Micah 1:8

(Verse 6 onwards): And I will make Samaria a heap of stones in the field, when a vineyard is planted, and I will pour down her stones into the valley, and will lay bare her foundations. And all her carved images shall be beaten to pieces, and all her wages shall be burned with fire, and all her idols will I lay desolate: for she gathered it of the hire of an harlot, and they shall return to the hire of a harlot.

Therefore I will wail and howl, I will go stripped and naked,....

Two things the prophet here thus dolefully laments:-- 1. That Israel's case is desperate: Her wound is incurable; it is ruin without remedy; man cannot help her;

Therefore I will wail--The prophet first shows how the coming judgment affects himself, in order that he might affect the minds of his countrymen similarly. stripped--that is, of shoes, or sandals, as the Septuagint translates. Otherwise "naked" would be a tautology. naked--"Naked" means divested of the upper garment (Isa 20:2).

Therefore I will - Therefore I would Wail - (properly, beat, that is, on the breast). And howl - “Let me alone,” he would say, “that I may vent my sorrow in all ways of expressing sorrow, beating on the breast and wailing, using all acts and sounds of grief.” It is as we would say, “Let me mourn on,” a mourning inexhaustible, because the woe too and the cause of grief was unceasing. The prophet becomes in words, probably in acts too, an image of his people, doing as they should do hereafter. He mourns, because and as they would have to mourn, bearing chastisement, bereft of all outward comeliness, an example also of repentance, since what he did were the chief outward tokens of mourning. I will (would) go stripped - despoiled . And naked - He explains the acts, that they represented no mere voluntary mourning. Not only would he, representing them, go bared of all garments of beauty, as we say “half-naked” but despoiled also, the proper term of those plundered and stripped by an enemy. He speaks of his doing, what we know that Isaiah did, by God’s command, representing in act what his people should thereafter do. : “Wouldest thou that I should weep, thou must thyself grieve the first.” Micah doubtless went about, not speaking only of grief, but grieving, in the habit of one mourning and bereft of all. He prolongs in these words the voice of wailing, choosing unaccustomed forms of words, to carry on the sound of grief. I will make a wailing like the dragons - (jackals). And mourning as the owls - (ostriches). The cry of both, as heard at night, is very piteous. Both are doleful creatures, dwelling in desert and lonely places. […]