Micah 2:1

Micah’s word begins with hôwy, “woe”. It is a cry of grief, an “ah” or an “alas” over suffering that is about to come, and the prophets use it to open a word of judgment. Jesus pronounced woes of the same kind over the scribes and Pharisees (Matthew 23). So the first sound of this passage tells Micah’s hearers that the people he is about to describe stand under the judgment of God, and that the prophet grieves to say it.

Those people “devise iniquity”. The verb châshab means to think, plan or plot, and it shows that their wickedness is deliberate. They lie “upon their beds” in the hours God gave for rest, and they spend them working out how to do harm. Scripture describes the wicked the same way elsewhere: “He deviseth mischief upon his bed” (Psalm 36:4), and “they sleep not, except they have done mischief” (Proverbs 4:16). Isaiah says of the people of his day, “they conceive mischief, and bring forth iniquity” (Isaiah 59:4–5). David’s prayer runs the other way: “Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O LORD” (Psalm 19:14).

“When the morning is light, they practise it.” What was planned in the dark is carried out as soon as day comes, eagerly and at once, with the night’s thinking turned straight into the day’s deeds.

The reason follows: “because it is in the power of their hand.” The word for hand, yâd, stands here for power and means. These men act because they can. They have the wealth, the standing and the strength to take what they want, and nobody is able to hinder them. Isaiah brings the same charge against the elders and princes of his people: “the spoil of the poor is in your houses” (Isaiah 3:14–15).

This verse shows us that God sees what is planned in private as clearly as what is done in public. Sin begins in the heart and mind, and the LORD judges it there. The woe also tells the strong that the God who sees them will repay: “To me belongeth vengeance, and recompence” (Deuteronomy 32:35).

Verse 2 tells us what the night’s plans were. “They covet fields.” Châmad is to desire something strongly, and here it is a wrongful craving for what belongs to someone else, the sin forbidden in the last of the Ten Commandments: “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house” (Exodus 20:17). The craving turns straight into action. They “take them by violence”, gâzal, to tear away, strip or rob. The houses they “take away”, nâsâʼ, to lift up and carry off, so that whole families are left without a home. Jesus warned, “Take heed, and beware of covetousness: for a man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth” (Luke 12:15).

The result is given in two matching phrases: “so they oppress a man and his house, even a man and his heritage.” To oppress, ʻâshaq, is to wrong, defraud or extort. The “house” is the man’s household, and the “heritage” is his family’s land. Micah speaks of the victim as “a man”, one at a time, so that each loss is a person’s loss.

Israel’s history already held a picture of this sin. King Ahab coveted the vineyard of his neighbour Naboth, and his covetousness ended in Naboth’s murder and the seizure of the vineyard (1 Kings 21:1–16). What one king did once, Micah’s rich men were doing field by field.

“Therefore” ties verse 3 to everything before it. The speaker is the LORD, Yᵉhôvâh, the covenant God of Israel, and he answers the plotters with their own verb. They châshab iniquity on their beds, and he says, “Behold, against this family do I devise an evil.” Their plans were deliberate, and his judgment is just as deliberate. “This family” is the people who committed these wrongs, the nation and above all its corrupt leaders and rich men.

The word raʻ covers both wickedness and harm, so it can mean moral evil and it can mean calamity, disaster or misfortune. Here it is the calamity God will bring. The English word “evil” joins verses 1 and 3: they work evil, and the LORD devises an evil in return. The verse closes with raʻ again, “for this time is evil”, because the age has been made wicked by the deeds of its people, and that is why God acts.

“From which ye shall not remove your necks.” To remove, mûwsh, is to withdraw or take away, and tsavvâʼr is the neck, a word Scripture ties both to the yoke and to pride. The picture is a yoke laid on their necks that they will be unable to shake off. The men who laid burdens on others will now wear one themselves.

“Neither shall ye go haughtily.” Rôwmâh means proudly, with the head held high. The oppressors walked tall because they trusted their wealth and power to keep them safe, and the judgment will bow those necks. “Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall” (Proverbs 16:18).

God judges this way because he is the righteous Judge. “God judgeth the righteous, and God is angry with the wicked every day” (Psalm 7:11). “Behold, the righteous shall be recompensed in the earth: much more the wicked and the sinner” (Proverbs 11:31). To the house of David he said, “Execute judgment in the morning, and deliver him that is spoiled out of the hand of the oppressor” (Jeremiah 21:12). That is the morning work God asks of rulers, and Micah’s rich men rose in the morning to rob.

“In that day” points to the time when God carries out what he has devised. Yôwm means a day or a span of time, and the prophets’ “that day” is the time of God’s decisive act. Here it is the invasions of Assyria and later Babylon, which cost Israel and then Judah their land and their kingdom, as the curses of Deuteronomy 28 had warned. Judah went into exile in Babylon in 586 BC.

“Shall one take up a parable against you.” A mâshâl is a saying, proverb, byword or parable, and here it is a byword of mockery, a taunt. Songs like this were sung over a fallen enemy, as Isaiah was told to take up a proverb against the king of Babylon. The “one” is left unnamed. It may be survivors, neighbouring peoples watching the downfall, or the prophet himself, and the point is that anyone who sees the ruin will be able to put it into words.

“And lament with a doleful lamentation.” The Hebrew sets three related words side by side: the verb nâhâh, to lament, nᵉhîy, a lament or wailing, and nihyâh, a secondary form of the same word, which the KJV renders “doleful”. The sound of mourning comes again and again, like a funeral wail for a nation.

Then come the words of the lament, spoken in the voice of the ruined. “We be utterly spoiled.” Shâdad means to ravage, lay waste or plunder. “He hath changed the portion of my people: how hath he removed it from me!” The portion, chêleq, is an allotted share, and above all the land each family received when the tribes were given their inheritance (Joshua 14). The cry of “how” is shock and anguish.

“Turning away he hath divided our fields.” To divide, châlaq, is to share out or allot, and sâdeh is a field. “Turning away” comes from shûwb, to turn back or return. The fields that were theirs are parcelled out to others. The “he” of the lament is unnamed. Behind it stands the LORD, who said in verse 3 that he devises this evil, and the hands that divide the fields are those of the invaders he sends.

Verse 5 gives the final sentence, with another “therefore”, and the “thou” it addresses is the oppressor. In Israel land was shared out by lot and then measured. A gôwrâl is a lot, a marked object such as a pebble used to decide a question, and also the portion decided by it. Chebel is a rope or measuring line used to mark out the bounds of a share, and it can stand for the share itself. Shâlak is to cast or throw. Joshua cast lots before the LORD to divide the land among the tribes (Joshua 18:10), and that division is the setting of the whole of Joshua 18.

“Thou shalt have none that shall cast a cord by lot in the congregation of the LORD.” When the land is shared out among God’s people, these men will have nobody to throw the lot for them and nobody to stretch out a line over a portion of their own. Those who took other men’s land will receive none.

The “congregation of the LORD”, qâhâl Yᵉhôvâh, is the assembly of God’s covenant people. To be left without a share there is to lose a place among the people of God as well as a piece of ground. Paul states the principle at work: “whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap” (Galatians 6:7). Proverbs gives it with a promise for the poor: “Rob not the poor, because he is poor: neither oppress the afflicted in the gate: For the LORD will plead their cause, and spoil the soul of those that spoiled them” (Proverbs 22:22–23).

Jesus had all power in heaven and in earth (Matthew 28:18), and he used it to serve. “The Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). Being in the form of God, he took the form of a servant and was obedient to death on a cross (Philippians 2:6–8). He met the plotters of his own day, when the leaders “took counsel together for to put him to death” (John 11:53), and he gave himself up to their evil to redeem us.

He spoke against the covetousness of verse 2 in the parable of the rich fool (Luke 12:15–21), and he warned against laying up treasures on earth, “where thieves break through and steal” (Matthew 6:19). He counts what is done to the least of his brethren as done to himself (Matthew 25:40), so the man robbed of his field has a defender in him.

The judgment of verse 3 fell on Christ for all who trust in him. He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29). God “hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (2 Corinthians 5:21), and “the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:4–6). In place of the yoke the oppressors were unable to throw off, he offers his own: “For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:29–30).

Where the oppressors lost their portion, he gives his people one that lasts. Believers are joint-heirs with Christ (Romans 8:17), the poor in spirit receive the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 5:3), and the inheritance is “incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you” (1 Peter 1:4). The congregation of the LORD now gathers Jews and Gentiles together as fellow citizens of God’s household (Ephesians 2:19–22). At the last, Christ will judge all who devise and practise evil (Revelation 20:11–15).

These verses show a God who is awake while the wicked lie scheming, and who hears every plan made on a bed in the dark. That is a sober word for anyone who holds power over others, in a home, a workplace, a church or a nation, because God weighs what the strong do with their strength. It is also a comfort for the family whose field was taken. The LORD counts a man’s home and heritage as his own concern, and he pleads the cause of the robbed.

His justice fits the wrong. The plans of verse 1 end in the lament of verse 4, and the land-grabbers of verse 2 are left without a share in verse 5. Amos gives the justice God delights in: “let judgment run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream” (Amos 5:24). And in Christ, the God who judged the plunderers gives his people a portion that nobody can divide.