Micah 3:9 - Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Hear this, I pray you - The prophet discharges upon them that “judgment” whereof, by the Spirit of God, he was full, and which they “abhorred; judgment” against their perversion of judgment. He rebukes the same classes as before “the heads and judges” Micah 3:1, yet still more sternly. They abhorred judgment, he says, as a thing loathsome and abominable, such as men cannot bear even to look upon; they not only dealt wrongly, but they “perverted, distorted, all equity:” “that so there should not remain even some slight justice in the city” . “All equity;” all of every sort, right, rectitude, uprightness, straight-forwardness, whatever was right by natural conscience or by God’s law, they distorted, like the sophists making the worse appear the better cause. Naked violence crushes the individual; perversion of equity destroys the fountain-head of justice. The prophet turns from them in these words, as one who could not bear to look upon their misdeeds, and who would not speak to them; “they pervert;” building; “her heads, her priests, her prophets;” as Elisha, but for the presence of Jehoshaphat, would not look on Jehoram, nor see him 2 Kings 3:14. He first turns and speaks of them, as one man, as if they were all one in evil;