Micah 7:1–7

7:1 The prophet represents the nation here when he laments for himself. Agrarian images are used to describe the barrenness of the land: there is no fruit to be gathered, no clusters of grapes in the vineyard, no figs on the fig trees. Although it is harvest time, there is nothing but desolation. As becomes clear in the next verse, this represents the moral barrenness of the nation. The prophet Isaiah used a similar image—God made a vineyard and looked for a harvest, but only rotten grapes were produced (Isa. 5:1–7). In Micah, there are not even rotten grapes.

7:2 The point of the agrarian metaphor is clarified. The godly person has perished from the land. “Godly” (hasid) comes from the same root that describes the quality God desires in people: kindness (hesed; cf. 6:8). The word “perish” suggests a negative connotation. A similar passage in Isaiah describes the righteous and the godly being swept away in a tide of evil (Isa. 57:1). The absence of the righteous leads to the proliferation of evil, as people stalk one another, seeking to hunt them down and kill them like wild animals. “Each hunts the other with a net” is literally “Each hunts his brother with a net.” There is no idea of being a brother’s keeper here, just his killer.

7:3 Micah further describes the godless state of the land, including its corrupt leadership: the judicial and royal officials are interested not in justice and equitable rule but in making money from their positions through bribes. The “great man” may be a reference to the king (cf. 2 Sam. 3:38) or to distinguished nobility, who reveal their evil desires. Previously, they would at least keep their desires hidden because of shame; now they have no shame. “They weave it together” summarizes the situation: the leadership of the country is bound together in an intricate web of evil.

7:4 The metaphor now reverts to the agrarian world. Instead of ripe fruit, the “best” of the nation are like thorns and briars. Instead of producing nourishment, they merely cause pain. Consequently, the nation can expect only judgment: “the day of your watchmen” indicates what the sentinels on the walls of cities see as judgment approaches. This is further defined as “your punishment,” or visitation of judgment, which indicates an appointed time of divine judgment (cf. Amos 3:2, 14). Panic and confusion will ensue. The Hebrew word for “confusion” occurs only one another time in Scripture, in a telling text from Micah’s contemporary, Isaiah, where it refers to the approaching demise of Jerusalem by the Assyrian army and the resultant “tumult and trampling [down] and confusion . . . a battering down of walls and a shouting” (Isa. 22:5). The panic is palpable.

7:5 Consequently, in order to survive the coming crisis the prophet commands the people not to trust one another. Three categories of people are mentioned, in increasing level of relationship: neighbors, close friends or intimates (those who have been known a long time and therefore would normally be trusted; cf. Ps. 55:14), and wives.

7:6 Such people can no longer be trusted because even the most intimate ties have been fractured: children despise their parents, and servants—“men of his own house”—despise masters, so that the household, which ought to be the haven of utmost security, becomes a place of danger and even war.

7:7 In contrast to the nation, in which no one can be trusted, Yahweh is utterly reliable. “In a world where even neighbor and family are not to be trusted (vv. 5f.), only God is left. But he is there.”¹ There is thus hope, but it is a hope beyond anyone or anything found in the nation. Micah has learned in his nation’s descent to the moral abyss what the prophet Jonah experienced in his own descent to the bottom of the sea: salvation comes only from the Lord (Jonah 2:9). Micah’s final words on behalf of the nation are that God would hear his prayer. This prayer will be the subject of the last passage of the book (Mic. 7:8–20).