fruit. קיץ, fruit; see at Amo 8:1. אוּתה is to be taken in a relative sense, and the force of אין still extends to בּכּוּרה (compare Gen 30:33). The figure is explained in Mic 7:2 ff.
Verses 2-3
Mic 7:2-3“The godly man has disappeared from the earth, and there is no more a righteous man among men. All lie in wait for blood, they hunt every man his brother with the net. Mic 7:3. Their hands are after evil, to make it good. The prince asks, and the judge is for reward; and the great man, he speaks the evil of his soul: and they twist it together.” The grape and the early fig signify the good and the righteous man. חסיד is not the God-fearing man, but, according to the context, the man who cherishes love and fidelity. אבד, not “to have perished,” but to be lost, to have disappeared. מן הארץ, not “out of the land,” but, as the parallel בּאדם shows, from the earth, out of the world. For the fact itself, compare Psa 12:2 and Isa 57:1. They all lie in wait for blood, i.e., not that they all go about committing murder, but simply that they set their minds upon quarrels, cheating, and treachery, that they may rob their neighbour of his means of existence, so that he must perish (cf. Mic 3:2-3; Mic 2:1-2); at the same time, even murderous thoughts are not excluded. The same thing is implied in the hunting with the net. אח, the brother, is the fellow-countryman (for this figure, compare Psa 10:9; Psa 35:7-8, etc.). In Mic 7:3 the words from על הרע to להיטיב are not to be joined to what follows so as to form one sentence. Such a combination is not only opposed to the accents, but is at variance with the structure of the whole verse, which consists of several short clauses, and it does not even yield a natural thought; consequently Ewald proposes to alter the text (שׁואל). הרע is hardly the inf. hiph. “to do evil,” but most likely a noun with the article, “the evil;” and the thought is therefore either “both hands are (sc., busy) with evil,” or “both hands are stretched out to evil,” to make it good, i.e., to carry out the evil well (היטיב as in Jer 2:33), or to give evil such a form that it shall appear to be good, or right. This thought is then made special: the prince, the judge, and the great man, i.e., the rich man and mighty man (Lev 19:15; 1Sa 25:2), weave a thing to make evil good. עבּת, to weave, to twist together, after עבות, twist or string. The subject to ויעבּתוּה is to be found in the three classes already named, and not merely in the judge and the great man. There is just as
