Micah 4:13

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

For I will give you iron horns; ¹ 

I will give you bronze hooves,

and you will crush many nations.” ² 

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

and dedicate their wealth to the sovereign Ruler ³  of the whole earth. ⁴ 

Micah 1:7

1:7 All her carved idols will be smashed to pieces;

all her metal cult statues will be destroyed by fire. ⁵ 

I will make a waste heap ⁶  of all her images.

Since ⁷  she gathered the metal ⁸  as a prostitute collects her wages,

the idols will become a prostitute’s wages again.” ⁹ 

[4:13]  ¹ tn Heb “I will make your horn iron.”

[4:13]  ² 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]  ³ tn Or “the Lord” (so many English versions); Heb “the master.”

[4:13]  ⁴ 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.

[1:7]  ⁵ tn Heb “and all her prostitute’s wages will be burned with fire.”

[1:7]  ⁶ tn Heb “I will make desolate” (so NASB).

[1:7]  ⁷ tn Or “for” (KJV, NASB, NRSV).

[1:7]  ⁸ tn No object is specified in the Hebrew text; the words “the metal” are supplied from the context.

[1:7]  ⁹ tn Heb “for from a prostitute’s wages she gathered, and to a prostitute’s wages they will return.” When the metal was first collected it was comparable to the coins a prostitute would receive for her services. The metal was then formed into idols, but now the Lord’s fiery judgment would reduce the metal images to their original condition.