Woe is me! (Job 10:15). Micah threatens no more; he represents repentant Israel confessing its corruption and lamenting the necessity of punishment. I am as when they have gathered the summer fruits; literally, I am as the gatherings of the fruit harvest.
The point of comparison is only to be inferred from the context. At the fruit. harvest no early figs are to be found, and (in the next clause) after the vintage no more grapes; so in Israel there is none righteous left.
The Septuagint gives a plainer exposition, ἐγενήθην ὡς συνάγων καλάμην ἐν ἀμητῷ, "I became as one that gathereth straw in harvest;" so the Vulgate, Factus sum sicut qui collegit in autumno racemos vindimiae, joining the two clauses together.
My soul desired the first ripe fruit; better, nor early fig which my soul desired. The holiness and grace of more primitive times are wholly absent from this later period (see Hosea 9:10, where a similar figure is used; compare also Christ's dealing with the barren fig tree, Matthew 21:18, etc.
). The first ripe figs were proverbially sweet and good (see Isaiah 28:4; Jeremiah 24:2; and Hosea, loc cit.).