3. plot evil. The word that usually means “evil” carries its related sense of “harm” here, but it is worth repeating as “evil” because it reflects a measure-for-measure response to “plot crime” and “work evil” in verse 1.

you shall not be able to pull out your necks from it. What is elliptically implied is the image of a restraining yoke.

4. sobbing shall be sobbed. This deliberately odd phrasing echoes the Hebrew, which in fact shows a triple occurrence of a single verbal stem: wenahah nehi nihyah.

How it is taken away from me. The initial “how” is the formal sign of a lament, occurring here atypically not in the first line of the lament but in the second. It should be noted that both versets of this line as well as the second verset of the preceding line employ a third-person singular verb as the equivalent of a passive, which is fairly common biblical usage.

5. any who casts a lot by cord. This is a procedure for dividing territory, but in the destruction there will be no territory to divide.

6. Do not preach. These words, and what follows through the end of verse 7, are spoken by Micah’s recalcitrant audience. As abundantly elsewhere, there is acute tension between the prophet and those he addresses, who do not want to hear the harsh things he has to say.

7. What is said of the house of Jacob. The Hebrew wording is obscure.

Will not His words do well / with him who goes upright? The translation, in accordance with the Septuagint, reads “His words” instead of the Masoretic “my words.” What the prophet’s challengers are expressing is a confidence that they are the ones who go upright and that God will be patient with them and reward them.

8. against. The translation assumes that the anomalous ʾetmul should be broken into ʾet, the accusative particle, and mul, “opposite,” but the meaning remains questionable.

From him without cloak. The enigmatic mul recurs here, and the translation is again conjectural.

thinking themselves safe. The Hebrew uses an ellipsis, saying only “safe.”

9. My people’s wives you drive out. The “enemy” of the previous verse is clearly the enemy within, who strips of their remaining garments those who can barely cover themselves and despoils people returning from battle who imagine themselves safe. Here they expropriate the homes of once pampered wives (perhaps now widowed).

My glory. This term sounds somewhat odd in context. It would have to indicate something like security and prosperity, as the women are driven from their homes with their infants.

10. she has defiled herself. The reference is to the collective nation, Judah.

dire destruction shall descend. Although this is the clear gist of the three Hebrew words, the syntax is somewhat problematic.

11. I would preach to you. These are the words of the prophet sarcastically representing the intention of his hostile audience. The third verset, “He would be this people’s preacher,” would thus suggest that someone who exhorts his audience to get drunk would be the fitting preacher for such people.

12. They shall bustle with people. The unspecified “they,” the subject of a feminine plural verb, has to refer to the towns (feminine in Hebrew) of Judah.

13. He who makes the breach. Since this is a prophecy of national restoration after a dispersal (verse 12), the breach would be in a wall enclosing the exiles. The same verb is used for “break out” in the next verset, but it is slightly puzzling that they then go out through a gate, not a breach in the wall. Perhaps passing through the gate is to be understood as “passing, as if through a gate,” which would indicate a very wide breach.