The state of the text of Micah vi. 9-vii. 6 is as confused as the condition of society which it describes: it is difficult to get reason, and impossible to get rhyme, out of the separate clauses. We had best give it as it stands, and afterwards state the substance of its doctrine, which, in spite of the obscurity of details, is, as so often happens in similar cases, perfectly clear and forcible. The passage consists of two portions, which may not originally have belonged to each other, but which seem to reflect the same disorder of civic life, with the judgment that impends upon it.[904] In the first of them, vi. 9-16, the prophet calls for attention to the voice of God, which describes the fraudulent life of Jerusalem, and the evils He is bringing on her. In the second, vii. 1-6, Jerusalem bemoans her corrupt society; but perhaps we hear her voice only in ver. 1, and thereafter the prophet's.
The prophet speaks:—
Hark! Jehovah crieth to the city!
('Tis salvation to fear Thy Name!)[905]
Hear ye, O tribe and council of the city! (?)[906]
God speaks:—
... in the house of the wicked treasures of wickedness,
And the scant measure accursed!
Can she be pure with the evil balances,
And with the bag of false weights,
Whose rich men are full of violence,[907]
And her citizens speak falsehood,
And their tongue is deceit in their mouth?
But I on My part have begun to plague thee,
To lay thee in ruin because of thy sins.
Thou eatest and art not filled,
But thy famine[908] is in the very midst of thee!
And but try to remove,[909] thou canst not bring off;
And what thou bringest off, I give to the sword.
Thou sowest, but never reapest;
Treadest olives, but never anointest with oil,
And must, but not to drink wine!
So thou keepest the statutes of Omri,[910]
And the habits of the house of Ahab,
And walkest in their principles,
Only that I may give thee to ruin,
And her inhabitants for sport—
Yea, the reproach of the Gentiles[911] shall ye bear!
Jerusalem speaks:—
Woe, woe is me, for I am become like sweepings of harvest,
Like gleanings of the vintage—
Not a cluster to eat, not a fig that my soul lusteth after.
Perished are the leal from the land,
Of the upright among men there is none:
All of them are lurking for blood;
Every man takes his brother in a net.
Their hands are on evil to do it thoroughly.[912]
The prince makes requisition,
The judge judgeth for payment,
And the great man he speaketh his lust;
So together they weave it out.
The best of them is but a thorn thicket,[913]
The most upright worse than a prickly hedge.[914]
The day that thy sentinels saw, thy visitation, draweth on;
Now is their havoc[915] come!
Trust not any friend! Rely on no confidant!
From her that lies in thy bosom guard the gates of thy mouth.
For son insulteth father, daughter is risen against her mother, daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law;
And the enemies of a man are the men of his house.
Micah, though the prophet of the country and stern critic of its life, characterised Jerusalem herself as the centre of the nation's sins. He did not refer to idolatry alone, but also to the irreligion of the politicians, and the cruel injustice of the rich in the capital. The poison which weakened the nation's blood had found its entrance to their veins at the very heart. There had the evil gathered which was shaking the state to a rapid dissolution.
This section of the Book of Micah, whether it be by that prophet or not, describes no features of Jerusalem's life which were not present in the eighth century; and it may be considered as the more detailed picture of the evils he summarily denounced. It is one of the most poignant criticisms of a commercial community which have ever appeared in literature. In equal relief we see the meanest instruments and the most prominent agents of covetousness and cruelty—the scant measure, the false weights, the unscrupulous prince and the venal judge. And although there are some sins denounced which are impossible in our civilisation, yet falsehood, squalid fraud, pitilessness of the everlasting struggle for life are exposed exactly as we see them about us to-day. Through the prophet's ancient and often obscure eloquence we feel just those shocks and sharp edges which still break everywhere through our Christian civilisation. Let us remember, too, that the community addressed by the prophet was, like our own, professedly religious.
The most widespread sin with which the prophet charges Jerusalem in these days of her commercial activity is falsehood: Her inhabitants speak lies, and their tongue is deceit in their mouth. In Mr. Lecky's History of European Morals we find the opinion that "the one respect in which the growth of industrial life has exercised a favourable influence on morals has been in the promotion of truth." The tribute is just, but there is another side to it. The exigencies of commerce and industry are fatal to most of the conventional pretences, insincerities and flatteries, which tend to grow up in all kinds of society. In commercial life, more perhaps than in any other, a man is taken, and has to be taken, in his inherent worth. Business, the life which is called par excellence Busy-ness, wears off every mask, all false veneer and unction, and leaves no time for the cant and parade which are so prone to increase in all other professions. Moreover the soul of commerce is credit. Men have to show that they can be trusted before other men will traffic with them, at least upon that large and lavish scale on which alone the great undertakings of commerce can be conducted. When we look back upon the history of trade and industry, and see how they have created an atmosphere in which men must ultimately seem what they really are; how they have of their needs replaced the jealousies, subterfuges, intrigues, which were once deemed indispensable to the relations of men of different peoples, by large international credit and trust; how they break through the false conventions that divide class from class, we must do homage to them, as among the greatest instruments of the truth which maketh free.