Micah 2:4
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In that day they will take up a proverb against you and taunt you with this bitter lamentation: ‘We are utterly ruined! He has changed the portion of my people. How He has removed it from me! He has allotted our fields to traitors.’”
Commentaries
Excerpts gathered from published commentaries to ground the reading.
Guilt and Punishment of Israel. Its Future Restoration - Mic 2:1-13 After having prophesied generally in ch. 1 of the judgment that would fall upon both kingdoms on account of their apostasy from the living God, Micah proceeds in Mic 2:1-13 to condemn, as the principal sins, the injustice and oppressions on the part of the great (Mic 2:1, Mic 2:2), for which the nation was to be driven away from its inheritance (Mic 2:3-5). He then vindicates this threat, as opposed to the prophecies of the false prophets, who confirmed the nation in its ungodliness by the lies that they told (Mic 2:6-11); and then closes with the brief but definite promise, that the Lord would one day gather together the remnant of His people, and would multiply it greatly, and make it His kingdom (Mic 2:12, Mic 2:13). As this promise applies to all Israel of the twelve tribes, the reproof and threat of punishment are also addressed to the house of Jacob as such (Mic 2:7), and apply to both kingdoms. There are no valid grounds for restricting them to Judah, even though Micah may have had the citizens of that kingdom more particularly in his mind.
Open source ↗In this chapter we have, I. The sins with which the people of Israel are charged - covetousness and oppression, fraudulent and violent practices (Mic 2:1, Mic 2:2), dealing barbarously, even with women and children, and other harmless people (Mic 2:8, Mic 2:9). Opposition of God's prophets and silencing them (Mic 2:6, Mic 2:7), and delighting in false prophets (Mic 2:11). II. The judgments with which they are threatened for those sins, that they should be humbled, and impoverished (Mic 2:3-5), and banished (Mic 2:10). III. Gracious promises of comfort, reserved for the good people among them, in the Messiah (Mic 2:12, Mic 2:13). And this is the sum and scope of most of the chapters of this and other prophecies.
Open source ↗2:4 The power brokers would be ruined financially as their enemies confiscated their property. The land that they had seized unjustly from fellow Israelites would be violently taken from them (2:5).
Open source ↗Cross-references
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Will not all of these take up a taunt against him, speaking with mockery and derision: ‘Woe to him who amasses what is not his and makes himself rich with many loans! How long will this go on?’
and at noon you will grope about like a blind man in the darkness. You will not prosper in your ways. Day after day you will be oppressed and plundered, with no one to save you.
And Balaam lifted up an oracle, saying: “Balak brought me from Aram, the king of Moab from the mountains of the east. ‘Come,’ he said, ‘put a curse on Jacob for me; come and denounce Israel!’
I will take up a weeping and wailing for the mountains, a dirge over the wilderness pasture, for they have been scorched so no one passes through, and the lowing of cattle is not heard. Both the birds of the air and the beasts have fled; they have gone away.
The earth will be utterly laid waste and thoroughly plundered. For the LORD has spoken this word.
Then I asked: “How long, O Lord?” And He replied: “Until the cities lie ruined and without inhabitant, until the houses are left unoccupied and the land is desolate and ravaged,
I will again bring a conqueror against you, O dweller of Mareshah. The glory of Israel will come to Adullam.
At this, the leaders sought to arrest Jesus, for they knew that He had spoken this parable against them. But fearing the crowd, they left Him and went away.
Hear this word, O house of Israel, this lamentation I take up against you:
If I go out to the country, I see those slain by the sword; if I enter the city, I see those ravaged by famine! For both prophet and priest travel to a land they do not know.’”