Mic 2:1-2 | KingComments | STEP | In Micah 1, Micah has listed the sins against God. In Micah 2 it is about the sins against one’s neighbor. Micah turns to those in power, the people with money and influence, who are only interested in self-enrichment, and in doing so, stop at nothing. With a “woe” he announces God’s judgment on them. The “woe” he pronounces on these people is reminiscent of the six fold “woe” Isaiah pronounces ( ). Just like Isaiah, Micah then also pronounces a ‘woe’ over himself ( ; ). Announcement of judgment to others cannot be made without judging ourselves. The people Micah is speaking to here are purebred criminals. Evil does not attack them, they devote themselves to it. They have well considered their plans for self-enrichment. They have done so in the night, when people are supposed to be asleep. And when it gets light, they start to carry out their nefarious plans. They are so shameless that they do not shy away from the light, but rather carry out their sinful business in the light. Their entire existence is devoted to it. They can think of nothing else. These wicked people use the night to plot evil ( ). This is in stark contrast to what occupies the heart of the God-fearing David. When he is in the wilderness, on the run from Saul, he does not lie down at night thinking about how to eliminate Saul. He thinks of the LORD, of Who He is ( ). And when he thinks of the iniquity that surrounds and is done to him, he wants to surrender everything in his heart to the LORD and not avenge himself ( ). Led by God’s Spirit, Micah reveals the wicked reason for their actions. They reason: ‘We have the power and therefore the right to act as we wish.’ The sentence “for it is in the power of their hands” reads literally: ‘Their hand is to them their god.’ That is to say, the power they have applies to them as god; they recognize no higher power than their hand (cf. ). They have the power to do what they want (cf. ; ). It is the fault of many, often the rich and strong, but also people with intellectual power, that they believe they are allowed to do what they are able to do. It is the kind of people who have no sense of goodness, in whom there is no fear of God ( ). There is no inner or outer limitation, nothing that prevents them from carrying out their nefarious plans. They think and do. An application for today can be seen in many writers, makers of films or inventors of computer games. They keep coming up with new methods to sin. They sell them in their latest editions. The readers, viewers and buyers are the victims who willingly allow their money to be disposed of by investing it in a purchase of the products of these inventors of evil. As they take in the fruit of these people’s thinking, their moral awareness, without being aware of it, is increasingly degraded. The evil that comes out of this is a society that becomes more and more hardened and turns more and more against God and His authority and, as a result, also more and more against his neighbor.

‏ Micah 2:1-2

Scheme and Work Out Evil

In Micah 1, Micah has listed the sins against God. In Micah 2 it is about the sins against one’s neighbor. Micah turns to those in power, the people with money and influence, who are only interested in self-enrichment, and in doing so, stop at nothing. With a “woe” he announces God’s judgment on them. The “woe” he pronounces on these people is reminiscent of the six fold “woe” Isaiah pronounces (Isa 5:8-30). Just like Isaiah, Micah then also pronounces a ‘woe’ over himself (Mic 7:1; Isa 6:5). Announcement of judgment to others cannot be made without judging ourselves.

The people Micah is speaking to here are purebred criminals. Evil does not attack them, they devote themselves to it. They have well considered their plans for self-enrichment. They have done so in the night, when people are supposed to be asleep. And when it gets light, they start to carry out their nefarious plans. They are so shameless that they do not shy away from the light, but rather carry out their sinful business in the light. Their entire existence is devoted to it. They can think of nothing else.

These wicked people use the night to plot evil (Psa 36:4). This is in stark contrast to what occupies the heart of the God-fearing David. When he is in the wilderness, on the run from Saul, he does not lie down at night thinking about how to eliminate Saul. He thinks of the LORD, of Who He is (Psa 63:6). And when he thinks of the iniquity that surrounds and is done to him, he wants to surrender everything in his heart to the LORD and not avenge himself (Psa 4:4).

Led by God’s Spirit, Micah reveals the wicked reason for their actions. They reason: ‘We have the power and therefore the right to act as we wish.’ The sentence “for it is in the power of their hands” reads literally: ‘Their hand is to them their god.’ That is to say, the power they have applies to them as god; they recognize no higher power than their hand (cf. Hab 1:11). They have the power to do what they want (cf. Gen 31:29; Pro 3:27).

It is the fault of many, often the rich and strong, but also people with intellectual power, that they believe they are allowed to do what they are able to do. It is the kind of people who have no sense of goodness, in whom there is no fear of God (Rom 3:18). There is no inner or outer limitation, nothing that prevents them from carrying out their nefarious plans. They think and do.

An application for today can be seen in many writers, makers of films or inventors of computer games. They keep coming up with new methods to sin. They sell them in their latest editions. The readers, viewers and buyers are the victims who willingly allow their money to be disposed of by investing it in a purchase of the products of these inventors of evil. As they take in the fruit of these people’s thinking, their moral awareness, without being aware of it, is increasingly degraded. The evil that comes out of this is a society that becomes more and more hardened and turns more and more against God and His authority and, as a result, also more and more against his neighbor.

Covetousness, Robbery and Oppression

Their evil practices, conceived in the night, consist of robbing and oppressing. They result from their coveting of what belongs to their neighbor. When the rights of God are violated, the rights of one’s neighbor are also violated. It is already forbidden to covet something that belongs to someone else. It is a violation of the tenth commandment of the law (Exo 20:17). It declares the coveting of what belongs to someone else to be a sinful act (Rom 7:7). Paul states that greed is idolatry (Col 3:5), because it is putting your heart on something other than God.

But it does not stop at coveting. First they sin in their hearts. Then they sin in practice. And it seems that they are successful in their evil intentions. What they do is aptly illustrated in the history of Ahab who wants Naboth’s vineyard (1Kgs 21:1-2). Ahab shows his complete indifference to the fact that the land belongs to God (Lev 25:23). God has given His land as a hereditary possession to the families of His people.

Naboth appreciates what God has given him and under no circumstances wants to get rid of his land (1Kgs 21:3). He is aware that Ahab’s covetousness does not only concern his own house, but his ancestral house and also the house that will be of the next generation. But Ahab does not care about that. He takes possession of Naboth’s inheritance by placing the business in the hands of his still more wicked wife Jezebel. She sees to it that Naboth is murdered and the vineyard comes into Ahab’s possession (1Kgs 21:4-15).

The people Micah has in mind are all little Ahabs. They do what Ahab did. It is not flattering, but it is a clear comparison. Isaiah also denounced and punished these practices (Isa 5:8). The history of Ahab and Naboth is therefore not merely an incident, but happens repeatedly and takes place wherever covetousness prevails. The characteristic of covetousness is that you never have enough. That is how it is with these people. In our twenty-first century, criminal trials against directors of large companies bring to light the same behavior.

The prophet speaks of ‘robbing’, but they will certainly have denied that. They will have acted in such a way that they can defend themselves against these kinds of accusations. They will present it so that they have appropriated the possession of the other in a ‘neat’ way. But they are people who move the boundaries to their own advantage (Hos 5:10) in order to take possession of another person’s inheritance. They do not care about the boundaries of others.