Micah7chapter 7

The opening picture is a specific disappointment. After the summer fruit has been gathered and the grapes gleaned, a hungry man walking the rows finds nothing — not one cluster, not one first-ripe fig, which was the prized early fruit everyone waited for. Micah says that is what looking for a godly man in the land feels like.

The hunting language that follows is literal equipment. They hunt one another with a net, and both hands are skilled at evil — the official asks, the judge takes the bribe, the great man states what he wants, and together they weave it. The best of them is like a briar, and the most upright like a thorn hedge, which is what you get when you reach into that tangle.

The breakdown of the household was the last thing to go in that society. A son treating his father with contempt, a daughter rising against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law, and a man's enemies being the men of his own house — in a culture built on the extended family, this is society at the floor. Jesus later quoted these lines about what following him would cost.

The watchman at the end is standing on a wall. The day of your watchmen, the day of your visitation, is coming — and then the promise of a day for building your walls, the boundary extended, and people coming from Assyria and Egypt and from sea to sea.