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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Micah 6:9 - 6:9
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But because Israel is altogether wanting in these virtues, the Lord must threaten and punish. Mic 6:9. “The voice of Jehovah, to the city it cries, and wisdom has thy name in its eye; hear ye the rod, and who appoints it!” With these words Micah introduces the threatening and reproachful words of the Lord. קוֹך יְהֹוָה is not to be taken by itself, as an exclamation, “Hark! voice of the Lord!” as in Isa 13:4; Isa 40:6, etc. (Umbreit), but must be connected with what follows, in accordance with the accents. Whilst the prophet tells the people in Isa 40:8 what Jehovah requires, he introduces the following threat with “voice of Jehovah,” etc., to give the greater emphasis to the reproof, by intimating that it is not his own voice, but Jehovah's, which is speaking now. “To the city,” i.e., to the chief city of the kingdom, viz., Jerusalem. The sentence which follows, and which has been explained in very different ways, has the same object. תּוּשִׁיָּה, a word borrowed from the Chokmah-literature (Proverbs and Job), both here and Isa 28:29, formed from יֵשׁ or the root וָשַׁי (וָשָׁה), in the sense of subsistentia, substantia, then mostly vera et realis sapientia (see Delitzsch on Job 26:3). יִרְאֶה שִׁמְךָ is taken by many as a relative clause, “Blessed is he who sees Thy name,” i.e., gives heed to Thy revelation, Thy government of the universe; but if this were the sense, the relative could not have been omitted, or the infinitive רְאֹת must have been used. תּוּשִׁיָּה is rather to be taken as the object, and שִׁמְךָ as the subject: Thy name sees wisdom, i.e., has the true wisdom of life in sight (רָאָה as in Gen 20:10 and Psa 66:18). There is no necessity for the conjecture יִרְאָה for יִרְאֶה (Ewald and Hitzig); and notwithstanding the fact that יָרֵא is adopted in all the ancient versions, it is unsuitable, since the thought “wisdom is to fear Thy name” would be a very strange one in this connection, unless we could paraphrase the name into “word of the person speaking.” For other explanations, see Caspari. Hear ye, i.e., observe, the rod, viz., the judgment threatened by the Lord, and appointed for His rebellious nation. The reference is to the imperial power of Assyria, which Isaiah also describes in Isa 10:5, Isa 10:24, as the matteh and shēbhet by which Israel is smitten. The suffix to יְעָדָהּ refers to שֵׁבֶט, which is construed here as a feminine; יָעַד denotes the appointment of an instrument of punishment, as in Jer 47:7.