Discovery BoxMicah 4:9--5:1
Context4:9 Jerusalem, why are you 1 now shouting so loudly? 2
Has your king disappeared? 3
Has your wise leader 4 been destroyed?
Is this why 5 pain grips 6 you as if you were a woman in labor?
4:10 Twist and strain, 7 Daughter Zion, as if you were in labor!
For you will leave the city
and live in the open field.
You will go to Babylon,
but there you will be rescued.
There the Lord will deliver 8 you
from the power 9 of your enemies.
4:11 Many nations have now assembled against you.
They say, “Jerusalem must be desecrated, 10
so we can gloat over Zion!” 11
4:12 But they do not know what the Lord is planning;
they do not understand his strategy.
He has gathered them like stalks of grain to be threshed 12 at the threshing floor.
4:13 “Get up and thresh, Daughter Zion!
For I will give you iron horns; 13
I will give you bronze hooves,
and you will crush many nations.” 14
You will devote to the Lord the spoils you take from them,
and dedicate their wealth to the sovereign Ruler 15 of the whole earth. 16
5:1 (4:14) 17 But now slash yourself, 18 daughter surrounded by soldiers! 19
We are besieged!
With a scepter 20 they strike Israel’s ruler 21
on the side of his face.
[4:9] 1 tn The Hebrew form is feminine singular, indicating that Jerusalem, personified as a young woman, is now addressed (see v. 10). In v. 8 the tower/fortress was addressed with masculine forms, so there is clearly a shift in addressee here. “Jerusalem” has been supplied in the translation at the beginning of v. 9 to make this shift apparent.
[4:9] 2 tn Heb “Now why are you shouting [with] a shout.”
[4:9] 3 tn Heb “Is there no king over you?”
[4:9] 4 tn Traditionally, “counselor” (cf. KJV, NAB, NASB, NIV, NRSV). This refers to the king mentioned in the previous line; the title points to the king’s roles as chief strategist and policy maker, both of which required extraordinary wisdom.
[4:9] 5 tn Heb “that.” The Hebrew particle כִּי (ki) is used here in a resultative sense; for this use see R. J. Williams, Hebrew Syntax, 73, §450.
[4:9] 6 tn Heb “grabs hold of, seizes.”
[4:10] 7 tn Or perhaps “scream”; NRSV, TEV, NLT “groan.”
[4:10] 8 tn Or “redeem” (KJV, NASB, NIV, NRSV, NLT).
[4:10] 9 tn Heb “hand.” The Hebrew idiom is a metonymy for power or control.
[4:11] 10 tn Heb “let her be desecrated.” the referent (Jerusalem) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
[4:11] 11 tn Heb “and let our eye look upon Zion.”
[4:12] 12 tn The words “to be threshed” are not in the Hebrew text, but have been supplied in the translation to make it clear that the
[4:13] 13 tn Heb “I will make your horn iron.”
[4:13] 14 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] 15 tn Or “the Lord” (so many English versions); Heb “the master.”
[4:13] 16 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.
[5:1] 17 sn Beginning with 5:1, the verse numbers through 5:15 in the English Bible differ by one from the verse numbers in the Hebrew text (BHS), with 5:1 ET = 4:14 HT, 5:2 ET = 5:1 HT, 5:3 ET = 5:2 HT, etc., through 5:15 ET = 5:14 HT. From 6:1 the verse numbers in the English Bible and the Hebrew Bible are again the same.
[5:1] 18 tn The Hebrew verb גָדַד (gadad) can be translated “slash yourself” or “gather in troops.” A number of English translations are based on the latter meaning (e.g., NASB, NIV, NLT).
[5:1] 19 tn Heb “daughter of a troop of warriors.”
[5:1] 20 tn Or “staff”; KJV, NAB, NASB, NIV, NRSV, NLT “rod”; CEV “stick”; NCV “club.”
[5:1] 21 tn Traditionally, “the judge of Israel” (so KJV, NASB).
