Micah goes on to speak in verse 9 about the women and children who remained, as if their menfolk were taken away and were thus unable to offer them any protection. Micah thus seems to imply that the male debtors were eventually sold into slavery for failure to repay their debts. However, the women may be widows. The picture given is one of unrelieved misery. The husbands are either dead, or forced by misfortune into debt and finally sold into slavery, while the wives have nothing left but the homes they love. But the greed of the creditors is still not satisfied and even makes them drive the women of my people out of their homes.

You drive the women … out of their homes is a habitual or typical act of these rich men that Micah is criticizing, and if a language has a way of indicating habitual action, it should be used here. In languages where the same word is used for “women” and “wives,” it may be best to try to say this in such a way that it clearly means women who are living alone. These women are part of the group called my people by the Lord (see also verse 8).

The homes they love are called “pleasant homes” in Revised Standard Version. The expression is intended to emphasize how terrible this act is, by showing how much these homes meant to the women. Translators should feel free to use whatever term sounds best in their language.

You have robbed their children of my blessings forever: it is not certain exactly what the children are robbed of. The Hebrew is literally “my glory” (Revised Standard Version), but scholars have understood this in various ways. Some think it refers to the privilege of being free men, of that of being landowners in the promised land. Others think it refers to a glorious future, while others take it as a reference back to the children’s fathers, the peasant farmers who were the backbone of the nation. Good News Translation prudently translates as my blessings, which gives the general sense without being committed to any one specific interpretation. Blessings could be translated here as “all the good things I want to give them.”

Whatever it is that God’s “glory” refers to in this verse, it is probably something that the children would have enjoyed most fully after they had grown up. In some languages it may not be possible to use “rob” or “take away” of something in the future, and it may be better to say “you have prevented their children from ever having my blessings.”

Micah says that the evil men have robbed the children of God’s blessings or glory forever. This seems to be a way of stressing that there is no chance that the children will ever recover from the evil that has been done to them, and that they will die without receiving these blessings, if in fact they are not already dead. Translators should not use a term that suggests that the emphasis here is on their spiritual condition after death.

Quoted with permission from Clark, David J. et al. A Handbook on Micah. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1978, 1982, 1993. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .