Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Micah · About this commentary
Why Do You Cry Aloud?
Micah 4:9-13
9 Now why do you cry out aloud? Is there no king in you? Has your counselor perished, that pains have taken hold of you as of a woman in travail? · WEB
Three times the passage says now, and each time the present distress is left standing while the outcome is moved somewhere else.
Verse 9 asks why the city is screaming and answers with two questions: is there no king, has the counselor perished? Something a nation is supposed to have has gone. The pain is compared to labor, the image that governs the passage and returns in the next chapter Micah 5:3.
Verse 10 develops it without softening it. Writhe and push, daughter of Zion — you will leave the city, camp in open country, and come as far as Babylon . The destination is named plainly, generations before it mattered. Then, in the same breath and the same place: there you will be delivered, there Yahweh will redeem you. The rescue is not offered instead of the exile. It is located inside it.
Verse 11 gives the second now: many nations gathered, wanting to watch the city defiled. Verse 12 answers that they do not know Yahweh's thoughts, and says what those thoughts were — he gathered them, like cut sheaves brought to the threshing floor. The besiegers arrived believing they were the harvesters.
Verse 13 hands the flail to the city they came for, with a horn of iron and hoofs of bronze. What is taken is then devoted to Yahweh, which keeps the reversal from becoming revenge: the spoil does not stay with the one who won it.
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