoke of worldly abundance ministering to sensuality, ana of unbroken security. lie tells of God's mercies, but after chastisement, to the remnant of larael. But the restoration is complete, far beyond their then condition. He liad foretold the desolation of Samaria*, the captivity of Ju- dah * ; he foretells the restoration of ill Jafob^ as one. The images are partly taken (as is the Prophet's wont,) from that first deliver- ance from Egypt*. TAen, as the image of the future growth under persecution, God multiplied His people exceedingly'; then * the Lord went be/oi'e them by day in a pillar of a cloud to lead themtJie way ; then Gou brought thun vp ^ out of the house of bondage ^\ fiut their future prison-house was to be no land of Goshen. It was to be a captivity and a dispersion at once, as Hosea hiul already fore- told ". So he speaks of them emphatically ", as a great throng, nssembling I will assemble, 0 Jacoby all of thee ; gathering I will gather the remnant of Israel. The word, which is used of the gathering of a flock or its lambs ^', be-
1 ver. 10. • ver. 11. 'S. Jer.
« k 6. • L 16. ii. 4. • Hengst ChrisL i. 4J0.
TEx. i. 12. •lb. xiii. 21.
» Ex. iii. 8, 17. Lev. xi. 45. The people went up. Ex. xiii. 18. add. zii. 38. i. 10. MSee below, vi. 4.
11 See on Ho». vi. 11. vol. f . p. 70. ix. 17. p. 97. " cJD«K rJDK, ppK pp. "la xl. 11. xilL M.
M Deut XXX. a, 4. Roe Neh. i. 9.
i*Seo below, iv. 6. Ps. cvi. 47. evil. 3. Is. xi. 12. xliii. 5. liv. 7. Ivi. 8. Zoph. ill. 19, 20. Jor. xxiii. 3. xxix. 14. xxxi. 8, 10. xxxii. 37. Ezek xi. 17. xx. 34, 41. xxviii. 25. xxxiv. 13. xxxvii. 21. xxxviii. 8. xxxix. 27. Zech. X. 10.
' flock in the midst of their ^ hrTs t fold : ' they shall make ^ir. 730.
great noise by reason of 'Exek.s0.a7. the multitude of men.
came, from Moses' prophecy**, a received word of the gathering of Israel from the dis- persion of the captivity **. The return of the Jews from Babylon was but a faint shadow of the fulfillment. For, ample as were the terms of the decrees of Cyrus *• and Artaxerxes ", and widely as that of ('ynis was diffused *^, the restoration was essentially that of Judah, i. e. Judah, Benjamin and Levi *': the towns, whose inhabitants returned, were those of Judah and Benjamin '^ ; the towns, to which they returned, were of the two tribes. It was not a gathering of all Jacob; and of the three tril)es who returned, there were but few gath- ered, and they had not even an earthly kinif, nor any visible Presence of God. The words began to be fulfilled in the many '* tens of Oiousands who believed at our Lord's first Coming ; and all Jacob, that is, all who were Israelites indeed, the remnant according to the election of grace^, were gathered within the one fold of*^the Church, under One Shepherd. It shall be fully fulfilled, when, in the end, the fullness of the Gentiles shaU come in. and oil Israel shali be saved ^, All Jacob is the same as Uie remnant of Israel, the true Israel which remains when the false severed itself off'; all the seed-corn, when the chaff w:ts winnowed away. So then, whereas they were now scat- tered, then, God saith, / will put them together [in one fold] as the sheep of Bozrah, which abounded in sheep ^, and was also a strong city of Edom*; denoting how believers should be fenced within tiie Church, as by a strong wall, against which the powers of dark- ness should not prevail, and the wolf should howl around the fold, yet be unable to enter it, and £dom and the heathen should be- come part of the inheritance of Christ *•. As a flock in the midst of their fold, at rest, "*^ like sheep, still and subject to their shepherd's voice. So shall these, having one faith and One Spirit, in meekness and simplicity, obey the one rule of truth. Nor shall it be a small number;" for the place where they
M Ezr. 1. a-4. " vii. 1.^ w lb. i. 1.
" lb. i. 6. ii. 1. Iv. 1. X. 7, 9. Josephns, who nlone iTjentiona that Er.ra pent a oopy of Artaxerxes' letter to him, "to all those of his nation who were in Media," and that " many of them, takinc; their property, came to Babylon,' lonscinjc for tho return to Jenisolem," adds, ** but the whole people of Israelites [i.e. the great maas] remained where they were.^ Ant. xi 5, 2.
» Ezr. ii. Neh. vii. n livpw^ Acts xzi. 20.
« Rom. xi. 6. » lb. xi. 26, 6.
•♦ Is. xxxiv. G.
» See on Am. i. 12. vol. i. p. 252L
*8ee on Am. ix. 12. vol. i. p. 337. « Bup.
CHAPTER II.
37
c HR°i8 T ^^ '"^^ breaker is come ^^^' "30. up before them : they have
shall be gathered shall be too narrow to con- tain them, as is said in Isaiah ; Give place to me, that I may dtoeU \
They 8haU make great noise (it is the same word as our hum, "the hum of men,") by reaaon of the multitude of men. He explains his image, as does Ezekiel \ And ye are My floekj the Jiock of My pasture ; men are ye; I, your Crody saUh the Lord God : and, ^ As a flock of holy thirty as the flock of Jerusalem in her sol- emn feasts ; so shall the waste cities be full of a flock of men, and they shall huno thai I am tlie Lord. So many shall they be, that *' through- out the whole world they shall make a great and public sound in praising God, filling Heaven and the green pastures of Paradise with a mighty hum of praise ; " as St. John saw * a great multitude which no man could nunv- ber, "*with one united voice praising the Good Shepherd, Who smoothed for them all rugged places, and evened them by His Own Steps, Himself the Guide of their way and the Gate of Paradise, as He saith, / am the Door; through Whom, bursting through and going beforCj being also the Door of the way, the flock of believers shall break through It. But this Shepherd is their Lord and King." Not their King only, but the Lord God; so that this, too, bears witness that Chiist is God.
13. The Breaker is come up {gone up) before them; they have broken up^ (broken through*) and have passed the gate, and have gone forth. The image is not of conquest, but of deliver- ance. They break through, not to enter in but to pa^ through the gate ana ap forth. The wall of the city is ordfinarily broken through, in order to make an entrance^, or to secure to a conqueror th^ power of entering in® at any time, or by age and decay •. But here the object is expressed, to go forth. Plainly then they were confined before, a.s in a prison ; and the gnte of the prison was burst open, to set them free. It is then the same image as when God says by Isaiah ^^ ; I will say to the North, give up ; and to the South, Hold not back, or ", Go ye forth of Babylon, Say ye, the Lord
* xlix. 20. * xxzIt. 3L • lb. zxxvi. 38.
* Rev. vii. 9. * Rap.
* ]nD is to break through, as, enemies surround- ing one, 2 Sam. v. 20. 1 Chr. xiv. 11. break in pieces ») AM to ecatteff Ps. Ix. 3. brecJc through or down a wall, (5»oe references in 30, 31,33.) and with 3, "burst uiM><' of God's inflictions, £x. xix. 22, 24. 2 Sam. VI. 8. Pfl. cvi. 29. 1 Chr. xiil. 11. xv. 13.
T P«. Ixxx. l.^ Ixxxix. 41. Is. V. 6. Neh. li. 13. •ProT. XXV. 28. 2 Kgs xiv. 13. 2 Chr. xxv. 23. xxvL 6. » 2 Chr. xxxii. 5. » xliii. 6. " lb. xlviil. 20.
M lii. 11, 12. IKVP, AS here )HT ; and D3' Jfl^ni^H
ooiresponding to DD^J£)^ Tlh]^.
broken up, and have passed ^ hrTs t through the gate, and are Q"*- '^^-
hath redeemed His servant Jacob; or, with the same reminiscence of God's visible leading of His people out of Egypt, " Depart ye, de- P^^l y^f /or y« ^haU not go out with h^ste, nor yet by flight, for the Lord Ood shall go before you, and the God of Israel will be your reward ; or as Hosea describes their restoration " ; Then shall the children of Judah and the children of Israel be aathered together and appoint themselves one Heaa, and they shall go up out of the land ^*. Elsewhere, in Isaiah, the spiritual meaning of the deliverance from the prison is more distinctly brought out, as the work of our « Redeemer ". Twill give Thee for a covenant of the people, for a light of the Gentiles, to open the blind eyes, to bring out the prisoners from the prison, them that sit in darkness out of the pris- on-house; and ", the Spirit of the Lard God is upon Me, because the Lord hath anointed Me to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the open- ing of the prison to them that are baund.
From this passage, the " Breaker-through " was one of the titles of the Christ, known to the Jews *^, as One Who should be " ^® from below and from above " also ; and from it they believed that " ^' captives should come up from Gehenna, and the Shechinah/' or the Presence of God, " at their head." " » He then. Who shall break the way, the King and Lord Who shall go up before them, shall be the Good Shepherd, Who puts them together in the fold. And this He doth when, as He saith, *^ He putteth forth His own sheep, and He goeth before them and the sheep foUow Him, for they know His Voice. How doth He go be- fore them but by suffering for them, leaving them an exam^e of sufiering, and opening the entrance of Farad ise ? The Good Shep- herd goeth up to the Cross, ^and is lifted up from the earth, laying down His Life for His sheep, to draw all men unto Him. He goeth up, trampling on death by His resurrection ; He goeth up above the heaven of heavens, and sitteth on the Right Hand of the Father, opening the way before them, so that the flock, in their lowliness, may arrive where • the Shepherd went before in His Majesty.
wi. 11. (IL2.Heb.) • " VIKn TD iSjT in reference to Egypt, (see on Hos. i. 11. vol. i. p. 26) as here D^J?.
w Is. xlli. 6, 7.
w Is. Ixi. 1. " Huls. Theol. Jud. pp. 143, 144.
u R. Mos. Haddars. in Mart Pug. Fid. p. 432. It is interpreted of the Messiah in the Beresnith Rabba, g 48. f. 47. 2. (Sch5ttg. de Mess. p. 61.) the Echa Rab- baihi, f. 60. 2, (lb. p. 69.) the Penile ta Rabbathi, f. 60. 1, (lb. p. 135.) and the Midrash Mishle, ad c. vi. 1. (lb. ad loc. p. 212.) So also Jonathan, Kashi, Tan- chum, Abarbanel in Poc.
i» Quoted by Pearson on the Creed, art 6, note y.
«> Rup. n &. John x.4. « lb. 16. zii. 32.
38
MICAH.
_ <^^^^- '^^- king shall pass before them, • H08.3.6. '^ ^
And when He thus breaketh through and openeth the road, thej also break through and pass through the aate and go otUby U,hj that Gate, namely, whereof the Psalmist saith \ This 18 the Oate of the Lord ; the righteous shall enter into It What other is this Gate than that same Passion of Christ, beside which there is no gate, no waj whereby any can enter into life? Through that open portal, wliich the lance of the soldier made m His Side when crucified, and there came thereout Blood and Watery they shall pass and go through, even as the childi:en of Israel passed through tlie Red Sea, which divided before thera, when Pharaoh, his chariots and horsemen, were drowned." "'He will be in their hearts, and will teach and lead them; He will 8hew them the way of Salvation, ^guid- ing their feet into the way of peace, and they shall pass through the strait and narrow gate which leadeth unto life ; of which it is writ- ten*, Enler ye in at the. strait gate; because strait is the gate and ncuTOw is the way which leadeth unto life, arid few there be thai find iL And their Kino shall pass before M«m, as He did, of old. in the figure of the cloud, of which Moses saia *, If Thy Presence go not, carry us nM up hence; aryi wherein shall it be known that I have found grace in Thy sight, land Thy people, is it not in that Thou goest up with us f and as He then did when He passed out of this world to the Father. And t/ie Lord on (that is, ai) the head of them, as of His army. " * For the Lord is His Name, and He is the Head, they tlie members; He the King, tiiey the people ; He the Shepherd, they the siieep of His pasture. And of this passing through He spake ^, By Me if any man enter in, he shaU be saved, and shall go in and out and find pasture. For a man entereth in, when, receiving the faith, he becomes a sheep of this Shepherd, and goeth out, when he eloseth this present life, and then findeth the pastures of unfading, everlasting life ; " " * passing from this pilgrimage to his home, from faith to sijL>:ht, Irom labor to reward." Again, as describing the Christianas life here, it speaks of pn)2fress. "^Wh'W) shall have entered in, must not remain in the state wherein he entered, but must go forth into the pasture ; so that, in entering in should be the begin- ning, in going forth and finding pasture^ the perfecting of graces. He who entereth in, is contiiined within the bounds of the world ; he who goeth forth, goes, as it were, beyond all
» Ps. ex viii. 20. « Dion. » S. Luke i. 79.
«8. Matt. vii. 13, 14. » Ex. xxxlii. 15, 16.
• Rup. 7 s. John X. 9.
8 S. Jer. • Ps. xxiil. 1. ^ Is. xlv. 2.
" lb. li. 10. " lb. xlv. 2, 3. "2 Tim. ii. 3.
' and the Lord on the head, of them.
Before CHRIST
cir. TV).
* Is. 52. 12.
created things, and, counting as nothing aU things seen, snail find pasture above the Heav- ens and shall feed upon the Word of God, ana say •, The Lord is my Shepherd, (and feed- eth me,) I can lack nothing. But this going forth can only be through-Christ ; as it fol- loweth, and the Lord at the head of them.^^ Nor, again, is this in itself easy, or done for us without anv effort of our own. All is of Christ. The words express the closeness of the relation between the Head and the mem- bers; and what He, our King and Lord, doth, they do, because He Who did it for them, doth it in them. The same words are used of both, shewing that what they do, they do by virtue of His Might, treading in His steps, walking where He has made the way plain, and by His Spirit. What they do, they do, as belonging Co Him. He break- eth through, or, rather, in all is the Breaker- through. They, having broken through, pass on, because He passeth before them. He will ^^ break in pieces Ute gales of brojss. and cut in sunder the oars of iron. He breaketh through whatever would hold us back or oppose us, all might of sin and detith and Satan, as Moses opened the Red Sea, for " a way for the ransomed to pass over ; and so He saith, *' / wiU go before thee, I