(2) And they covet fields.--The act of Ahab and Jezebel in coveting and acquiring Naboth's vineyard by violence and murder was no isolated incident. The desire to accumulate property in land, in contravention of the Mosaic Law, was denounced by Micah's contemporary, Isaiah: "Woe unto them that join house to house. that lay field to field, till there be no place, that they may be placed alone in the midst of the earth" (Isaiah 5:8).

Verse 2. - They carry out by open violence the fraud which they have devised and planned (comp. Isaiah 5:8; Amos 4:1). Covet fields. Compare the case of Ahab and Naboth (1 Kings 21.). The commandment against coveting (Exodus 20:17) taught the Jews that God regarded sins of thought as well as of action. The Law forbade the alienation of landed property and the transfer of estates from tribe to tribe (Leviticus 25:23-28; Numbers 36:7). A rich man might buy a poor man's estate subject to the law of jubilee; but these grandees seem to have forced the sale of property, or else seized it by force or fraud. Oppress; Vulgate, calumniabantur. The Hebrew word involves the idea of violence.

2:1-5 Woe to the people that devise evil during the night, and rise early to carry it into execution! It is bad to do mischief on a sudden thought, much worse to do it with design and forethought. It is of great moment to improve and employ hours of retirement and solitude in a proper manner. If covetousness reigns in the heart, compassion is banished; and when the heart is thus engaged, violence and fraud commonly occupy the hands. The most haughty and secure in prosperity, are commonly most ready to despair in adversity. Woe to those from whom God turns away! Those are the sorest calamities which cut us off from the congregation of the Lord, or cut us short in the enjoyment of its privileges.And they covet fields, and take them by violence,.... The fields of their poor neighbours, which lie near them, and convenient for them; they wish they were theirs, and they contrive ways and means to get them into their possession; and if they cannot get them by fair means, if they cannot persuade them to sell them, or at their price, they will either use some crafty method to get them from them, or they will take them away by force and violence; as Ahab got Naboth's vineyard from him:

and houses, and take them away; they covet the houses of their neighbours also, and take the same course to get them out of their hands, and add them to their own estates:

so they oppress a man and his house, even a man and his heritage; not only dispossess him of his house to dwell in, but of his paternal inheritance, what he received from his ancestors, and should have transmitted to his posterity, being unalienable; and so distressed a man and his family for the present, and his posterity after him. The Vulgate Latin version is, "they calumniate a man and his house"; which seems to be designed to make it agree with the story of Ahab, 1 Kings 21:13.