The prophet speaks:--
_Tell it not in Gath,_ _Weep not in Acco,_[828] _In Beth-le-'Aphrah_[829] _roll thyself in dust._ _Pass over, inhabitress of Shaphir,_[830] _thy shame uncovered!_ _The inhabitress of Sa'anan_[831] _shall not march forth;_ _The lamentation of Beth-esel_[832] _taketh from you its standing._ _The inhabitress of Maroth_[833] _trembleth for good, For evil hath come down from Jehovah to the gate of Jerusalem._ _Harness the horse to the chariot, inhabitress of Lachish,_[834] _That hast been the beginning of sin to the daughter of Zion;_ _Yea, in thee are found the transgressions of Israel._ _Therefore thou givest ..._[835] _to Moresheth-Gath:_[836] _The houses of Achzib_[837] _shall deceive the kings of Israel._ _Again shall I bring the Possessor_ [_conqueror_] _to thee, inhabitress of Mareshah;_[838] _To Adullam_[839] _shall come the glory of Israel._ _Make thee bald, and shave thee for thy darlings;_ _Make broad thy baldness like the vulture,_ _For they go into banishment from thee._
This was the terrible fate which the Assyrian kept before the peoples with whom he was at war. Other foes raided, burned and slew: he carried off whole populations into exile.
Having thus pictured the doom which threatened his people, Micah turns to declare the sins for which it has been sent upon them.
[809] Micah i.; Jer. xxvi. 18.
[810] i. 14.
[811] Ataroth (Numb. xxxii. 3) is Atroth-Shophan (_ib._ 35); Chesulloth (Josh. xix. 18) is Chisloth-Tabor (_ib._ 12); Iim (Numb. xxxiii. 45) is Iye-Abarim (_ib._ 44).
[812] "Michæam de Morasthi qui usque hodie juxta Eleutheropolim, haud grandis est viculus."--Jerome, Preface to Micha. "Morasthi, unde fuit Micheas propheta, est autem vicus contra orientem Eleutheropoleos."--_Onomasticon_, which also gives "Maresa, in tribu Juda: cuius nunc tantummodo sunt ruinæ in secundo lapide Eleutheropoleos." See, too, the _Epitaphium S. Paulæ_: "Videam Morasthim sepulchrum quondam Michææ, nunc ecclesiam, et ex latere derelinquam Choræos, et Gitthæos et Maresam." The occurrence of a place bearing the name Property-of-Gath so close to Beit-Jibrin certainly strengthens the claims of the latter to be Gath. See _Hist. Geog._, p. 196.
[813] See above, pp. 74 ff.
[814] For the situation of Adullam in the Shephelah see _Hist. Geog._, p. 229.
[815] Isa. x. 28 ff. This makes it quite conceivable that Micah i. 9, _it hath struck right up to the gate of Jerusalem_, was composed immediately after the fall of Samaria, and not, as Sinend imagines, during the campaign of Sennacherib. Against the latter date there is the objection that by then the fall of Samaria, which Micah i. 6 describes as present, was already nearly twenty years past.
[816] The address is either to the tribes, in which case we must substitute _land_ for _earth_ in the next line; or much more probably it is to the Gentile _nations_, but in this case we cannot translate (as all do) in the third line that the Lord will be a witness _against_ them, for the charge is only against Israel. They are summoned in the same sense as Amos summons a few of the nations in chap. iii. 9 ff.--The opening words of Micah are original to this passage, and interpolated in the exordium of the other Micah, 1 Kings xxii. 28.
[817] Jehovah's _Temple_ or _Place_ is not, as in earlier poems, Sinai or Seir (cf. Deborah's song and Deut. xxxiii.), but Heaven (cf. Isaiah xix. or Psalm xxix.).
[818] So LXX. and other versions.
[819] Wellhausen's objections to this phrase are arbitrary and incorrect. A ruin in the midst of soil gone out of cultivation, where before there had been a city among vineyards, is a striking figure of desolation.
[820] Which is precisely how Herod's Samaria lies at the present day.
[821] So Ewald.
[822] It must be kept in mind that all the verbs in the above passage may as correctly be given in the future tense; in that case the passage will be dated just before the fall of Samaria, in 722-1, instead of just after.