For the second time in this message, Micah cried out to the people, “Listen!” (vv. 1, 9 niv). Like the crowds that Jesus taught, these Jews had ears to hear His words, but they couldn’t hear God’s truth in those words (Matt. 13:9, 43). They lacked spiritual discernment.
God speaks about sin and its consequences (6:9–16). The Lord called to the people of Jerusalem to fear His name and heed what He had to say; for without the fear of the Lord, they could have neither knowledge nor wisdom (Prov. 1:7). God specifically condemned the merchants of the city for being deceptive in their business practices (Mic. 6:10–12). They used weights and measures that were dishonest so that customers didn’t get full value for their money (see Lev. 19:35–36; Deut. 25:13–16).
Why did this sin grieve the Lord so much? Because by doing these illegal things, the businessmen were exploiting and abusing the poor and needy in the land for whom God has a special concern (Amos 8:4–10). The Mosaic economic system provided for the care of the poor and needy, but the wealthy merchants in Micah’s time had abandoned the system. They robbed the poor of both justice and the necessities of life, a sin God could not overlook.
Moreover, along with making their own weights and measures and bribing the courts, the rich were openly violent (Mic. 6:12; also see 2:2; 3:1–3). They forcibly evicted people from their houses and lands and left them helpless, without homes or any source of income. When the poor tried to protect themselves through the courts, the rich merchants lied about the situation and convinced the officials that their actions were right.
But God has ordained that people reap what they sow, whether good or evil (Hos. 8:7; Gal. 6:7–8). Therefore, judgment had to fall on the “robber barons” of the land. Indeed, God warned about two different kinds of judgments (Mic. 6:13–16). The first (vv. 13–15) was already in progress, slow and secret, but very thorough. “Therefore, I have begun to destroy you, to ruin you because of your sins” (v. 13 niv). This judgment was the collapse of their economic system, including their crops (stolen farms), their investments (stolen money), and even their enjoyment of all that they had accumulated. Everything these merchant thieves had amassed for their pleasure would disappear, and whatever they tried to enjoy would bring them no pleasure at all. (See God’s covenant warnings in Deut. 28:15ff.)
The second judgment (Mic. 6:16) would be sudden and open: the total ruin of the nation by the hand of Babylon. That Micah should point to Babylon as the aggressor (4:10) is remarkable, because Babylon wasn’t a major power on the international scene at that time. It was Assyria that everybody feared, and Assyria did ruin the northern kingdom in 722 and did do great damage to Judah in 701. But by the time Babylon was finished with Judah and Jerusalem, the nation would be in ruin and the people in derision. The people’s sins found them out.
The Lord tried to use the judgment on the northern kingdom to awaken and warn the people of Judah, the southern kingdom, but they wouldn’t listen. Their defense was “It can’t happen here. We have the temple!” But they weren’t obeying God’s law or honoring His house. Instead, they were following the godless ways of two kings of Israel, Omri and Ahab, both of whom “did evil in the eyes of the Lord, and did worse than all who were before [them]” (1 Kings 16:25; see v. 30 nkjv). They should have followed the godly ways of King David, because it was for David’s sake that God held back His judgment for so long (11:13, 32, 34, 36; 15:4).
The prophet speaks of his sorrow (7:1–7). The prophets not only declared God’s message with their lips, but they also felt the burden of the people on their hearts. Jeremiah wept over the sins of the nation in his day and wished he could weep even more (Jer. 9:1ff.), and Micah lamented because there were no godly people left in the land. Looking for a godly person was as futile as looking for summer fruit after the harvest was over.
Micah compared the evil officials to hunters who wove clever nets and threw them over the helpless and trapped them. These officials and judges were skilled at weaving their nets (perverting the law so they could rob the unwary), but they weren’t skilled at obeying God’s laws. They were like briars and thorns that hurt people, when they should have been like concerned shepherds who helped people.
“The day of your watchmen” refers to the day of judgment when the watchmen on the walls would see the enemy approaching and call out to warn the people. God’s prophets were His watchmen (Ezek. 3:18–21), constantly warning the nation, but the leaders wouldn’t listen. They preferred lies to truth and this brought about a “time of … confusion” (Mic. 7: niv).
This confusion reached into every level of society. Not only was Micah grieved at the corruption of the officials, but also he was grieved at the unfaithfulness of the common people of the land (vv. 5–6). You couldn’t trust anybody! When truth is no longer the standard for society, then everything starts to fall apart; for faithfulness to our word is the cement that holds society together. It had come to the place where neighbor couldn’t trust neighbor and friends couldn’t trust each other. The basic unit of Jewish society, the family, was quickly falling apart. (In fact, Jesus quoted Mic. 7: in Matt. 10:36.)
In the light of the terrible condition of the land and the judgment that was impending, wouldn’t it have been a wise thing for the people to turn from their sin and trust the Lord? Would it not have been a smart thing for them to claim 2 Chronicles 7: and seek God’s face so that He might heal their land? But sinners don’t do wise things, because their eyes are blinded as they walk in the darkness (John 3:19–21).