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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Micah 7:2 - 7:2
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“The godly man has disappeared from the earth, and there is no more a righteous man among men. All lie in wait for blood, they hunt every man his brother with the net. Mic 7:3. Their hands are after evil, to make it good. The prince asks, and the judge is for reward; and the great man, he speaks the evil of his soul: and they twist it together.†The grape and the early fig signify the good and the righteous man. חָסִיד is not the God-fearing man, but, according to the context, the man who cherishes love and fidelity. ×ָבַד, not “to have perished,†but to be lost, to have disappeared. מִן ×”Ö¸×ָרֶץ, not “out of the land,†but, as the parallel בָּ×Ö¸×“Ö¸× shows, from the earth, out of the world. For the fact itself, compare Psa 12:2 and Isa 57:1. They all lie in wait for blood, i.e., not that they all go about committing murder, but simply that they set their minds upon quarrels, cheating, and treachery, that they may rob their neighbour of his means of existence, so that he must perish (cf. Mic 3:2-3; Mic 2:1-2); at the same time, even murderous thoughts are not excluded. The same thing is implied in the hunting with the net. ×ָח, the brother, is the fellow-countryman (for this figure, compare Psa 10:9; Psa 35:7-8, etc.). In Mic 7:3 the words from עַל הָרַע to לְהֵיטִיב are not to be joined to what follows so as to form one sentence. Such a combination is not only opposed to the accents, but is at variance with the structure of the whole verse, which consists of several short clauses, and it does not even yield a natural thought; consequently Ewald proposes to alter the text (ש×וְ×ֵל). הָרַע is hardly the inf. hiph. “to do evil,†but most likely a noun with the article, “the evil;†and the thought is therefore either “both hands are (sc., busy) with evil,†or “both hands are stretched out to evil,†to make it good, i.e., to carry out the evil well (הֵיטִיב as in Jer 2:33), or to give evil such a form that it shall appear to be good, or right. This thought is then made special: the prince, the judge, and the great man, i.e., the rich man and mighty man (Lev 19:15; 1Sa 25:2), weave a thing to make evil good. עִבֵּת, to weave, to twist together, after עֲבוֹת, twist or string. The subject to וַיְעַבְּתוּהָ is to be found in the three classes already named, and not merely in the judge and the great man. There is just as little reason for this limitation as for the assumption that the great man and the prince are one person. The way in which the three twist the thing or the evil plan together is indicated in the statements of the three previous clauses. The prince asks, sc. for the condemnation of a righteous or innocent man; and the judge grants this for recompense against compensation; and the rich man co-operates by speaking havvath napshoÌ„. HavvaÌ‚h in most passages is universally allowed to signify hurt, mischief, destruction; and the only question is, whether this meaning is to be traced to הוה = ×וה, to breathe (Hupfeld on Psa 5:10), or to הוה, to occur, an occurrence, then specially an evil occurrence (Hengstenberg, Diss. on the Pentateuch, vol. i. p. 252). Only in Pro 10:3 and the passage before us is havvaÌ‚h said to signify desire in a bad sense, or evil lust. But, as Caspari has shown, the meaning is neither necessary nor established in either of these two passages. In Pro 10:3 the meaning aerumna activa aliisque inferenda is quite sufficient; and C. B. Michaelis has adopted it for the present passage: “The great man speaks the mischief of his soul,†i.e., the injury or destruction of another, for which he cherishes a desire. Nephesh, the soul as the seat of desire. ×”×•Ö¼× is not introduced to strengthen the suffix attached to × Ö·×¤Ö°×©×וֹ, “of his, yea of his soul†(Ewald, Hitzig, Umbreit); for not only are the accents against this, but also the thought, which requires no such strengthening. It is an emphatic repetition of the subject haggaÌ‚doÌ„l. The great man weaves evil with the king and judge, by desiring it, and expressing the desire in the most open manner, and thereby giving to the thing an appearance of right.