Micah 2:2

And they covet fields, &c. -To covet" is itself a gross offence against the law of God, as the deepest of all the Ten Commandments shews (Exodus 20:17). Large additions to one's estates were diametrically opposed to the spirit, if not always to the letter, of the law of land-tenure among the Israelites. See Numbers 27:1-11; Numbers 33:54; 1 Kings 21:4; Leviticus 25:8-17. These rich men would have had a perfect right to purchase the lease of another man's property, subject indeed to the law of redistribution in the 49th year (the year of Jubilee) a relic of the old Village Community system, which seems to have prevailed anciently among Semitic as well as Aryan races (comp. Sir R. Maine's Village Communities, and Mr Fenton's article on the Law of Jubilee, in the Theological Review, 1878). But, as the account of Naboth the Jezreelite (1 Kings 21.) shews, the small Israelitish proprietors were too sturdy and too law-abiding to accede to proposals of purchasers when they could possibly avoid it. Hence, on the immoral principle that -might is right" (or, as the prophet says, -because it is in the power of their hands"), they followed the example of Ahab, and used fraudulent or openly violent means fraud is suggested by the language of Micah 2:1, open violence by that of Micah 2:2. Isaiah denounces the same offences in Micah 5:8; Amos, probably, in Micah 4:1.