Mikha 2:12

The Lord Will Restore His People

2:12 I will certainly gather all of you, O Jacob,

I will certainly assemble those Israelites who remain. ¹ 

I will bring them together like sheep in a fold, ² 

like a flock in the middle of a pasture; ³ 

they will be so numerous that they will make a lot of noise. ⁴ 

Mikha 3:11

3:11 Her ⁵  leaders take bribes when they decide legal cases, ⁶ 

her priests proclaim rulings for profit,

and her prophets read omens for pay.

Yet they claim to trust ⁷  the Lord and say,

“The Lord is among us. ⁸ 

Disaster will not overtake ⁹  us!”

[2:12]  ¹ tn Heb “the remnant of Israel.”

[2:12]  ² tc The MT reads בָּצְרָה (batsrah, “Bozrah”) but the form should be emended to בַּצִּרָה (batsirah, “into the fold”). See D. R. Hillers, Micah (Hermeneia), 38.

[2:12]  ³ tc The MT reads “its pasture,” but the final vav (ו) belongs with the following verb. See GKC 413 §127.i.

[2:12]  ⁴ tn Heb “and they will be noisy [or perhaps, “excited”] from men.” The subject of the third feminine plural verb תְּהִימֶנָה (tÿhimenah, “they will be noisy”) is probably the feminine singular צֹאן (tso’n, “flock”). (For another example of this collective singular noun with a feminine plural verb, see Gen 30:38.) In the construction מֵאָדָם (me’adam, “from men”) the preposition is probably causal. L. C. Allen translates “bleating in fear of men” (Joel, Obadiah, Jonah, and Micah [NICOT], 300), but it is possible to take the causal sense as “because of the large quantity of men.” In this case the sheep metaphor and the underlying reality are mixed.

[3:11]  ⁵ sn The pronoun Her refers to Jerusalem (note the previous line).

[3:11]  ⁶ tn Heb “judge for a bribe.”

[3:11]  ⁷ tn Heb “they lean upon” (so KJV, NIV, NRSV); NAB “rely on.”

[3:11]  ⁸ tn Heb “Is not the Lord in our midst?” The rhetorical question expects the answer, “Of course he is!”

[3:11]  ⁹ tn Or “come upon” (so many English versions); NCV “happen to us”; CEV “come to us.”