Micah 4:10

Be in pain, and labour to bring forth, O daughter of Zion, like a woman in travail: for now shalt thou go forth out of the city, and thou shalt dwell in the field, and thou shalt go even to Babylon; there shalt thou be delivered; there the LORD shall redeem thee from the hand of thine enemies.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(10) Thou shalt go even to Babylon.—This prediction has naturally caused difficulty to those who doubt the power of prophets to prophesy: for Babylon was not at all considered in the days of Micah, when Assyria was in the ascendant. It was a century after Micah’s time before Babylon recovered its ancient dignity. The fact, however, remains that Micah wrote, “Thou shalt go to Babel;” and there is the other fact, that the people of Judah (not Israel) did go. Micah also declared, “THERE shalt thou be delivered:” and in the time of Cyrus the Jews were delivered there. The repetition, “There . . . there,” is emphatic.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

4:9-13 Many nations would assemble against Zion to rejoice in her calamities. They would not understand that the Lord had collected them as sheaves are gathered to be threshed; and that Zion would be strengthened to beat them to pieces. Nothing has yet taken place in the history of the Jewish church agreeing with this prediction. When God has conquering work for his people to do, he will furnish them with strength and ability for it. Believers should cry aloud under distresses, with the prayer of faith, not with despondency.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Be in pain, and labor to bring forth - (Literally, Writhe and burst forth,) as if to say, "thou must suffer, but thy suffering and thy joy shall be one. Thou canst not have the joy without the suffering. As surely as thou sufferest, thou shalt have joy. In all sorrow, lose not faith and hope, and "thou shalt be sorrowful, but thy sorrow shall be turned into joy" John 16:20. Cyril: "Good daughter, be very patient in the pangs, bear up against your sorrows," so shall the birth be nigh. Yet for the time she must "go forth out of the city" into captivity. "And thou shalt dwell in the field," houseless, under tents, as captives were accustomed to be kept, until all were gathered together to be led away; a sore exchange for her former luxury, and in requital of their oppression Amos 6:1-14; Micah 2:8-9.

And thou shalt go even to Babylon - Not Babylon, but Assyria was the scourge of God in Micah's time. Babylon was scarcely known, a far country 2 Kings 20:14. Yet Micah is taught of God to declare that thither shall the two tribes be carried captive, although the ten were carried captive by Assyria. "There (see the note at Hosea 2:15) shalt thou be delivered, there the Lord shall redeem thee from the hand of thine enemies." God's judgments, or purifying trials, or visitation of His saints, hold their way, until their end be reached. They who suffer them cannot turn them aside; they who inflict them cannot add to them or detain them. The prison house is the place of deliverance to Joseph and Peter; the Red Sea to Israel; the judges were raised up, when Israel was mightily oppressed; Jabesh-Gilead was delivered when the seventh day was come 1 Samuel 11:3, 1 Samuel 11:10-11; the walls of Jerusalem were the end of Sennacherib; Judah should have long been in the very hand and grasp of Babylon, yet must its clenched hand be opened.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

10. Be in pain, and labour—carrying on the metaphor of a pregnant woman. Thou shalt be affected with bitter sorrows before thy deliverance shall come. I do not forbid thy grieving, but I bring thee consolation. Though God cares for His children, yet they must not expect to be exempt from trouble, but must prepare for it.

go forth out of the city—on its capture. So "come out" is used 2Ki 24:12; Isa 36:16.

dwell in the field—namely, in the open country, defenseless, instead of their fortified city. Beside the Chebar (Ps 137:1; Eze 3:15).

Babylon—Like Isaiah, Micah looks beyond the existing Assyrian dynasty to the Babylonian, and to Judah's captivity under it, and restoration (Isa 39:7; 43:14; 48:20). Had they been, as rationalists represent, merely sagacious politicians, they would have restricted their prophecies to the sphere of the existing Assyrian dynasty. But their seeing into the far-off future of Babylon's subsequent supremacy, and Judah's connection with her, proves them to be inspired prophets.

there … there—emphatic repetition. The very scene of thy calamities is to be the scene of thy deliverance. In the midst of enemies, where all hope seems cut off, there shall Cyrus, the deliverer, appear (compare Jud 14:14). Cyrus again being the type of the greater Deliverer, who shall finally restore Israel.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

Be in pain, and labour to bring forth; it may be read, Thou shalt be in pain, and thou shalt labour, &c.; so it will be a prediction of the troubles, sorrows, and dangers that they shall meet with in the wars against the Babylonians, and in their captivity under them.

O daughter of Zion; all the house of Judah, particularly you that dwell in Jerusalem and near Mount Zion. Like a woman in travail; whose sorrows are very sharp, but somewhat mitigated by expectation of a good delivery, and the birth of a living child: let your hopes so mitigate your sorrows too.

For now; ere long, within a few years, you will see or hear that Israel is carried captive (which Micah lived to see): this may be an admonition, it is certainly a token that you shall be captives too; and this came upon them one hundred and thirty years after, when in Zedekiah’s time the daughter of Zion was deplorably wasted, conquered, and captivated by Nebuchadnezzar.

Thou shalt go forth out of the city; forced thereto by the prevailing power of the Babylonians, who took Zedekiah and those that accompanied him when they stole out of the city: these did go out when they could keep in it no longer.

Thou shalt dwell in the field; as conquered, made prisoners, and held so in the fields under a strong guard, until all the conquered were brought together, that they might in one body be led away. In their journey to Babylon they were forced to lodge in the fields, also exposed to all the inconveniencies of heat in the day and of cold in the night, weary, hungry, thirsty, and faint near to death.

Thou shalt go even to Babylon; O daughter of Zion, thou shalt certainly be carried captive to Babylon, where thy dwelling shall be little bettered, thou shalt dwell by the river, without the city.

There shalt thou be delivered; by Cyrus first, and by Darius Hystaspes next, and by Artaxerxes in Nehemiah’s time; all this as type of a greater deliverance.

The Lord; the everlasting God, thy God, whose servants the Persian kings that favoured the Jews were, and by whose motion they did incline to release them. Shall redeem; the Hebrew word points out a redemption by the next kinsman, and so fairly minds us of the Messiah, the great Redeemer of the church. And to him, and the redemption of the church by him, do these deliverances ultimately and principally point.

From the hand of thine enemies; who would have detained the people of God longer in slavery, or who would have hindered the rebuilding of the temple, and the re-establishment of the worship of God. Proportionably to this type doth the antitype answer, Luke 1:74,75.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

Be in pain, and labour to bring forth, O daughter of Zion,

like a woman in travail,.... Bear thy troubles and calamities, sufferings and sorrows, patiently, and expect deliverance from them, as a woman in such circumstances does: or, as some render it in the future, "thou shalt be in pain", &c. (y); and so is a prediction of their distress and captivity, which is expressed in plainer terms in the following clauses:

for now shalt thou go forth out of the city; the city of Jerusalem; either by flight, in a private and secret manner, as Zedekiah and his princes, and part of his army did; or by force, being taken and led out by the enemy:

and thou shalt dwell in the field; being turned out of their houses, they were obliged to lodge in the fields, while they were collected together, and in a body marched as captives to Babylon; and while on the road lay in the open fields, and not in houses, who had been used to dwell in a city, and in their panelled houses; but now even their city itself was ploughed like a field, as before predicted:

and thou shalt go even to Babylon; to the city of Babylon, as their king did, and many of them also; and others of them into various parts of that kingdom: this is a clear prophecy of the Babylonish captivity, which came to pass upwards of a hundred years after this:

there shalt thou be delivered; after seventy years captivity, by the hand of Cyrus; who taking the city of Babylon, and making himself master of the whole empire, delivered the Jews from their bondage, and gave them liberty to return to their own land:

there the Lord shall redeem thee from the hand of thine enemies; the Chaldeans: and this was typical of the deliverance and redemption of all the Lord's people from the hand of all their spiritual enemies; from Satan and the world, law, death, and hell; by the blood of the great Redeemer, and near kinsman of his people, the Lord Jesus Christ.

(y) "dolebis ac suspirabis", so some in Vatablus.

Geneva Study Bible

Be in pain, and labour to bring forth, O daughter of Zion, like a woman in travail: for now shalt thou go forth out of the city, and thou shalt dwell in the field, and thou shalt go even to Babylon; there shalt thou be delivered; there the LORD shall redeem thee from the hand of thine enemies.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

10. Be in pain, &c.] There is no remedy for Zion’s distress. Having sinned, she must bear her punishment. Having lost her first purity, she must be refined.

for now shalt thou go forth] ‘Now,’ because the future is realized by the prophet as if present. To heighten the effect of his announcement, he describes one by one the stages of the calamity,—the going out of the city, the dwelling in the open country, houseless and unprotected, and lastly the coming to Babylon, the scene of captivity. To ‘go forth’=to surrender, as Isaiah 36:16, 2 Kings 24:12.

and thou shalt go even to Babylon] These words are very difficult, when viewed in relation to the context. For 1, the enemy, whose destruction the prophet anticipates, is the contemporary kingdom of Assyria (see Micah 5:6), not that of Babylon, which had in fact been conquered by Tiglath-Pileser, and only succeeded to the place and power of Assyria a century later; and 2, we read in Micah 4:12 that Jehovah has brought the hostile nations to Jerusalem that they may be destroyed there, which seems not to allow space for a transportation of the Judæans to Babylon. Thus the difficulty in admitting that Micah really foretold the Babylonian captivity is based on purely exegetical grounds. It has indeed been replied 1, that Babylon is here mentioned only as a province of the Assyrian empire, and 2, that it appears from 2 Kings 17:24 (confirmed by the Annals of Sargon, Records of the Past, vii. 29), that Sargon transported a part of the rebellious population of Babylonia to N. Israel, which we may presume that, according to the custom of the Assyrians, he replaced by captive Israelites. It is therefore quite conceivable that in foretelling an invasion of Judah by Sargon, the prophet might represent the captives of Judah as following their Israelitish brethren to Babylonia. This reply is perhaps adequate as against the first-mentioned difficulty, but it leaves the second in its full force. It is necessary therefore to assume either that these words, ‘and thou shalt go to Babylon,’ are the interpolation of a later editor of the prophetic writings, who overlooked or misunderstood the context, or that they represent a subsequent revelation made by the Spirit of prophecy to Micah himself. The former view is perhaps at first sight objectionable, because it assumes that Divine Providence has not watched over the text of the Scriptures so as to prevent alterations from being made in their original form. But we must remember that the permanent function of the Old Testament for Christians is simply to point to Jesus Christ, as the Saviour both of Jew and of Gentile, and that no superficial changes of the text are of any religious importance which leave the performance of this function unimparied. The hypothesis of interpolation is confirmed (to mention the principal evidence only) by the occurrence of closely analogous words, undoubtedly interpolated, in the Septuagint version of Micah 4:8, the second part of which runs thus, καὶ εἰσεύσεται ἡ ἀρχὴ ἡ πρώτη, βασιλεία ἐκ Βαβυλῶνος τῇ θυγατρὶ Ἱερουσαλήμ. These words seem to give us the point of view from which the students (translators or editors) of the Scriptures approached the prophecies after the exile. The great deliverance from Babylon swallowed up all others, and they discovered references to it which are not warranted by the context of the passages. In a certain sense, it is true, the Babylonian captivity was the fulfilment of the prophecy before us; for neither the actual punishment nor the actual deliverance of Jerusalem in Micah’s time corresponded exactly to the prophet’s statements. Whether it be for the repentance of Hezekiah, or for any other reason known only to God, Jerusalem was not suffered to come to such extremities as the prophet describes, and consequently the Divine interposition was not so striking and unique. If however we prefer the second of the alternatives mentioned above, analogies for this view are also forthcoming. Isaiah repeatedly intermixes the matter of later discourses with that of earlier ones—an inevitable consequence of the mode in which the prophetic discourses were brought into their present form on the basis of notes and recollections (see the present annotator’s edition of Isaiah).

there shalt thou be delivered] If we accept the former of the alternatives proposed in the foregoing note, so that ‘and thou shalt go even to Babylon’ becomes an interpolation, we must suppose the promised deliverance to take place ‘in the field’ (or open country) where the people of Jerusalem have assembled. They are in fact on the point of surrendering to the Assyrians, their king (see Micah 5:1) has suffered the grossest indignity, when Jehovah suddenly interposes for their relief. Otherwise the deliverance will be that from the Babylonian exile, a view however which is difficult to reconcile with Micah 4:12.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 10. - Be in pain. The anguish is not to be resisted, but shall end, like birth pains, in deliverance. Septuagint, Ωδινε καὶ ἀνδρίζου καὶ ἔγγιζε, "Be in pain, and do bravely, and draw near," which is like Aeneas's encouragement to his friends (Virgil, 'AEneid,' 1:207) -

"Durate, et vosmet rebus servate secundis." For now shalt thou go forth. The prophet leaves his metaphor, and announces that the people shall "go forth" into captivity. He says "now,"as having the scene before his eyes. They must leave their city, live shelterless in the open country, be carried to a distant land, even to Babylon. Shall dwell in the field; i.e. while they are making their way to the place of their captivity. Thou shall go even to Babylon. This is simple prophecy, and could have been known to Micah only by inspiration. In his day Assyria was the enemy whom Israel had to dread (as Micah 5:5, 6), Babylon being at this time in the position of a conquered country, and not becoming again powerful and independent for another century, So Isaiah prophesied of the captivity to Babylon (Isaiah 39:3-8), if modern critics have not shaken our faith in the genuineness of that chapter. Micah does not define the time of the Captivity, or the agents; he notes merely the place whither the Jews were at last to be deported. Even in this case "Babylon" may have its typical import, and be taken to represent the great world power arrayed against the chosen race; and the prophecy may look forward to other fulfilments in succeeding ages. Some commentators think that Babylon is here mentioned as the most distant country known, or as a portion of the Assyrian empire. Others suppose that Sargon transported some Israelitish captives to Babylon to replace the rebellious Babylonians whom he exiled to Palestine ('Records of the Past,' 7:29; 2 Kings 17:24; comp. 2 Chronicles 33:11), and that thus Micah was naturally led to represent the Judaeans as following their brethren. Whichever explanation we take, there is no reason to consider that the reference to Babylon is the interpolation of a late editor of the prophetic writings. There shall thou be delivered. In Babylon deliverance shall arise. This prophecy was first literally fulfilled in the return from captivity under Cyrus; it is further fulfilled, under Christ, in the rescue of the true Israelites from the bondage of sin and the world. Micah 4:10

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

But before this takes place, the daughter Zion will lose her king, and wander into captivity to Babylon; but there she will be redeemed by the Lord out of the power of her enemies. Micah 4:9. "Now why dost thou cry a cry? Is there no king in thee, or is thy counsellor perished, that pangs have seized thee like the woman in labour? Micah 4:10. Writhe and break forth, O daughter Zion, like a woman in labour! For how wilt thou go out of the city and dwell in the field, and come to Babel? there wilt thou be rescued; there will Jehovah redeem thee out of the hand of thine enemies." From this glorious future the prophet now turns his eye to the immediate future, to proclaim to the people what will precede this glorification, viz., first of all, the loss of the royal government, and the deportation of the people to Babylon. If Micah, after announcing the devastation of Zion in Micah 3:12, has offered to the faithful a firm ground of hope in the approaching calamities, by pointing to the highest glory as awaiting it in the future, he now guards against the abuse which might be made of this view by the careless body of the people, who might either fancy that the threat of punishment was not meant so seriously after all, or that the time of adversity would very speedily give place to a much more glorious state of prosperity, by depicting the grievous times that are still before them. Beholding in spirit the approaching time of distress as already present, he hears a loud cry, like that of a woman in labour, and inquires the cause of this lamentation, and whether it refers to the loss of her king. The words are addressed to the daughter Zion, and the meaning of the rhetorical question is simply this: Zion will lose her king, and be thrown into the deepest mourning in consequence. The loss of the king was a much more painful thing for Israel than for any other nation, because such glorious promises were attached to the throne, the king being the visible representative of the grace of God, and his removal a sign of the wrath of God and of the abolition of all the blessings of salvation which were promised to the nation in his person. Compare Lamentations 4:20, where Israel calls the king its vital breath (Hengstenberg). יועץ (counsellor) is also the king; and this epithet simply gives prominence to that which the Davidic king had been to Zion (cf. Isaiah 9:5, where the Messiah is designated as "Counsellor" par excellence). But Zion must experience this pain: writhe and break forth. Gōchı̄ is strengthened by chūlı̄, and is used intransitively, to break forth, describing the pain connected with the birth as being as it were a bursting of the whole nature (cf. Jeremiah 4:31). It is not used transitively in the sense of "drive forth," as Hitzig and others suppose; for the determination that Jerusalem would submit, and the people be carried away, could not properly be represented as a birth or as a reorganization of things. With the words כּי עתּה וגו the prophet leaves the figure, and predicts in literal terms the catastrophe awaiting the nation. עתּה (now), repeated from Lamentations 4:9, is the ideal present, which the prophet sees in spirit, but which is in reality the near or more remote future. קריה, without an article, is a kind of proper name, like urbs for Rome (Caspari). In order to set forth the certainty of the threatened judgment, and at the same time the greatness of the calamity in the most impressive manner, Micah fills up the details of the drama: viz., going out of the city, dwelling in the field, without shelter, delivered up to all the chances of weather, and coming to Babel, carried thither without delay. Going out of the city presupposes the conquest of the city by the enemy; since going out to surrender themselves to the enemy (2 Kings 24:12; 1 Samuel 11:3) does not fit in with the prophetic description, which is not a historical description in detail. Nevertheless Israel shall not perish. There (shâm, i.e., even in Babel) will the Lord its God deliver it out of the hand of its foes.

The prediction that the daughter Zion, i.e., the nation of Israel which was governed from Zion, and had its centre in Zion - the covenant nation which, since the destruction of the kingdom of the ten tribes, existed in Judah only - should be carried away to Babylon, and that at a time when Assyria was in the field as the chief enemy of Israel and the representative of the imperial power, goes so far beyond the bounds of the political horizon of Micah's time, that it cannot be accounted for from any natural presentiment. It is true that it has an analogon in Isaiah 34:6-7, where Isaiah predicts to king Hezekiah in the most literal terms the carrying away of all his treasures, and of his sons (descendants), to Babylon. At the same time, this analogy is not sufficient to explain the prediction before us; for Isaiah's prophecy was uttered during the period immediately following the destruction of the Assyrian forces in front of Jerusalem and the arrival of Babylonian ambassadors in Jerusalem, and had a point of connection in these events, which indicated the destruction of the Assyrian empire and the rise of Babylon in its stead, at all events in the germ; whereas no such connecting link exists in the case of Micah's prophecy, which was unquestionably uttered before these events. It has therefore been thought, that in Micah 3:12 Micah predicts the destruction of Jerusalem, and here in Micah 4:10 the carrying away of Judah to Babylon by the Assyrians; and this opinion, that Micah expected the judgment upon Jerusalem and Judah to be executed by the Assyrians, and not by the Babylonians, has been supported partly by such passages as Micah 5:4-5, and Jeremiah 26:18-19, and partly by the circumstance that Micah threatens his own corrupt contemporaries with the judgment which he predicts on account of their sins; whereas in his time the Assyrians were the only possible executors of a judgment upon Israel who were then standing on the stage of history (Caspari). But these arguments are not decisive. All that can be inferred from Micah 5:4-5, where Asshur is mentioned as the representative of all the enemies of Israel, and of the power of the world in its hostility to the people of God in the Messianic times, is that at the time of Micah the imperial power in its hostility to the kingdom of God was represented by Assyria; but it by no means follows that Assyria would always remain the imperial power, so that it could only be from her that Micah could expect the destruction of Jerusalem, and the carrying away of Judah to Babylon. Again, Jeremiah 26:18, Jeremiah 26:19 - where the chief men of Judah, in order to defend the prophet Jeremiah, quote Micah's prophecy, with the remark that king Hezekiah did not put him to death in consequence, but feared the Lord and besought His face, so that the Lord repented of the evil which He had spoken concerning Jerusalem - simply proves that these chief men referred Micah's words to the Assyrians, and attributed the non-fulfilment of the threatened judgment by the Assyrians to Hezekiah's penitence and prayer, and that this was favoured by the circumstance that the Lord answered the prayer of the king, by assuring him that the Assyrian army should be destroyed (Isaiah 37:21.). But whether the opinion of these chief men as to the meaning and fulfilment of Micah's prophecy (Micah 3:12) was the correct one or not, cannot be decided from the passage quoted. Its correctness is apparently favoured, indeed, by the circumstance that Micah threatened the people of his own time with the judgment (for your sakes shall Zion be ploughed into a field, etc.). Now, if he had been speaking of a judgment upon Judah through the medium of the Babylonians, "he would (so Caspari thinks) not only have threatened his contemporaries with a judgment which could not fall upon them, since it was not possible till after their time, inasmuch as the Assyrians were on the stage in his day; but he would also have been most incomprehensibly silent as to the approaching Assyrian judgment, of which Isaiah spoke again and again." This argument falls to the ground with the untenable assumptions upon which it is founded. Micah neither mentions the Assyrians nor the Babylonians as executing the judgment, nor does he say a word concerning the time when the predicted devastation or destruction of Jerusalem will occur. In the expression בּגללכם, for your sakes (Micah 3:12), it is by no means affirmed that it will take place in his time through the medium of the Assyrians. The persons addressed are the scandalous leaders of the house of Israel, i.e., of the covenant nation, and primarily those living in his own time, though by no means those only, but all who share their character and ungodliness, so that the words apply to succeeding generations quite as much as to his contemporaries. The only thing that would warrant our restricting the prophecy to Micah's own times, would be a precise definition by Micah himself of the period when Jerusalem would be destroyed, or his expressly distinguishing his own contemporaries from their sons and descendants. But as he has done neither the one nor the other, it cannot be said that, inasmuch as the destruction of Jerusalem and the carrying away of the people was not effected by the Assyrians, but by the Babylonians (Chaldaeans), he would have been altogether silent as to the approaching Assyrian judgment, and only threatened them with the Chaldaean catastrophe, which did not take place till a long time afterwards. His words refer to all the judgments, which took place from his own time onwards till the utter destruction of Jerusalem and the carrying away of the people to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar. The one-sided reference of the prophecy to the Assyrians is simply based upon an incorrect idea of the nature of prophecy, and its relation to the fulfilment, and involves the prophet Micah in an irreconcilable discrepancy between himself and his contemporary the prophet Isaiah, who does indeed predict the severe oppression of Judah by the Assyrians, but at the same time foretels the failure of the plans of these foes to the people of Jehovah, and the total destruction of their army.

This contradiction, with the consequence to which it would inevitably lead, - namely, that if one of the prophets predicted the destruction of Jerusalem by the Assyrians, whereas the other prophesied that it would not be destroyed by them, the two contemporary prophets would necessarily lead the people astray, and render both the truth of their contradictory utterances and their own divine mission doubtful, - cannot be removed by the assumption that Isaiah uttered the prophecies in ch. 28-32 at a somewhat later period, after Micah had published his book, and the terribly severe words of Micah in Micah 3:12 had produced repentance. For Isaiah had predicted that the Assyrian would not conquer Jerusalem, but that his army would be destroyed under its walls, not only in Isaiah 28-32, at the time when the Assyrians are approaching with threatening aspect under Shalmaneser or Sennacherib, but much earlier than that, - namely, in the time of Ahaz, in Isaiah 10:5-12:6. Moreover, in Isaiah 28-32 there is not a single trace that Micah's terrible threatening had produced such repentance, that the Lord was able to withdraw His threat in consequence, and predict through Isaiah the rescue of Jerusalem from the Assyrian. On the contrary, Isaiah scourges the evil judges and false prophets quite as severely in Isaiah 28:7. and Isaiah 29:9-12 as Micah does in Micah 3:1-3 and Micah 3:5-8. And lastly, although the distinction between conditional prophecies and those uttered unconditionally is, generally speaking, correct enough, and is placed beyond all doubt by Jeremiah 18:7-10; there is nothing in the addresses and threatenings of the two prophets to indicate that Micah uttered his threats conditionally, i.e., in case there should be no repentance, whereas Isaiah uttered his unconditionally. Moreover, such an explanation is proved to be untenable by the fact, that in Micah the threat of the destruction of Jerusalem and of the desolation of the temple mountain (Micah 3:12) stands in the closest connection with the promise, that at the end of the days the mountain of God's house will be exalted above all mountains, and Jehovah reign on Zion as king for ever (Micah 4:1-3 and Micah 7:1). If this threat were only conditional, the promise would also have only a conditional validity; and the final glorification of the kingdom of God would be dependent upon the penitence of the great mass of the people of Israel, - a view which is diametrically opposed to the real nature of the prophecies of both, yea, of all the prophets. The only difference between Isaiah and Micah in this respect consists in the fact that Isaiah, in his elaborate addresses, brings out more distinctly the attitude of the imperial power of Assyria towards the kingdom of God in Israel, and predicts not only that Israel will be hard pressed by the Assyrians, but also that the latter will not overcome the people of God, but will be wrecked upon the foundation-stone laid by Jehovah in Zion; whereas Micah simply threatens the sinners with judgment, and after the judgment predicts the glorification of Zion in grand general terms, without entering more minutely into the attitude of the Assyrians towards Israel.

In the main, however, Micah goes hand in hand with his contemporary Isaiah. In Isaiah 32:14, Isaiah also foretels the devastation, or rather the destruction, of Jerusalem, notwithstanding the fact that he has more than once announced the deliverance of the city of God from Asshur, and that without getting into contradiction with himself. For this double announcement may be very simply explained from the fact that the judgments which Israel had yet to endure, and the period of glory to follow, lay, like a long, deep diorama, before the prophet's mental eye; and that in his threatenings he plunged sometimes more, sometimes less, deeply into those judgments which lay in perspective before him (see Delitzsch on Isaiah, at Isaiah 32:20). The same thing applies to Micah, who goes to a great depth both in his threats and promises, not only predicting the judgment in all its extremity, - namely, the utter destruction of Jerusalem, and the carrying away of the people to Babel, - but also the salvation in its ultimate perfection, viz., the glorification of Zion. We must therefore not restrict his threats in Micah 3:12 and Micah 4:10 even to the Chaldaean catastrophe, nor the promise of Israel's deliverance in Babel out of the hands of its foes to the liberation of the Jews from Babylon, which was effected by Cyrus, and their return to Palestine under Zerubbabel and Ezra; but must also extend the threat of punishment to the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans and the attendant dispersion of the Jews over all the world, and the redemption out of Babel promised in Micah 4:10 to that deliverance of Israel which, in the main, is in the future still. These two judgments and these two deliverances are comprehended in an undivided unity in the words of the prophet, Babel being regarded not only in its historical character, but also in its typical significance, as the beginning and the hearth of the kingdom of the world. Babel has this double significance in the Scriptures from the very commencement. Even the building of the city with a tower intended to reach to heaven was a work of human pride, and an ungodly display of power (Genesis 11:4.); and after its erection Babel was made by Nimrod the beginning of the empire of the world (Genesis 10:10). It was from these two facts that Babel became the type of the imperial power, and not because the division of the human race into nations with different languages, and their dispersion over the whole earth, had their origin there (see A. ch. Lmmert, Babel, das Thier und der falsche Prophet. Goth. 1862, p. 36ff.); and it is in this typical significance of Babel that we have to seek not only for the reason for the divine purpose to banish the people of God to Babel, when they were given up to the power of the kingdom of the world, but also for a point of connection for the prophetic announcement when this purpose had been communicated to the prophet's mind. Micah accordingly predicts the carrying away of the daughter Zion to Babel, and her deliverance there out of the power of her enemies, not because Babel along with Nineveh was the metropolis of the world-empire of his time, or a chief city of that empire, but because Babel, from its very origin, was a type and symbol of the imperial power. That the words of Micah, in their deepest sense, should be so interpreted, is not only warranted, but necessitated, by the announcement which follows in Micah 4:11-13 of the victorious conflict of Zion with many nations, which points far beyond the conflicts of the Jews in the times succeeding the captivity.