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 The Lord answers this prayer with the promise that He will renew for His people the wonders of the olden time (Mic 7:15-17); whereupon the prophet closes by praising the mercy and grace of the Lord (Mic 7:18-20). Mic 7:1 That the prophet is speaking in Mic 7:1 ff. not in his own name, but in the name of the church, which confesses and bemoans its rebellion against the Lord, is indisputably evident from Mic 7:7 ff., where, as all the expositors admit, the church speaks of itself in the first person, and that not “the existing corrupt Israelitish church,” as Caspari supposes, but the penitential, believing church of the future, which discerns in the judgment the chastising hand of its God, and expresses the hope that the Lord will conduct its conflict with its foe, etc. The contents of Mic 7:1-6, also, do not point to the prophet in distinction from the congregation, but may be understood throughout as the confession of sin on the part of the latter. Mic 7:1. ''“Woe to me! for I have become like a gathering of fruit, like a gleaning of the vintage: Not a grape to eat! an early fig, which my soul desired.” אללי, which only occurs again in Job 10:15, differs from הוי, and is “vox dolentis, gementis, et ululantis magis quam minantis”'' (March); and כּי is not “that,” but “for,” giving the reason for אללי. The meaning of הייתי כאס is not, “it has happened to me as it generally happens to those who still seek for early figs at the fruit gathering, or for bunches of grapes at the gleaning of the vintage” (Caspari and others); for כּאספי קיץ does not mean as at the fruit-gathering, but like the fruit-gathering. The nation or the church resembles the fruit-gathering and gleaning of the vineyard, namely, in this fact, that the fruit-gathering yields not more early figs, and the gleaning of the vintage yields no more grapes to eat; that is to say, its condition resembles that of an orchard in the time of the fruit-gathering, when you may find fruit enough indeed, but not a single early fig, since the early figs ripen as early as June, whereas the fruit-gathering does not take place till August (see at Isa 28:4). The second simile is a still simpler one, and is very easily explained. אספי is not a participle, but a noun - אסף the gathering (Isa 32:10); and the plural is probably used simply because of עוללת, the gleaning, and not with any allusion to the fact that the gleaning lasts several days, as Hitzig supposes, but because what is stated applies to all gatherings of