CRITICAL NOTES.]
Micah 6:13. Sick] i.e. I smite thee mortally (cf. for expression, Nahum 3:19; for matter, Micah 1:9).
Micah 6:14. Satis.] Fulfilment of Leviticus 26:26. Food would not be enough, nor sustain. Midst] Cast down in borders and in the metropolis, people will flee into the fortress, but only to die, not to be delivered. What goods and families are carried away will be given to the sword (cf. Jeremiah 50:37; Jeremiah 42:16).
Micah 6:15. Reap] The enemy will reap the harvests and plunder the stores (Leviticus 26:16; Deuteronomy 28:38-40).
Micah 6:16.] This punishment brought upon themselves. Omri] The conspirator and regicide (1 Kings 16:16-28). Statutes] By which this abandoned dynasty had disgraced the throne of Israel; human ordinances, not God’s commands (Leviticus 20:23). Bear] “The present generation is ripe for the curse, which the Lord had cast forth in the law for the future of his people (Isaiah 65:7) [Lange].
HOMILETICS
MORAL CONSUMPTION.—Micah 6:13-14
God threatens to smite Israel with mortal sickness; not so much bodily sickness, as desolation of land. By oppression they had made others weak, so Divine judgments will crush them by famine and invasion. Their calamity is a wasting sickness. The origin, seat, and consequences of this moral consumption are plainly described.
I. Sickness in the centre. “In the midst of thee.” The sinking down, the wasting away, was in the very centre of the country. The capital, the seat of their wickedness and treasures, was smitten, and the plague spread among the people. Inward decay always begins at the heart. And when the vital parts are affected what can arrest its progress?
II. Sickness with sufficiency. “Thou shalt eat, but not be satisfied.” They had abundance of wealth, an insatiable appetite, but their food did not nourish them. Their desires were a disease, not a moral strength. Like the deadly wasting that assails the human frame, there may be a spiritual atrophy to derange and emaciat the soul. The victim cries out with Job, “Thou hast filled me with wrinkles, which is a witness against me, and my leanness, rising up in me, beareth witness to my face.”
III. Sickness aided by outward circumstances. God’s judgments only hastened on the end. The moral atmosphere was fœtid, and all their surroundings unfavourable to health. In God’s favour is life; but he withdrew the fruit of the fields, and the blessings of the skies. When God departs from a people nothing will be left but inherent emptiness and pining consumption. “Their flesh shall consume away while they stand upon their feet, and their eyes shall consume away in their holes, and their tongue shall consume away in their mouth.”
IV. Sickness morally incurable. “I will make thee sick in smiting thee.” The sickness was the result of the smiting. “Thy wound is grievous,” lit. makes sick. It was an incurable wound: “There is no healing of thy bruise” (Nahum 3:4). Robbed of their families, smitten in their vineyards, and helpless in their condition, what hope of recovery was left! Spiritual leanness is the greatest calamity that can befall the Church. If God withdraws his help everything will decay. Life, light, and power, hope, joy, and peace, will die away. Creeds and ceremonies will only hasten the ruin. Nothing can survive the death, the moral consumption, of true religion. “My leanness! my leanness! Woe unto me!”
LABOUR WITHOUT PROFIT.—Micah 6:14-15
The judgments are further enumerated by which God would make them sick and desolate. They would sow and plant for others to reap. They would not be able to rescue what they had lost, nor preserve what they possessed from the foe. One stroke would follow another until the land was desolated, and its inhabitants put to shame.
I. Fields would be sown, but no harvest reaped. “Thou shalt sow, but thou shalt not reap.” The crops would be blasted and withered, or the enemy would reap them for himself. They reaped where they sowed not; so they must sow for others to reap. Sin provokes God to frustrate man’s efforts to subsist. He takes from the covetous and unjust the fruit of their efforts just when it is within their grasp. If we wish to enjoy the results of our physical and intellectual labours, we must fear God and love justice.
1. The necessities, and
2. The luxuries of life, the fruit of the field, the oil, and the wine, depend upon the providence of God, and may be taken away in his anger. “Thou shalt plant vineyards, and dress them, but shalt neither drink of the wine nor gather the grapes.”
II. Goods would be rescued, but delivered up to the enemy. “That which thou deliverest will I give up to the sword.” Children on whose account they got their wealth, goods and substance for which they had toiled, would be suddenly taken from them. If anything at all was rescued, it was only for a time, and could not be held. No effort can deliver from the power of God’s executioners. What we hold to be most precious is often most unsafe, and what we are determined not to lose that we lose suddenly.
III. Men would take flight, but could not escape. “Thou shalt take hold,” to rescue or remove to a safe place, but in vain, “but shalt not deliver.” How can men flee from God’s vengeance? No human band can rescue from God’s power. No harbour can hide from his presence. Heaven is the seat of his glory, earth the scene of his power, and hell the place of his wrath.
“What can ’scape the eye of God all seeing,
Or deceive his heart omniscient!” [Milton.]
SINS AND PUNISHMENT: AN UNBROKEN LINK.—Micah 6:16
This judgment the people brought upon themselves by their ungodly conduct. Their calamities were the results of their sins.
I. What were the sins of which they were guilty. First. They had broken the covenant of God and observed the statutes of men. “For the statutes of Omri are kept.” By every motive of hope and fear they were commanded to obey God. This was the purpose of their existence, and the ground on which they held their privileges and country. But the Baal-worship of Omri was patronized and raised into the popular religion (1 Kings 16:31-32). Secondly. They observed the doings of Ahab. Ahab’s idolatry and persecuting spirit were commended. The luxury, wickedness, and oppression of the court were sanctioned. Yea, men more wicked than others, men who sold themselves “to work wickedness in the sight of the Lord,” were their examples (1 Kings 21:25).
1. These customs were diligently observed. The margin gives, He doth keep diligently. One and all were kept as religious acts, in earnestness and diligence.
2. These customs were universally observed. Judah was at variance with Israel in many things, but they were one in apostasy.
3. These customs were continually observed. They had been introduced ages before Micah’s time, yet he found them prevalent and all-power-ful. Custom is the deposit of the past in the life of the present; the link which binds the present to the future. Thus evils are preserved and perpetuated from one generation to another.
II. What was the punishment which followed these sins? The actual results were very different from the expected fruits. Their conduct was so framed as if they had purposely desired the punishment. “That I should make thee a desolation.”
1. A privileged nation was made desolate. They were deprived of their privileges and honour. Sin will desolate the richest nation and the most flourishing Church; make people an astonishment to some, and a hissing to others.
2. An exalted nation was made a reproach. “You shall bear the reproach of my people.” They would have been God’s people if they had kept his covenant, but their sins brought shame and reproach. The God whom they had forsaken and offended left them in the hands of the heathen. The conduct which they deemed wise and expedient proved fatal to its originators and imitators. True honour is only found in God’s service. Sin and disgrace are bound together by an unbroken link. “We are become a reproach to our neighbours, a scorn and derision to them that are round about us.”
HOMILETIC HINTS AND SUGGESTIONS
1. The law of God is the standard of right in all ages. The threatenings of the law of Moses were in force in the days of Micah (Leviticus 26:16; Deuteronomy 28:30).
2. The execution of the law in the history of a nation is not always a warning to a people.
3. The punishment of the law to such as continually violate it is most bitter. Disappointment in labour, deprivation of the necessities of life, troubles in the family and the nation. “When our services of God are soured with sin,” says a quaint author, “his providences will justly be embittered to us.”
Micah 6:16. Statutes of Omri. Idolatrous customs.
1. Originated by great men.
2. Sanctioned by a wicked court.
3. Observed by a religious people. Antiquity and priestly or princely authority are of no force against the command of God. Fashion rules with an iron sceptre, and those who ought to stand up for God, often bow to the law of man.
“Custom’s the world’s great idol we adore,
And knowing this, we seek to know no more.” [Pomfret.]
Reproach. Sin in God’s people is especially great. And as they have peculiar privileges, so their reproach or punishment is proportionable to their profaning of their privileges (Ezekiel 36:20; Ezekiel 36:23) [Hutcheson]. “If professors of religion ruin themselves, their ruin will be the most reproachful of any; and they in a special manner will rise at the last day to everlasting shame and contempt.”
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 6
Micah 6:12-15. Crafty counsels are joyful in the expectation, difficult in the management, and sad in the event [Tacitus]. “There is no law more just than that the contrivers of destruction should perish by their own acts.” “The deceiver is often ruined by deceit.”
Micah 6:16. “The essence of wickedness is forsaking God.” “Those are marked for ruin that are deaf to reproof and good counsel.” Those that prefer the rules of carnal policy before Divine precepts, and the allurements of the world and the flesh before God’s promises and comforts, despise His word, giving the preference to those things which stand in competition with it [Matt. Henry].