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Hear, all ye people - The very commencement of this prophecy supposes preceding exhortations and predictions.
Hearken, O earth - ארץ arets, here, should be translated land, the country of the Hebrews being only intended.
And let the Lord God be Witness - Let him who has sent me with this message be witness that I have delivered it faithfully; and be a witness against you, if you take not the warning.
The Lord from his holy temple - The place where he still remains as your King, and your Judge; and where you profess to pay your devotions. The temple was yet standing, for Jerusalem was not taken for many years after this; and these prophecies were delivered before the captivity of the ten tribes, as Micah appears to have been sent both to Israel and to Judah. See Micah 1:5-9, Micah 1:12, Micah 1:13.
Hear, all ye people - Literally, “hear, ye peoples, all of them.” Some 140, or 150 years had flowed by, since Micaiah, son of Imlah, had closed his prophecy in these words. And now they burst out anew. From age to age the word of God holds its course, ever receiving new fulfillments, never dying out, until the end shall come. The signal fulfillment of the prophecy, to which the former Micalah had called attention in these words, was an earnest of the fulfillment of this present message of God.
Hearken, O earth, and all that therein is - The “peoples” or “nations” are never Judah and Israel only: the earth and the fullness thereof is the well-known title of the whole earth and all its inhabitants. Moses Deuteronomy 32:1, Asaph Psalm 50:7, Isaiah Isaiah 1:2, call heaven and earth as witnesses against God‘s people. Jeremiah, Jeremiah 6:19 as Micah here, summons the nations and the earth. The contest between good and evil, sin and holiness, the kingdom of God and the kingdom of Satan, everwhere, but most chiefly where God‘s Presence is nearest, is “a spectacle to the world, to angels and to men” 1 Corinthians 4:9. The nations are witnesses of God against His own people, so that these should not say, that it was for want of faithfulness or justice or power Exodus 32:12; Numbers 14:16; Joshua 7:8-9, but in His righteous judgment, that He cast off whom He had chosen. So shall the Day of Judgment “reveal His righteousness” Romans 2:5. “Hearken, O earth.” The lifeless earth Psalm 114:7; Psalm 97:5 trembles “at the Presence of God,” and so reproaches the dullness of man. By it he summons man to listen with great reverence to the Voice of God.
And let the Lord God be witness against you - Not in words, but in deeds ye shall know, that I speak not of myself but God in me, when, what I declare, He shall by His Presence fulfill. But the nations are appealed to, not merely because the judgments of God on Israel should be made known to them by the prophets. He had not yet spoken of Israel or Judah, whereas he had spoken to the nations; “hear, ye peoples.” It seems then most likely that here too he is speaking to them. Every judgment is an earnest, a forerunner, a part, of the final judgment and an example of its principles. It is but “the last great link in the chain,” which unites God‘s dealings in time with eternity. God‘s judgments on one imply a judgment on all. His judgments in time imply a Judgment beyond time. Each sinner feels in his own heart response to God‘s visible judgments on another. Each sinful nation may read its own doom in the sentence on each other nation.
God judges each according to his own measure of light and grace, accepted or refused. The pagan shall be judged by “the law written in their heart” Romans 2:12-15; the Jew, by the law of Moses and the light of the prophets; Christians, by the law of Christ. “The word,” Christ saith, “that I have spoken, the same shall judge him at the last Day” John 12:48. God Himself foretold, that the pagan should know the ground of His judgments against His people. “All nations shall say, wherefore hath the Lord done thus unto this land? What meaneth the heat of this great anger? Then men shall say, Because they have forsaken the covenant of the Lord God of their fathers which He made with them, when He brought them forth out of the land of Egypt, … ” Deuteronomy 29:24-25. But in that the pagan knew why God so punished His people, they came so far to know the mind of God; and God, who at no time “left Himself without witness” Acts 14:17, bore fresh “witness” to them, and, so far us they neglected it, against them. A Jew, wherever he is seen throughout the world, is a witness to the world of God‘s judgments against sin.
Dionysius: “Christ, the faithful Witness, shall witness against those who do ill, for those who do well.”
The Lord from His holy temple - Either that at Jerusalem, where God shewed and revealed Himself, or Heaven of which it was the image. As David says, “The Lord is in His holy temple; the Lord‘s throne is in heaven” Psalm 11:4; and contrasts His dwelling in heaven and His coming down upon earth. “He bowed the heavens also and came down” Psalm 18:9; and Isaiah, in like words, “Behold, the Lord cometh out of His place to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity” Isaiah 26:21.
Hear, all ye people; hearken, O earth, and all that therein is: and let the Lord God be witness against you, the Lord from his holy temple. For, behold, the Lord cometh forth out of his place, and will come down, and tread upon the high places of the earth. Micah 1:2, 3. Mar 262.1
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