Micah 2:4

In that day shall [one] take up a parable against you,.... Making use of your name, as a byword, a proverb, a taunt, and a jeer; mocking at your calamities and miseries: or, "concerning you" (c);

In that day shall one take up a parable against you, and lament with a doleful lamentation, and say, We be utterly spoiled: he hath changed the portion of my people: how hath he removed it from me!

In that day; when God shall retaliate, as , when he shall by the Assyrian captivity fulfil what hero is threatened by the prophet. Shall one take up; there shall be taken up, or be in common ordinary use among those that know what is befallen you. A parable; or taunting, scorning proverb; this tells them how their Assyrian conquerors should reflect reproach and shame upon captive Israel, much like that , which the Babylonians used toward captive Judah. Lament with a doleful lamentation; your friends for you, and you for yourselves, shall mourn most bitterly, as the import of the Hebraism is, lament with a lamentation of lamentations. So though all are not alike affected, yet every one shall carry it towards miserable Israel according as they are affected, condoling their sad state, or insulting over them. We be utterly spoiled: this is the sum of their mournful lamentation over their own state; Our land wasted, our friends slain, our cities taken, plundered, and sacked, our houses and goods either taken away from us or burnt, and our persons no more our own, but captives, under the power and will of our enemy; thus spoiled, nothing is any longer ours. He; the Assyrian, say some; God, say others; indeed God did it by the Assyrians. Hath changed the portion; the estate, wealth, plenty, freedom, safety, joy, and honour, into poverty, famine, servitude, danger, grief, and dishonour. The land of Canaan was the inheritance, and all the conveniencies it afforded were part of the portion of Israel; but, O doleful change! these all taken away from Israel, and given to others. My people; it is either the prophet, who calls them his people, or rather, every one of Israel that useth this lamentation, Who saith my people. How hath he removed it from me! how dreadfully hath God dealt with Israel! removing their persons into captivity, and transferring their right and possession to enemies! Turning away he hath divided our fields; either, thus turning away from us in displeasure, God hath divided our fields among others, given them to the enemy, and he hath divided them to whom he pleaseth, to his own people and soldiers; or else this word turning away may be rendered returning, and be spoken of the enemy, when he returned he did divide our fields; or, as the margin of our Bibles, instead of restoring our fields, which we hoped, and our mistaken leaders promised, God hath given the enemy success and power to divide our fields, and to allot them to others.

Micah 2:4 In that day shall [one] take up a parable against you, and lament with a doleful lamentation, [and] say, We be utterly spoiled: he hath changed the portion of my people: how hath he removed [it] from me! turning away he hath divided our fields.Ver. 4. In that day shall one take up a parable, &c.] In that day, that doleful and dismal day of their calamity. Shall one] Any one that is moved at your misery, and would work you to a sense of your sin, the mother of your misery. Shall take up a parable] Tristem et querulam, sad and sorrowful. And lament with a doleful lamentation] Heb. with a lamentation of lamentations, or with heigh-ho upon heigh-ho, as the word seems to signify. We be utterly spoiled] Plundered to the life, laid naked to the very foundation, Micah 1:6, put into such a condition as that there is neither hope of better nor place of worse. He hath changed the portion of my people] That is, God, or the Assyrian, by God’ s appointment, hath taken away our country, and given it to strangers. The Pope took upon him, in Henry VIII’ s days, to give England, Primo occupaturo, to him that could first win it. This brutum fulmen briding of lighning came to nothing; but when God’ s people changed their glory for that which profited not, Jeremiah 2:11, he soon changed their portion; he caused that good land to spew them out, he turned their weal into woe, and brought wrath upon them to the utmost. Neither profited it them any more to have been called God’ s people than it did Dives in flames, that Abraham called him son; or Judas, that Christ called him friend. How hath he removed it from me!] This is lamentation-like indeed, see Lamentations 1:1; Lamentations 2:1; Lamentations 4:1, all beginning with the same word, How. The speech is concise and abrupt, meet for mourners. There is an elegance in the original not to be translated. How uncertain are all things here! God sits upon the circle of the earth, and shakes out the inhabitants at pleasure, as by a canvas, Isaiah 40:22. Persons and things are said to be in heaven, but on earth; on the outside of it only, where they have no firm footing. Dionysius was driven out of his kingdom; which yet he thought was tied to him with chains of adamant, saith the historian (Aelian. lib. 2). Turning away (from us as a loathsome object, being so incorrigibly flagitioas) he hath divided our fields] sc. to the enemy for a reward, as he gave Egypt to Nebuchadnezzar for his pains at Tyre. Or thus. Instead of restoring (which now we are hopeless of) he hath divided our fields, our fertile and fat country, to those that will be sure to hold their own in it, as the Gauls and Goths did in Italy, after they had once tasted the sweetness of it.

(4) Shall one take up a parable against you—i.e., the enemies shall repeat in mockery the doleful lamentations with which you bewail your pitiable state. Turning away he hath divided.—Rather, to an apostate—i.e., an idolater—he hath divided our fields. The land they were taking from others God would give into the hands of an idolatrous king.

Verse 4. Take up a parable against you] Your wickedness and your punishment shall be subjects of common conversation; and a funeral dirge shall be composed and sung for you as for the dead. The lamentation is that which immediately follows: We be utterly spoiled; and ends, Are these his doings? Micah 2:7.

4. shall one take up a parable] Or, a taunting song (as probably Isaiah 14:4, Habakkuk 2:6). The Hebr. mβshβl means properly a saying characterized by parallelism—‘the parallelism may consist either in the moral application of emblems, or simply in the parallel disposition of the lines and the sense. From the fact that emblems were generally applied in a witty, satirical manner, mβshβl sometimes obtains the meaning of taunt-song.’ So, too, we may add, the participial noun mτshηl acquires the sense of taunt-singer in Numbers 21:27, Ezekiel 16:44. In the present instance, the prophet means (see next clause) that the same words from different speakers would be at once a lamentation and a taunt. When an Israelite should say plaintively, ‘It is all over,’ his enemy should take up his words in a tone of triumph or mockery. and lament with a doleful lamentation, &c.] Rather, and lament with a lamentation:‘It is done,’ they shall say,‘We be utterly spoiled:He changeth the portion of my people;How doth he remove it from me!Unto the rebellious he divideth our fields.’The purport of the complaint is that Jehovah (for the Israelites recognize him as the sender of their trouble) has transferred the promised land to heathen men, who from their very birth have been rebels against Jehovah. The epithet ‘rebellious’ deserves notice. True, it is the Jews who use it, but the prophet would certainly have sanctioned its employment. We find him, in chap. Micah 5:15, announcing the punishment of the heathen for their disobedience, and his great contemporary Isaiah, in Isaiah 10:5-15 (comp. Isaiah 37:26), rebuking Sennacherib for ‘vaunting himself’ against Him who gave him his commission. Both prophets imply that the heathen had a certain natural light, which might have led them to the true God, or at least have preserved them from rejecting Him, when His claims were brought before them. Comp. St Paul’s words in Romans 1:20, ‘so that they are without excuse.’

In that day shall one take up a parable against you - The mashal or likeness may, in itself, be any speech in which one thing is likened to another: 1) “figured speech,” 2) “proverb,” and, since such

Micah 2:3-4 announce the judgment. Therefore — Because they devise evil. I devise an evil — Or, calamity (Amos 3:6). Jehovah will bring upon the evil doers a calamity from which there can be no escape.