Micah 2:2

And they covet fields, and take [them] by violence,.... The fields of their poor neighbours, which lie near them, and convenient for them; they wish they were theirs, and they contrive ways and means

And they covet fields, and take them by violence; and houses, and take them away: so they oppress a man and his house, even a man and his heritage.

And they, who devised mischief, , covet fields; first set their minds upon their meaner neighbour’ s estate, think how convenient it lieth to theirs, as Ahab thought Naboth’ s did for him. And take them by violence; by power wrest the estates out of their hands, at their own rate; or, if they will not so part with them, these mischievous oppressors will act a Jezebel’ s part with Naboth, which was no hard matter to do in Israel, during the times that ran parallel with those of Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah. Houses, in which their poorer and innocenter neighbours dwelt; but perhaps these houses spoiled a prospect, or straitened the great ones, who, right or wrong, will have them, that they may enlarge their own houses, orchards, or gardens. Take them away; they tear, devour, and swallow up the poor man. His house; his family, which by this means is left to poverty and beggary. His heritage: this explains the former, and addeth somewhat to the greatness of their sin, that this is done against ancient right and possession, which the oppressed plead, nay, in a case where God hath forbidden them to sell their heritage, .

Micah 2:2 And they covet fields, and take [them] by violence; and houses, and take [them] away: so they oppress a man and his house, even a man and his heritage.Ver. 2. And they covet fields, and take them by violence] See here the several degrees of sin, and what descents covetous men dig to hell, and beware betimes. Surely as the plot of all diseases lies in the humours of the body, so of all sin in the lust of the soul. The heathen could say (Laertins), Pαντωνμενπρωτιστακακωνεπιθυμιαεστιν. Covetousness is called the lust of the eyes, 1 John 2:16, because from looking comes lusting, from lusting acting (hence lusts of the soul are called deeds of the body, Romans 8:13), yea, acting with violence, they covet and take, they rob and ravish, Psalms 10:9, there is neither equity nor honesty to be had at their hands; but as they take away fields, houses, heritages shamelessly; so they bear them away boldly, and think to escape scot free; because it is facinus maioris abollae (Juvenal), the fact of a great one, whose hand is to power, as Micah 2:1. And houses, and take them away] Though a man’ s house be his castle, as we say, yet it cannot secure him from these cormorants. Scribes and Pharisees devoured widows’ houses, Matthew 23:14, where was a concurrence of covetousness and cruelty, for these seldom go sundered, besides the putrid hypocrisy of doing this under a pretence of long prayers. A poor man in his house is like a snail in his shell; crush that and you kill him. So they oppress (or defraud) a man and his house] Either by fraud or force, by craft or cruelty, they ruin a man (a well-set man, virum validum, βαψ) and his family, his whole progeny; which might not be done to the unreasonable creatures, Deuteronomy 22:6. This is to be like Uladus, that cruel prince of Valachia; whose manner was, together with the offender, to execute the whole family; yea, sometimes the whole kindred.

(2) And they covet fields.—The act of Ahab and Jezebel in coveting and acquiring Naboth’s vineyard by violence and murder was no isolated incident. The desire to accumulate property in land, in contravention of the Mosaic Law, was denounced by Micah’s contemporary, Isaiah: “Woe unto them that join house to house. that lay field to field, till there be no place, that they may be placed alone in the midst of the earth” (Isaiah 5:8).

Verse 2. They covet fields] These are the rich and mighty in the land; and, like Ahab, they will take the vineyard or inheritance of any poor Naboth on which they may fix their covetous eye; so that they take away even the heritage of the poor.

2. And they covet fields, &c.] ‘To covet’ is itself a gross offence against the law of God, as the deepest of all the Ten Commandments shews (Exodus 20:17). Large additions to one’s estates were diametrically opposed to the spirit, if not always to the letter, of the law of land-tenure among the Israelites. See Numbers 27:1-11; Numbers 33:54, 1 Kings 21:4, Leviticus 25:8-17. These rich men would have had a perfect right to purchase the lease of another man’s property, subject indeed to the law of redistribution in the 49th year (the year of Jubilee)—a relic of the old Village Community system, which seems to have prevailed anciently among Semitic as well as Aryan races (comp. Sir R. Maine’s Village Communities, and Mr Fenton’s article on the Law of Jubilee, in the Theological Review, 1878). But, as the account of Naboth the Jezreelite (1 Kings 21.) shews, the small Israelitish proprietors were too sturdy and too law-abiding to accede to proposals of purchasers when they could possibly avoid it. Hence, on the immoral principle that ‘might is right’ (or, as the prophet says, ‘because it is in the power of their hands’), they followed the example of Ahab, and used fraudulent or openly violent means—fraud is suggested by the language of Mic 2:1, open violence by that of Mic 2:2. Isaiah denounces the same offences in Micah 5:8; Amos, probably, in Micah 4:1.

And they covet fields and take them by violence - (rend them away) and houses, and take them away Still, first they sin in heart, then in act. And yet, with them, to covet and to rob, to desire and to take, are the same.

1, 2. A vivid description of the corrupt conduct of the aristocracy.