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Against this family (the Israelites) do I devise an evil - You have devised the evil of plundering the upright; I will devise the evil to you of punishment for your conduct; you shall have your necks brought under the yoke of servitude. Tiglath-pileser ruined this kingdom, and transported the people to Assyria, under the reign of Hezekiah, king of Judah; and Micah lived to see this catastrophe. See on Micah 2:9; (note).
Such had been their habitual doings. They had done all this, he says, as one continuous act, up to that time. They were habitually devisers of iniquity, doers of evil. It was ever-renewed. By night they sinned in heart and thought; by day, in act. And so he speaks of it in the present. They do it. But, although renewed in fresh acts, it was one unbroken course of acting. And so he also uses the form, in which the Hebrews spoke of uninterrupted habits, They have coveted, they have robbed, they have taken. Now came God‘s part.
Therefore, thus saith the Lord - Since they oppress whole families, behold I will set Myself against this whole family; since they devise iniquity, behold I too, Myself, by Myself, in My own Person, am devising. Very awful is it, that Almighty God sets His own Infinite Wisdom against the devices of man and employs it fittingly to punish. “I am devising no common punishment, but one to bow them down without escape; “an evil from which” - He turns suddenly to them, “ye shall not remove your necks, neither shall ye go haughtily.” Ribera: “Pride then was the source of that boundless covetousness,” since it was pride which was to be bowed down in punishment. The punishment is proportioned to the sin. They had done all this in pride; they should have the liberty and self-will wherein they had wantoned, tamed or taken from them. Like animals with a heavy yoke upon them, they should live in disgraced slavery.
The ten tribes were never able to withdraw their necks from the yoke. From the two tribes God removed it after the 70 years. But the same sins against the love of God and man brought on the same punishment. Our Lord again spake the woe against their covetousness Luke 16:13-14; Luke 11:39; Matthew 23:14, Matthew 23:23, Matthew 23:25; Mark 12:40. It still shut them out from the service of God, or from receiving Him, their Redeemer. They still spoiled the goods Hebrews 10:34 of their brethren. In the last dreadful siege, “there were insatiable longings for plunder, searching-out of the houses of the rich; murder of men and insults of women were enacted as sports; they drank down what they had spoiled, with blood.” And so the prophecy was for the third time fulfilled. They who withdraw from Christ‘s easy yoke of obedience shall not remove from the yoke of punishment; they who, through pride, will not bow down their necks, but make them stiff, shall be bent low, that they go not upright or haughtily anymore Isaiah 2:11. The Lord alone shall be exalted in that Day. For it is an evil time. Perhaps he gives a more special meaning to the words of Amos Amos 5:13, that a time of moral evil will be, or will end in, a time, full of evil, that is, of sorest calamity.