Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Micah · About this commentary
What Is Cut Off in That Day
Micah 5:10-15
10 “It will happen in that day”, says Yahweh, “that I will cut off your horses from among you and will destroy your chariots. · WEB
The purge in this passage falls on the covenant people's own defenses and their own religion, not on their enemies.
Four times in four verses the same verb lands — I will cut off — and the list it governs is the surprise. Horses and chariots, then cities and strongholds, then sorceries and fortune-tellers, then carved images and standing pillars, and the Asherah poles pulled up by the root Micah 5:10–14.
Every item belongs to the people being addressed. This is not a promise that their enemies will be disarmed; it is a promise that they will be. Cavalry and walls were what a small kingdom trusted between two empires, and divination and images were what it reached for when the walls looked thin. The passage treats both as one problem and removes them together.
That is what makes verse 13 the center: you will no longer bow down to the work of your hands. The military hardware and the religious hardware are both handmade, and both are taken from a people about to be told what is actually required of them.
Only at verse 15 does the anger turn outward, on nations that did not listen — and the verb is the one that opens all three of this book's addresses. The nations are judged for the failure those addresses keep charging against Jacob.
held with reason What this mark means