The best of them is as a briar; the most upright, [worse] than a thorn-fence. The day of thy watchmen, thy visitation is come; now shall be their perplexity.
Micah 7 opens with the prophet grieving over a harvest already stripped bare. Verse 4 gives the verdict. Even the pick of the nation now wounds whoever touches them, and the announced day has arrived. Two questions follow. How can the best be the problem? And what does a person do when that day lands?
Verse 4 is a conclusion, not a starting point. It follows a deliberate hunt through the nation for anything worthy of the name "people of God".
In Micah 7 the prophet stands before God as intercessor for the people. He lays before Him both their deep misery and their sins. He speaks in their name and makes himself one with them... Anxious, he searches among the people for anything that matches their title as the people of God. He finds nothing but fraud and deceit, and men waiting in ambush to shed blood, eager to do evil with both hands. Yet all of this is said as the city's confession. So from that place she can look up, bowing to God's hand, to One who will Himself plead her cause and carry out judgment for her.
Without faith there is no real repentance, and the rot reaches from the people to the king.
It is faith that produces real repentance and true humility. Where there was no faith, right to the end of the chapter we find solemn proof of evil showing itself in both the people and the king. What the prophet says here is a lament, and in the end it turns into a prayer.
The two images have a history. Thorns are what the curse brought into the world after man's sin.
Six different Hebrew words are translated as thorn or brier, and several of them cannot be pinned down exactly. This shows how plentiful the fruits are of the curse God pronounced in Eden because of man's sin. Those fruits will be removed in the millennium, when the myrtle and other plants will take the thorn's place.
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Set that against what God once found in these same people.
The LORD's soul is left unsatisfied. When Israel was helpless in the wilderness at the first, He had found them like grapes, like the first ripe fruit on a fig tree. But now the best of them is a brier.
The picture of a search that ends in disappointment turns up again in the Gospels, where the Lord comes to a tree in leaf and finds nothing on it.
Verses 1, 2. Compare these verses, on to verse 6, with the words of the Lord Jesus in the Gospels — Mark 11:13, and Matthew 21:19. "The time of figs was not yet."
The problem is not a shortage of decent behaviour. It is a break at the source.
When God does not have His place in the soul, we assert our independence. Then our weakness and inconsistency open the way to the enemy's cunning, and the mind does not see that it has left the truth. "I said in my haste, All men are liars," Psalm 116:11. So again, Micah 7 (where there is every kind of corruption), "The best of them is like a brier, the most upright of them a thorn hedge... Trust not in a friend, put no confidence in a guide; keep the doors of your mouth from her who lies in your bosom." They had departed from God. To learn what sin really is, you must learn the source you have departed from. We have departed from God.
Verse 4 announces a day that leaves people bewildered. A few lines later the prophet shows what he does with it. Some translations read "visitation" where the ESV has "punishment".
Verses 1-6. It is the prophet's voice complaining over the conditions of the people. But he also pictures the remnant during Zion's time of anguish. Note that our Lord quotes from this part of Micah (see Matthew 10:21, which applies to the future remnant). In the middle of the conditions he describes, we read that his refuge was prayer. He looked to the Lord, sure that He would hear. "But as for me, I will look to the LORD; I will wait for the God of my salvation; my God will hear me" (verse 7). This will be the attitude of the godly Israelites during the time of trouble.
- Search. The prophet hunts through the nation for anything worthy of its name. He finds only fraud, deceit and violence.
- Verdict. God once found first-ripe fruit here. Now He finds a brier — the mark of the curse that sin brought in, and that God will clear away in the age to come.
- Measure. The charge names the best and the most upright. So no one can point to a better example in the nation.
- Root. All of it traces to one source. They had departed from God, and to learn what sin is, you must learn what you left.
- Refuge. The day lands and confusion sets in. One thing stays open: the prophet looks to the LORD and waits for the God of his salvation.
Believe ye not in a companion, put not confidence in a familiar friend keep the doors of thy mouth from her that lieth in thy bosom.
Micah 7 mourns a nation where honesty has died, and this verse is its low point: a man cannot speak safely to a friend, an adviser, or even his own wife. How does a people sink this far, why did Jesus later quote these lines, and where can trust go when every human tie fails?
The verse sits in a section where the prophet stops accusing and starts pleading. One writer follows the movement from lament to prayer, and then to broken bonds.
It is a lament of the prophet that turns at last into a prayer. Then he describes, in the most striking way, the terrible breakdown of all bonds and the treachery common among the Jews… Here is a solemn thought: these are the words that Jesus applies to the effect of His message of the kingdom. What an awful proof of man's evil.
Micah is not standing apart from the ruin he describes. Another writer notes that he speaks from inside it.
In Micah 7 the prophet takes the place of intercessor before God, in the name of the people — presenting to Him at once their deep misery and their iniquities — speaking in their name, and identifying himself with them… He searches anxiously among the people for something suitable to their title of the people of God; he finds nothing but fraud and deceit.
Why has trust collapsed? One writer traces it back to a single root.
Where God does not have His place in the soul, we assert our independence. Then our weakness and inconsistency open the way to the cunning of the enemy, and the mind does not see that it has left the truth… So again, Micah 7, where corruption of every kind is found… They had departed from God. To learn what sin is to any purpose is to learn the source from which we have departed. We have departed from God.
Commentators point out that Christ quoted this passage. Micah wrote of the worst of human corruption. Jesus said His own message would produce it.
The Lord Jesus declares in the Gospel that the preaching of the gospel would produce what the prophet describes as the height of iniquity. Such is the iniquity of the heart that the light stirs into action. It rouses a hatred that only grows worse the nearer its object is.
That timing is worth weighing. Micah described a state still ahead of him, yet it broke out while Jesus walked among His people.
The Lord is alluding to the prophecy of Micah, who describes in similar terms the worst evil of the last days… It is solemn to find, therefore, that before the days spoken of by the prophet arrive, the evil had already come, and that the presence of Divine love in the person of Jesus provokes it. This could not be if men were not thoroughly bad; but Jesus is the Truth, and therefore brings all things to a head.
The same broken confidence appears twice in Scripture from two different causes. One writer sets the two side by side.
The prophet Micah, in describing the moral corruption that prevailed in his day, declares that all confidence between friends, and even between husband and wife, had completely vanished… The gospel of Matthew shows the same state of things, but this time it follows the presentation of Christ… When Christ is presented to men, they either receive Him or reject Him. So He brings, not peace, but a sword. It draws out from those who refuse Him all the enmity, all the hidden corruption, of the human heart, both against Christ and against His followers.
If the closest ties can turn hostile, the disciple has a decision to make early. One writer reads Christ's call to discipleship as an echo of these verses.
There may be an allusion here to Micah 7:5-6. A person must give up friends for Christ… you cannot have two hearts — a heart for the world, and a heart for Me — Christ would say. I tremble when I see people who have not counted the cost, setting out in the profession of following Christ. It is God's way to put the barrier at the very start.
The warning is not the end. Verse 7 answers it: the collapse of human trust is what drives a person to God. One writer applies this to the remnant — the faithful few left in Israel.
This forces the remnant to look to the Lord as their only resource, and to bow until He pleads. When we have fallen in anything, that is the only thing we have to do.
Another writer names the prophet's refuge, and sees the same pattern for God's people in a coming day of trouble.
In the middle of the conditions the prophet describes, we read that his refuge was prayer. He looks to the Lord, sure that He will hear. "But as for me, I will look to the LORD; I will wait for the God of my salvation; my God will hear me" (verse 7). This will be the attitude of the godly Israelites during the time of trouble.
- Departure. The distrust starts further back. A people who have left God can no longer be truthful with each other, and the ruin shows first in the closest ties.
- Description. Micah is not giving advice about friendship. He is recording a fact: trust between friends, and even between husband and wife, was gone.
- Division. Christ quoted this passage about His own message. Where people refuse Him, the light draws out their hidden hatred, and He brings a sword rather than peace.
- Decision. The nearest ties can turn hostile. So following Christ means counting the cost at the start, not halfway through.
- Dependence. The verse strips away every human support. The next verse supplies the only one that holds: look to the Lord, and wait for the God of salvation.