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.
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. Jeremiah 26:18 quotes this verse. Jeremiah describes the powerful effect of Micah's prophecy on Hezekiah (Jeremiah 26:19), "Did he not tear the Lord, and besought the Lord, and the Lord repented him of the evil which he had pronounced against him?" See my Introduction to Micah, on this verse. Its effect on Hezekiah was such that a thorough reformation of his kingdom ensued, which caused the averting of the execution of God's judgments on Jerusalem for more than 100 years. The Talmud and Maimonides record that, at the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans under Titus, Terentius Rufus, who was left in command of the army, with a plowshare tore up the foundations of the temple: so that this prophecy included in its fulfillment not only the destruction of Jerusalem under Nebuchadnezzar, but that also under the Roman Titus.
Mountain of the house - the height on which the temple stands.
As the high places of the forest - shall become as heights in a forest overrun with wild shrubs and brushwood.
Remarks:
(1) The princes and rulers, who are the ministers of justice to others, ought best to know what is likely to be their own doom if they be guilty of injustice (Micah 3:1). The Lord will pay the violent in kind. Even as they would not hear the cry of those who complained because of oppression, so in the oppressors' day of distress, when they cry to the Lord, He will not hear them (Micah 3:4). Men must not hope that, after behaving ill, they shall fare well.
(2) Not only the princes, but the prophets also in Israel, were guilty of rapacity and covetousness. They flattered these who ministered to their greediness with promises of "peace;" while against those who would "not put into their mouth they threatened "war," as a holy judgment from God (Micah 3:5). Love of filthy lucre is especially unseemly in him who exercises the sacred ministry. They who so dishonour God shall soon be forever silenced by God (Micah 3:7).
(3) In contrast to such stands the true minister of God. Though not possessing the miraculous inspiration of the prophet, every minister taught by the Holy Spirit, in his ordinary operations, can say, "Truly I am full of power by the Spirit of the Lord" (Micah 3:8). The true minister, "strengthened with might by Christ's Spirit in the inner man" (Ephesians 3:16), is not afraid "to declare" unto sinners their "transgression" and "sin." He does not, like the false prophets, flatter those who will give him presents with promises of peace where there is no repentance, which is the only solid ground of peace. Nor does he make the heart of the humble righteous sad whom God hath not made sad; but with spiritual "judgment" discriminates the right message from God to give to the penitent and to the impenitent respectively.
(4) Judgment and equity are the true basis of a kingdom or nation. The polity that is, like Jerusalem, "built up with blood and with iniquity," shall fall (Micah 3:9-10).
(5) Names of religion will save no one, if the reality is lacking. People may go to the house of God, and profess to worship God as they will, but if their heart goeth after covetousness God rejects them. Faith rests upon the Lord, and honours Him by obedience. Presumption leans upon forms of worship, while dishonouring Him whom it professes to honour. All who love 'money' as their chief good, and yet lean upon the Lord, saying, "Is not the Lord among us" (Micah 3:11), utterly deceive themselves. Evil shall some upon them, to their everlasting destruction. As Zion, for the sake of such mammon-worshippers, was "plowed as a field," and its "house" of God laid waste, so shall every sanctuary which the worshippers desecrate by hypocrisy be destroyed by the judgment of God: so far shall it be from screening them from punishment. Let us see that our service of God is sincere, humble, and consistent.