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 4:13

4:13 “Get up and thresh, Daughter Zion!

For I will give you iron horns; ⁵ 

I will give you bronze hooves,

and you will crush many nations.” ⁶ 

You will devote to the Lord the spoils you take from them,

and dedicate their wealth to the sovereign Ruler ⁷  of the whole earth. ⁸ 

Mikha 5:8

5:8 Those survivors from Jacob will live among the nations,

in the midst of many peoples.

They will be like a lion among the animals of the forest,

like a young lion among the flocks of sheep,

which attacks when it passes through;

it rips its prey ⁹  and there is no one to stop it. ¹⁰ 

[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.

[4:13]  ⁵ tn Heb “I will make your horn iron.”

[4:13]  ⁶ sn Jerusalem (Daughter Zion at the beginning of the verse; cf. 4:8) is here compared to a powerful ox which crushes the grain on the threshing floor with its hooves.

[4:13]  ⁷ tn Or “the Lord” (so many English versions); Heb “the master.”

[4:13]  ⁸ tn Heb “and their wealth to the master of all the earth.” The verb “devote” does double duty in the parallelism and is supplied in the second line for clarification.

[4:13]  sn In vv. 11-13 the prophet jumps from the present crisis (which will result in exile, v. 10) to a time beyond the restoration of the exiles when God will protect his city from invaders. The Lord’s victory over the Assyrian armies in 701 b.c. foreshadowed this.

[5:8]  ⁹ tn The words “its prey” are supplied in the translation for clarification.

[5:8]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “and there is no deliverer.”