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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Micah 7:7 - 7:7
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“This confession of sin is followed by a confession of faith on the part of the humiliated people of God” (Shlier.) Mic 7:7. “But I, for Jehovah will I look out; I will wait for the God of my salvation; my God will hear me. Mic 7:8. Rejoice not over me, O mine enemy! for am I fallen, I rise again; for do I sit in darkness, Jehovah is light to me.” By וַאֲנִי what follows is attached adversatively to the preceding words. Even though all love and faithfulness should have vanished from among men, and the day of visitation should have come, the church of the faithful would not be driven from her confidence in the Lord, but would look to Him and His help, and console itself with the assurance that its God would hear it, i.e., rescue it from destruction. As the looking out (tsâphâh) for the Lord, whether He would not come, i.e., interpose to judge and aid, involves in itself a prayer for help, though it is not exhausted by it, but also embraces patient waiting, or the manifestation of faith in the life; so the hearing of God is a practical hearing, in other words, a coming to help and to save. The God of my salvation, i.e., from whom all my salvation comes (cf. Psa 27:9; Isa 17:10). Her enemy, i.e., the heathen power of the world, represented in Micah's time by Asshur, and personified in thought as daughter Asshur, is not to rejoice over Zion. כִּי, for, not “if:” the verb nâphaltı̄ is rather to be taken conditionally, “for have I fallen;” nâphal being used, as in Amo 5:2, to denote the destruction of the power and of the kingdom. The church is here supposed to be praying out of the midst of the period when the judgment has fallen upon it for its sins, and the power of the world is triumphing over it. The prophet could let her speak thus, because he had already predicted the destruction of the kingdom and the carrying away of the people into exile as a judgment that was inevitable (Mic 3:12; Mic 6:16). Sitting in darkness, i.e., being in distress and poverty (cf. Isa 9:1; Isa 42:7; Psa 107:10). In this darkness the Lord is light to the faithful, i.e., He is their salvation, as He who does indeed chasten His own people, but who even in wrath does not violate His grace, or break the promises which He has given to His people.