Micah 3:12

Therefore shall Zion for your sake be ploughed [as] a field,.... That is, for your sins, as the Targum; for the bloodshed, injustice, and avarice of the princes, priests, and prophets; not that the

Therefore shall Zion for your sake be plowed as a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high places of the forest.

By this it appears that this sermon was preached to Judah and its governors, priests, and prophets, who were thus wicked in Ahaz’ s time, and probably continued so in the beginning of Hezekiah’ s time. Jeremiah puts this out of all doubt, , saying that Micah spake these words to all Judah. As for the time, it was in all likelihood before the thirteenth year of Hezekiah, say some; I rather think it was in the very beginning of Hezekiah, and that this might awaken them of that age to comply with Hezekiah in the reformation. Zion here is threatened as endangered, nay ruined, by the sins of magistrates, priests, and prophets: they thought that Zion should be their safety, however they sinned; God by his prophet assures them the quite contrary, their sins should be the danger and destruction of Zion. For your sake; because your sins are so great and many. God would have spared Sodom for the sake of righteous men, these may be safety to a city; but God will not spare the wicked for any place’ s sake, nor shall a temple be more security to a wicked people than heaven was to sinning angels. Though these flagitious men cried out against Micah, and suchlike men, as a public danger, truth is, the injustice, idolatry, and inhumanity of public persons were the great danger. Ploughed as a field; either by the enemy and conqueror, thereby forbidding it to be ploughed without his leave, or by such as remained after the body of the people were carried captive. Jerusalem, one of the goodliest cities of the world, proud in its lofty and beautiful buildings, the city of the great King, shall become heaps; shall all lie in rubbish, its stately buildings shall be demolished and lie buried in their own ruins. The mountain of the house, holy mountain, on which the temple, one of the wonders of the world, did stand, beautified with rarest buildings, as the high places of the forest; shall lie so long waste as to be run over with wood as a forest, and be a lodge of wild beasts.

Micah 3:12 Therefore shall Zion for your sake be plowed [as] a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high places of the forest.Ver. 12. Therefore shall Zion for your sake be plowed as a field] Even for your sakes, O wicked princes, priests, and prophets; you are the traitors that have betrayed us all into the hands of Divine justice. To be angry with us for saying so, and telling you what to trust to, is as if some fond people should be angry with the herald, or the trumpet, as the cause of their wars. Zion shall be plowed as a field] Shall be utterly laid waste and levelled. Conquerors used to plough up those places that they would not have rebuilt; and to sow them with salt, Judges 9:45. It must needs be a dismal destruction that is described in such exquisite terms. Alterius perditio tua sit cautio. This threatening of the prophet took so well that the judgment was respited for over a hundred years, Jeremiah 26:19. But now men’ s hearts are more hardened, and therefore their destruction more hastened. And Jerusalem shall become heaps] Rupes ruderum. This they once thought as possible as to overthrow God’ s own throne; the very disciples had a conceit that the world could not outlast the temple, as may be gathered from Matthew 24:3. But they (some of them) lived to see themselves confuted, and our Saviour’ s words verified, "There shall not be left here one stone upon another that shall not be thrown down," Matthew 24:2. And the mountain of the house] That famous house, that was worthily reckoned one of the seven wonders of the world, and stood upon Mount Moriah. As the high places of the forest] As woody and desert places, fit only for wild beasts. Lege et Luge, Read and weep, saith one, speaking of Jerusalem’ s desolation.

(12) Therefore shall Zion . . .—Micah declared this sentence of Divine judgment with an intrepidity that was long remembered by the Jews. More than a century later the elders of the land, speaking in justification of the course taken by Jeremiah, used as a precedent the example of Micah. They spake to all the assembly of the people, saying, “Micah the Morasthite prophesied in the days of Hezekiah, king of Judah, saying, ‘Thus saith the Lord of hosts, Zion shall be plowed like a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high places of a forest.’ Did Hezekiah, king of Judah, and all Judah put him at all to death? Did he not fear the Lord, and besought the Lord, and the Lord repented Him of the evil which He had pronounced against them?” (Jeremiah 26:17-19). Shall become heaps.—So also, in after-days, the doom of Jerusalem was pronounced by our Lord: “The days will come when there shall not be left one stone upon another that shall not be thrown down.”

Verse 12. Therefore shall Zion - be ploughed as a field] It shall undergo a variety of reverses and sackages, till at last there shall not be one stone left on the top of another, that shall not be pulled down; and then a plough shall be drawn along the site of the walls, to signify an irreparable and endless destruction. Of this ancient custom Horace speaks, Odar. lib. i., Od. 16, ver. 18. Altis urbibus ultimae Stetere causae cur perirent Funditus, imprimeretque muris Hostile aratrum exercitus insolens "From hence proud cities date their utter falls; When, insolent in ruin, o'er their walls The wrathful soldier drags the hostile plough, That haughty mark of total overthrow." FRANCIS. Thus did the Romans treat Jerusalem when it was taken by Titus. Turnus Rufus, or as he is called by St. Jerome, Titus Arinius Rufus, or Terentius Rufus, according to Josephus, caused a plough to be drawn over all the courts of the temple to signify that it should never be rebuilt, and the place only serve for agricultural purposes. See Clarke on Matthew 24:2. Thus Jerusalem became heaps, an indiscriminate mass of ruins and rubbish; and the mountain of the house, Mount Moriah, on which the temple stood, became so much neglected after the total destruction of the temple, that it soon resembled the high places of the forest. What is said here may apply also, as before hinted, to the ruin of the temple by Nebuchadnezzar in the last year of the reign of Zedekiah, the last king of the Jews. As the Masoretes, in their division of the Bible, reckon the twelve minor prophets but as one book, they mark this verse, (Micah 3:12,) the MIDDLE verse of these prophets.

12. be plowed as a field] This striking prophecy was quoted at a critical point in the history of Jeremiah when ‘the priests and the prophets and all the people’ had pronounced sentence of death upon the prophet by acclamation. ‘Certain of the elders of the land’ we are told invoked the respectful treatment of Micah by king Hezekiah as a precedent for granting Jeremiah a similar immunity. So far from putting Micah to death, Hezekiah, they declare, had been moved by his sombre prediction to ‘fear the Lord and beseech the Lord,’ ‘and the Lord repented him of the evil which he had pronounced upon them’ (Jeremiah 26:17-19). In fact, all prophecy is conditional. The prophets declare the great principles of God’s moral government, and apply them to individual cases. But if the moral conditions of the cases to which these principles are applied be altered, the threatening or the promise is postponed, modified, or recalled. We have no difficulty therefore, in reconciling the genuineness of Micah’s prophecy with the fact thus stated by Dean Stanley. “The destruction which was then threatened has never been completely fulfilled. Part of the southeastern portion of the city has for several centuries been arable land; but the rest has always been within the walls. In the Maccabæan wars (1Ma 4:38) the Temple courts were overgrown with shrubs, but this has never been the case since.” (Jewish Church, ii. 464.) There is a parallel to this passage of Micah in Isaiah (Isaiah 32:13-14), which is all the more remarkable as Isaiah generally predicts the destruction of the Assyrians and the deliverance of Jerusalem (e.g. Isaiah 29:5, Isaiah 30:19, Isaiah 31:4). At the time when Micah and Isaiah delivered their gloomy vaticinations, the moral state of Jerusalem must have been worse than usual. The uncompromising severity with which they announced the inevitable punishment was (as Jeremiah 26:17-19 shews) the means chosen of God for producing at least a partial repentance. the mountain of the house] i.e. mount Moriah. as the high places of the forest] Rather, heights in the wood. The temple-mount shall be overgrown with low brushwood (comp. Isaiah 32:13). The word rendered ‘heights’ (bâmôth) may also mean ‘high places,’ and perhaps the writer means to suggest that the temple shall be treated no better than if it were a ‘high place.’ The plural ‘heights’ to correspond to the plural ‘heaps.’

Therefore shall Zion for your sake - for your sake shall Zion Be plowed as a field - They thought to be its builders; they were its destroyers.

12. The inevitable results of such criminal folly must be severe judgment.