Micah 2:4

shall one take up a parable Or, a taunting song (as probably Isaiah 14:4; Habakkuk 2:6). The Hebr. mâshâlmeans properly a saying characterized by parallelism -the parallelism may consist either in the moral application of emblems, or simply in the parallel disposition of the lines and the sense. From the fact that emblems were generally applied in a witty, satirical manner, mâshâlsometimes obtains the meaning of taunt-song." So, too, we may add, the participial noun môshçlacquires the sense of taunt-singer in Numbers 21:27; Ezekiel 16:44. In the present instance, the prophet means (see next clause) that the same words from different speakers would be at once a lamentation and a taunt. When an Israelite should say plaintively, -It is all over," his enemy should take up his words in a tone of triumph or mockery.

and lament with a doleful lamentation, &c. Rather, and lament with a lamentation:

-It is done," they shall say,

-We be utterly spoiled:

He changeth the portion of my people;

How doth he remove it from me!

Unto the rebellious he divideth our fields."

The purport of the complaint is that Jehovah (for the Israelites recognize him as the sender of their trouble) has transferred the promised land to heathen men, who from their very birth have been rebels against Jehovah. The epithet -rebellious" deserves notice. True, it is the Jews who use it, but the prophet would certainly have sanctioned its employment. We find him, in chap. Micah 5:15, announcing the punishment of the heathen for their disobedience, and his great contemporary Isaiah, in Isaiah 10:5-15 (comp. Isaiah 37:26), rebuking Sennacherib for -vaunting himself" against Him who gave him his commission. Both prophets imply that the heathen had a certain natural light, which might have led them to the true God, or at least have preserved them from rejecting Him, when His claims were brought before them. Comp. St Paul's words in ); (2) from the fishing-boat the eye of the Divine Speaker would rest on (a) patches of undulating corn-fields with the trodden pathwayrunning through them, the rocky groundof the hill-side protruding here and there, the large bushes of thorngrowing in the very midst of the waving wheat, the deep loam of the good rich soilwhich distinguishes the whole of the Plain of Gennesaret descending close to the water's edge; (b) the mustard-tree, which grows especially on the shores of the Lake; (c) the fishermen connected with the great fisheries, which once made the fame of Gennesaret, plying amidst its marvellous shoals of fish, the drag-netor hauling-net(Matthew 13:47-48), the casting-net(Matthew 4:18; Mark 1:16), the bag-netand basket-net(Luke 5:4-9); (d) the women and children employed in picking out from the wheat the tall green stalks, called by the Arabs, Zuwân= the Greek Zizania= the Lolliaof the Vulgate, the taresof our Version; (e) the countless flocks of birds, aquatic fowls by the lake-side, partridges and pigeons hovering over the rich plain. See Stanley's Sinai and Palestine, pp. 425 427; Thomson's Land and the Book, p. 402; Tristram's Land of Israel, p. 431.