Micah 7:1
Woe is me! for I am as when they have gathered the summer fruits, as the grapegleanings of the vintage: there is no cluster to eat: my soul desired the firstripe fruit. Woe is me! for I am as when they have gathered the summer fruits, as the grapegleanings of the vintage: there is no cluster to eat: my soul desired the firstripe fruit.
Micah's prophecy was given during the reigns of Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah at the same time as Isaiah, foretelling Christ's coming very definitely and holding wonderful promises for the repentant sinner. In its original setting it describes the moral corruption that preceded Jerusalem's destruction and the Jewish captivity. Its image of summer fruits already gathered and a vintage already gleaned, with no cluster left to eat while the soul still desires the firstripe fruit, portrays a search for good fruit after harvest that finds none. That fruitless search expresses scarcity of good and upright people, decay of virtue, and spiritual emptiness with nothing to satisfy.
The chapter outlines the history of the church until the second coming. It is a striking prophecy of last-day conditions. Together with the following verses the verse portrays a time when godly people are scarce and wickedness is widespread, foretelling overwhelming evil and the spirit of war on earth when Christ comes.
The verse is the cry of God's small, poor, reproached last-day remnant when humbled under His correcting reproof, who look out on the world and feel the godly have perished and none are upright, and look at their own unworthiness in God's presence to confess sin and lament. That humbling is for correction and not for destruction, and healing comes through humility of heart as they look to the Lord, wait for the God of their salvation, bear His indignation until He pleads their cause and brings them to light, and trust His mercy to pardon, have compassion, tread iniquities underfoot, and restore glory. Cited with the next verse, the verse warns about the character expected of God's people in the last days and calls them to mourn and weep rather than joke and jest. Its image of a fruitless search finds a fulfilment in Jesus' experience with the fruitless fig tree. Its picture of a failed harvest with no fruit remaining after gathering illustrates public preaching that usually brings only a few converts, like a gleaning of berries from the upper branches.