Why Do You Cry Aloud?
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? 10 Be in pain, and labor to give birth, daughter of Zion, like a woman in travail; for now you will go out of the city, and will dwell in the field, and will come even to Babylon. There you will be rescued. There Yahweh will redeem you from the hand of your enemies. 11 Now many nations have assembled against you, that say, “Let her be defiled, and let our eye gloat over Zion.” 12 But they don’t know the thoughts of Yahweh, neither do they understand his counsel; for he has gathered them like the sheaves to the threshing floor. 13 Arise and thresh, daughter of Zion, for I will make your horn iron, and I will make your hoofs bronze. You will beat in pieces many peoples. I will devote their gain to Yahweh, and their substance to the Lord of the whole earth.
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.
held with reason What this mark means