Verses 8-9 are taken by Good News Translation to be the Lord’s reply to the rich people. In Revised Standard Version they are taken to continue the words of Micah in verse 7. Since the prophet is speaking on behalf of the Lord, and the Lord is speaking through the prophet, the difference is more one of punctuation than of meaning.

The Hebrew text of verse 8 again contains a number of difficulties, and a literal translation of it is almost unintelligible, as shown by New International Version. Several small changes in the Hebrew are generally accepted by scholars, but there is no need to discuss these in detail, since they do not give rise to any significant differences between Revised Standard Version and Good News Translation. For full discussion, see the commentaries of Allen (pages 292-293) and Mays (page 67).

Note that Good News Translation has added the words The LORD replies in order to make clear who is speaking. After a translator has decided who is speaking in these verses, he should make sure that his understanding comes across clearly in the translation.

In some languages it may be necessary to make clear who the You are that God is speaking to. One way this can be done is to begin the verse with “The Lord answers these people,” referring to the speakers of the previous verses. Although the context implies that the evildoers are rich and that the people they are wronging are poor, Micah does not actually use these terms himself, and it is probably best for translators to avoid doing so.

My people is a term usually applied to the whole people of Israel, but in this verse and the next it refers only to the poor people. By speaking in this way the Lord shows that he is already treating the oppressors as though they were not part of his people (see verse 5).

The rich behave as badly as foreign enemies towards the poor and attack them, even though in the sight of God the poor are my people. When Men return from battle against enemies from other nations, they naturally think they will be safe at home. But in fact they meet the rich creditor, who demands that they return the money they have borrowed from him. He is like a new enemy who is all the more terrible because he is unexpected.

The description of the rich waiting to steal the coats off their backs is a reference to the law of Exo 22.26-27. If a poor man borrowed money, he would have to give something to the lender as a guarantee that he would repay the money. When the debtor repaid his debt, he would get back whatever he had given as the guarantee, but if he did not pay back his debt, then the lender was allowed to keep it. Often the only thing a poor person owned that was valuable enough to use as a guarantee was his outer garment. But the Law stated that the lender had to return such garments to the borrower every night, since the borrower had nothing else to wrap himself in to keep warm. This humane regulation was openly broken by the creditors of Micah’s day, who kept these garments of the poor indefinitely.

Steal the coats off their backs is an English figure Good News Translation uses to express the inhumane treatment described in the more literal “you strip the robe from…” (Revised Standard Version). If the reference is to the rich people wrongly keeping the garments rather than taking the garment from off a person’s body by force, it may be necessary in some languages to describe this more explicitly. One may say “There you are, waiting to take their coats as security for the money they owe you. You are just like robbers, since you refuse to return the coats when you should.” Another possibility is to say “There you are, waiting to harm them, just like robbers waiting to steal their coats.”

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 .