MICAH vi. 9-vii. 6.
The state of the text of Micah vi. 9-vii. 6 is as confused as the condition of society which it describes: it is difficult to get reason, and impossible to get rhyme, out of the separate clauses. We had best give it as it stands, and afterwards state the substance of its doctrine, which, in spite of the obscurity of details, is, as so often happens in similar cases, perfectly clear and forcible. The passage consists of two portions, which may not originally have belonged to each other, but which seem to reflect the same disorder of civic life, with the judgment that impends upon it.[904] In the first of them, vi. 9-16, the prophet calls for attention to the voice of God, which describes the fraudulent life of Jerusalem, and the evils He is bringing on her. In the second, vii. 1-6, Jerusalem bemoans her corrupt society; but perhaps we hear her voice only in ver. 1, and thereafter the prophet's.
The prophet speaks:--
_Hark! Jehovah crieth to the city!_ ('_Tis salvation to fear Thy Name!_)[905] _Hear ye, O tribe and council of the city!_ (?)[906]
God speaks:--
... in _the house of the wicked treasures of wickedness,_ _And the scant measure accursed!_ _Can she be pure with the evil balances,_ _And with the bag of false weights,_ _Whose rich men are full of violence,_[907] _And her citizens speak falsehood,_ _And their tongue is deceit in their mouth?_ _But I on My part have begun to plague thee,_ _To lay_ thee _in ruin because of thy sins._ _Thou eatest and art not filled,_ _But thy famine_[908] _is in the very midst of thee!_ _And_ but _try to remove,_[909] _thou canst not bring off;_ _And what thou bringest off, I give to the sword._ _Thou sowest, but never reapest;_ _Treadest olives, but never anointest with oil,_ _And must, but not to drink wine!_ _So thou keepest the statutes of Omri,_[910] _And the habits of the house of Ahab,_ _And walkest in their principles,_ Only _that I may give thee to ruin,_ _And her inhabitants for sport--_ _Yea, the reproach of the Gentiles_[911] _shall ye bear!_
Jerusalem speaks:--
_Woe, woe is me, for I am become like sweepings of harvest,_ _Like gleanings of the vintage--_ _Not a cluster to eat_, not _a fig that my soul lusteth after._ _Perished are the leal from the land,_ _Of the upright among men there is none:_ _All of them are lurking for blood;_ _Every man takes his brother in a net._ _Their hands are on evil to do it thoroughly._[912] _The prince makes requisition,_ _The judge_ judgeth _for payment,_ _And the great man he speaketh his lust;_ _So_ together _they weave it out._ _The best of them is but a thorn thicket,_[913] _The most upright_ worse _than a prickly hedge._[914] _The day that thy sentinels_ saw, _thy visitation, draweth on;_ _Now is their havoc_[915] _come!_ _Trust not any friend! Rely on no confidant!_ _From her that lies in thy bosom guard the gates of thy mouth._ _For son insulteth father, daughter is risen against her mother, daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law;_ _And the enemies of a man are the men of his house._
Micah, though the prophet of the country and stern critic of its life, characterised Jerusalem herself as the centre of the nation's sins. He did not refer to idolatry alone, but also to the irreligion of the politicians, and the cruel injustice of the rich in the capital. The poison which weakened the nation's blood had found its entrance to their veins at the very heart. There had the evil gathered which was shaking the state to a rapid dissolution.