Micah 6

Chap. VI. Ver. 1-16. | The Lord’s controversy with his people.—The manner in which the Prophet calls upon the inanimate creation to hear the expostulation of Jehovah with his people, is awakening and sublime. The Prophet then argues with the people on the folly of preferring ritual services, and even the most costly sacrifices, to moral duties and to humble submission to his will; the sentiment is forcibly and beautifully expressed, and nearly corresponds with the words that Moses addressed to Israel in the wilderness. ‘‘What doth the Lord thy God require of thee, but to fear the Lord thy God, to walk in all his ways, and to love him, and to serve the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul?”

((Deuteronomy 10:12).). The subsequent threatenings are terrible and alarming, and what we see this day fulfilled, in a people who are become “A desolation and a hissing, and a reproach” in all the earth. Chap. VII. Ver. 1—20. The church’s complaint and confession before God.—The Prophet begins this chapter with lamenting the decay of religion and the growth of ungodliness, using a beautiful allegory, borrowed from the vineyard, to represent the need of true piety and of good men, who were as rarely to be found as the early fig in the advanced season, or a cluster after the vintage had been gathered. He then reproves and threatens them, in terms so expressive of great calamities, as to be applied in the New Testament to times of the hottest persecution.

(See (Matthew 10:35-36).) Notwithstanding which, a pious Jew is here introduced, professing, in the name of his captive brethren, the strongest faith in the mercy of God, the most submissive resignation to his will, and the firmest hope in his favour in future times, when they should

Notes on the verses

Chap. VI. Ver. 1. Arise, contend thou.—{The manner of raising attention, says Abp. Newcome, in ver. 1, 2, by calling a man to urge his plea in the face of all nature, on the inanimate creation, to hear the expostulation of Jehovah with his people, is truly awakening and magnificent. The words of Jehovah follow in ver. 3..5. And God’s mercies having been set before the people, one of them is introduced in a beautiful dramatic form, asking what his duty is towards so gracious a God, ver. 6,7. The answer follows in the words of the prophet, ver. 8.]—Bagster. Ver. 5. From Shittim unto Gilgal.—“Gilgal is the place where the people encamped, when they had entered the promised land,” (Joshua 4:20). Here they were seduced to the worship of Baal-peor, (Numbers 31:6). “‘And in the interval from their departure from Shittim, Sihon and Og had been vanquished, they had been rescued from the device of Balaam, they had passed the Jordan, besieged Jericho, and began to possess the land.’” Boothroyd. Ver. 7. Shall I give my first-born?—This was not uncommon among the heathen. See (2 Kings 3:27); also Orient. Cust. No. 1146. Ver. 9. The man of wisdom shall see thy name.—See margin. We prefer the text; ‘‘The wise shall see thy name,” thy signature (as it were) to the decree, ‘‘Hear, therefore,” &c..: x Z Ver. 10. Treasures of wickedness—Are the unjust riches detained by fraud. Ver. 16. The statutes of Omri.—A wicked king, who built Samaria. (1 Kings 16:24).