with incurable sickness (for hechelaah, see at Nah 3:19 and Jer 30:12; and for the fact itself, Isa 1:5-6). The perfect expresses the certainty of the future. The suffix refers to the people, not of the capital only, but, as we may see from Mic 6:16, of the whole of the kingdom of Judah. Hashmēm (an uncontracted form; see Ges. §67, Anm. 10), devastando, is attached to the preceding verb in an adverbial sense, as a practical exemplification, like the שׁבע in Lev 26:18, Lev 26:24, Lev 26:28, which Micah had in his eye at the time. For the individualizing of the punishment, which follows, rests upon Lev 26:25-26, and Deu 28:39-40. The land is threatened with devastation by the foe, from which the people flee into fortresses, the besieging of which occasions starvation. For the fulfilment of this, see Jer 52:6 (cf. 2Ki 6:25). ישׁח, ἁπ.λεγ., hollowness, or emptiness of stomach. ותסּג, thou mayest remove, i.e., carry off thy goods and family, yet wilt thou not save; but even if thou shouldst save anything, it will fall into the hands of the enemy, and be destroyed by his sword (vid., Jer 50:37). The enemy will also partly consume and partly destroy the corn and field-fruit, as well as the stores of oil and wine (vid., Amo 5:11). ולא תסוּך שׁמן is taken verbatim from Deu 28:40.
Verse 16
This trouble the people bring upon themselves by their ungodly conduct. With this thought the divine threatening is rounded off and closed. Mic 6:16. “And they observe the statutes of Omri, and all the doings of the house of Ahab, and so ye walk in their counsels; that I may make thee a horror, and her inhabitants a hissing, and the reproach of my people shall ye bear.” The verse is attached loosely to what precedes by Vav. The first half corresponds to Mic 6:10-12, the second to Mic 6:13-15, and each has three clauses. השׁתּמּר, as an intensive form of the piel, is the strongest expression for שׁמר, and is not to be taken as a passive, as Ewald and others suppose, but in a reflective sense: “It (or one) carefully observes for itself the statutes of Omri instead of the statutes of the Lord” (Lev 20:23; Jer 10:3). All that is related of Omri, is that he was worse than all his predecessors (1Ki 16:25). His statutes are the Baal-worship which his son and successor Ahab raised into the ruling national religion (1Ki 16:31-32), and the introduction of which is attributed to Omri as the
