Micah 3:10

They build up Zion with blood, and Jerusalem with iniquity.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(10) They build up Zion with blood—i.e., they acquire money for the erection of splendid buildings by spoliation and robbery, not stopping short of murder. So also Habakkuk (Micah 2:12) denounces the king of Babylon for the bloody wars with which he obtained wealth for the enlargement of the city.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

3:9-12 Zion's walls owe no thanks to those that build them up with blood and iniquity. The sin of man works not the righteousness of God. Even when men do that which in itself is good, but do it for filthy lucre, it becomes abomination both to God and man. Faith rests in the Lord as the soul's foundation: presumption only leans upon the Lord as a prop, and would use him to serve a turn. If men's having the Lord among them will not keep them from doing evil, it never can secure them from suffering evil for so doing. See the doom of wicked Jacob; Therefore shall Zion for your sake be ploughed as a field. This was exactly fulfilled at the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, and is so at this day. If sacred places are polluted by sin, they will be wasted and ruined by the judgments of God.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

They build up - (literally, building, sing.) Zion with blood This may be taken literally on both sides, that, the rich built their palaces, "with wealth gotten by bloodshed , by rapine of the poor, by slaughter of the saints," as Ezekiel says, 'her princes in the midst thereof are like wolves, to shed blood, to destroy souls, to get dishonest gain' Ezekiel 22:27. Or by blood he may mean that they indirectly took away life, in that, through wrong judgments, extortion, usury, fraud, oppression, reducing wages or detaining them, they took away what was necessary to support life. So it is said; 'The bread of the needy is their life, he that defraudeth him thereof is a man of blood. He that taketh away his neighbor's living slayeth him, and he that defraudeth the laborer of his hire is a bloodshedder' (Ecclus. 34:21, 22). Or it may be, that as David prayed to God, 'Build Thou the walls of Jerusalem, asking Him thereby to maintain or increase its well-being' Psalm 51:18, so these men thought to promote the temporal prosperity of Jerusalem by doings which were unjust, oppressive, crushing to their inferiors.

So Solomon, in His degenerate days, made the yoke upon his people and his service grievious 1 Kings 12:4. So ambitious monarchs by large standing-armies or filling their exchequers drain the life-blood of their people. The physical condition and stature of the poorer population in much of France was lowered permanently by the conscriptions under the first Emperor. In our wealthy nation, the term poverty describes a condition of other days. We have had to coin a new name to designate the misery, offspring of our material prosperity. From our wealthy towns, (as from those of Flanders,) ascends to heaven against us , "the cry of 'pauperism' that is, the cry of distress, arrived at a condition of system and of power, and, by an unexpected curse, issuing from the very development of wealth. The political economy of unbelief has been crushed by facts on all the theaters of human activity and industry."

Truly we "build up Zion with blood," when we cheapen luxuries and comforts at the price of souls, use Christian toil like brute strength, tempt men to dishonesty and women to other sin, to eke out the scanty wages which alone our selfish thirst for cheapness allows, heedless of every thing save of our individual gratification, or the commercial prosperity, which we have made our god. Most awfully was "Zion built with blood," when the Jews shed the innocent Blood, that John 11:48 the Romans might not take away their place and nation. But since He has said, "Inasmuch as ye did it not unto one of the least of these My brethren, ye did it not unto Me" Matthew 25:45, and, "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me?" Acts 9:4, when Saul was persecuting Christ's members, then, in this waste of lives and of souls, we are not only wasting the Price of His Blood in ourselves and others, but are slaying Christ anew, and that, from the same motives as those who crucified Him 1 Corinthians 8:12. When ye sin (against the members, ye sin against Christ. Our commercial greatness is the Price of His Blood Matthew 27:6. In the judgments on the Jews, we may read our own national future; in the woe on those through whom the weak brother perishes for whom Christ died 1 Corinthians 8:11, we, if we partake or connive at it, may read our own.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

10. They—change of person from "ye" (Mic 3:9); the third person puts them to a greater distance as estranged from Him. It is, literally, "Whosoever builds," singular.

build up Zion with blood—build on it stately mansions with wealth obtained by the condemnation and murder of the innocent (Jer 22:13; Eze 22:27; Hab 2:12).

Matthew Poole's Commentary

They; heads, princes, judges, and great ones among them.

Build up; enlarge or beautify, and fortify.

Zion; the houses in Zion, or perhaps may be meant the temple and its buildings, and the royal palace of the kings of Judah.

With blood; with wealth and gifts which these builders made themselves masters of by violence, taking away the life of the owners, or else fining and amercing them. By this course they wrested part of their estates from them, by the other they seized all; they also for gain sometimes acquitted the guilty, and freed them in capital cases, and so sold the blood of the innocent.

And Jerusalem with iniquity; by such injustice Jerusalem was brought to ruin at last, though some particular persons and families did raise themselves, their houses and palaces, to a present largeness and stateliness.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

They build up Zion with blood, and Jerusalem with iniquity. Or, "O thou that buildest up" (g), &c. or "everyone of them that buildeth up" (h), &c. for the word is in the singular number; but, be fire words rendered either of these ways, they respect the heads and princes of the people; who either repaired the temple on Zion, or ornamented the king's palace, or built themselves fine stately houses in Jerusalem, or large streets there, by money they took of murderers to save them, as Kimchi; or by money got by rapine and oppression, by spoiling the poor of their goods and their livelihood, for them and their families, which was all one as shedding innocent blood; and by money obtained by bribes, for the perversion of justice, and such like illegal proceedings, truly called iniquity. The Targum is,

"who build their houses in Zion with bloodshed, and Jerusalem with deceits.''

(g) "aedificans", Montanus, Munster, Burkius. (h) "Quisque eorum aedificat", Vatablus, Piscator, Drusius.

Geneva Study Bible

They build up Zion with {h} blood, and Jerusalem with iniquity.

(h) They will say that they are the people of God, and abuse his name, as a pretence to disguise their hypocrisy.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 10. - They build up Zion with blood. Blood is, as it were, the cement that binds the building together. They raise palaces with money gained by extortion, rapine, and judicial murders like that of Naboth (1 Kings 21; comp. Jeremiah 22:13, etc.; Ezekiel 22:27; Habakkuk 2:12). Cheyne thinks this to be a too dark view of the state of public morals, and would therefore consider "blood" to be used for violent conduct leading to ruin of others, comparing Isaiah 1:15; Isaiah 59:3; Proverbs 1:11. In these passages, however, actual bloodshed may be meant; and we know too little of the moral condition of Judaea at this time to be able to decide against the darker view. Micah 3:10

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

Third strophe. - Micah 3:9. "Hear this, I pray, O he heads of the house of Jacob, and princes of the house of Israel, who abhor right, and bend all that is straight. Micah 3:10. Building Zion with blood, and Jerusalem with wickedness. Micah 3:11. Their heads, they judge for reward; and their priests, they teach for hire; and their prophets, they divine for money, and lean upon Jehovah, saying, Is not Jehovah among us? evil will not come upon us." With the words "Hear this, I pray," the address returns to its starting-point in Micah 3:1, but only to announce to the leaders of the people the threat of punishment for which the way has been prepared by Micah 3:2-7. To this end their God-forgetting conduct is briefly summed up once more in Micah 3:10, Micah 3:11. The summons to hear is really attached to the end of Micah 3:8. They are to hear the sin of Jacob (Micah 3:9-11); but they are also to hear the punishment for their sin, to which the word "this" points. The civil rulers only are addressed in Micah 3:9, - namely, those who were charged with the administration of justice and of the affairs of the state, but who did the very opposite, who abhorred justice, and made the straight crooked, because they passed sentence for bribes (Micah 3:11). They thereby build Zion with blood, etc., i.e., obtain the means of erecting splendid buildings by cruel extortions, and partly also by actual judicial murders, as Ahab (1 Kings 21 compared with Micah 6:16), and after him Jehoiakim, had done (Jeremiah 22:13-17). The Chaldeans built with blood in a different sense (Habakkuk 2:12). The participle bōneh (building) is also in apposition to râ'shē bēth (heads of the house, etc.), and the singular without the article is to be taken collectively. They do not, however, truly build the city by this, they simply labour for its destruction (Micah 3:12). But before saying this, Micah once more sums up briefly all the sins of the leading ranks. The teaching of the priests for reward refers to the fact that they had to give instruction as to the ritual requirements of the law, and were to do this gratuitously (cf. Leviticus 10:11; Deuteronomy 17:11; Deuteronomy 33:10), and that in disputed cases the judges were to pronounce sentence accordingly. At the same time, these men (not the prophets merely, but also the priests and the heads of the nation as the administrators of justice) placed their reliance upon Jehovah, upon the assurance that He was in the midst of them enthroned in His temple at Jerusalem, and that He would protect the city and its inhabitants from misfortune, without ever reflecting that Jehovah as the Holy One demands sanctification of life, and exterminates the sinners out of His people.