10 Be in pain, make sounds of grief, O daughter of Zion, like a woman in childbirth: for now you will go out of the town, living in the open country, and will come even to Babylon; there you will have salvation; there the Lord will make you free from the hands of your haters.
Give sounds of joy, make melody together, waste places of Jerusalem: for the Lord has given comfort to his people, he has taken up the cause of Jerusalem. The Lord has let his holy arm be seen by the eyes of all nations; and all the ends of the earth will see the salvation of our God. Away! away! go out from there, touching no unclean thing; go out from among her; be clean, you who take up the vessels of the Lord. For you will not go out suddenly, and you will not go in flight: for the Lord will go before you, and the God of Israel will come after you to keep you.
And the angel who was talking to me went out, and another angel went out, and, meeting him, Said to him, Go quickly and say to this young man, Jerusalem will be an unwalled town, because of the great number of men and cattle in her. For I, says the Lord, will be a wall of fire round about her, and I will be the glory inside her.
Truly I say to you, You will be weeping and sorrowing, but the world will be glad: you will be sad, but your sorrow will be turned into joy. When a woman is about to give birth she has sorrow, because her hour is come; but when she has given birth to the child, the pain is put out of her mind by the joy that a man has come into the world. So you have sorrow now: but I will see you again, and your hearts will be glad, and no one will take away your joy.
Do not be glad because of my sorrow, O my hater: after my fall I will be lifted up; when I am seated in the dark, the Lord will be a light to me. I will undergo the wrath of the Lord, because of my sin against him; till he takes up my cause and does what is right for me: when he makes me come out into the light, I will see his righteousness; And my hater will see it and be covered with shame; she who said to me, Where is the Lord your God? my eyes will see their desire effected on her, now she will be crushed under foot like the dust of the streets. A day for building your walls! in that day will your limits be stretched far and wide. In that day they will come to you from Assyria and the towns of Egypt, and from Egypt even to the River, and from sea to sea and from mountain to mountain. But the land will become a waste because of its people, as the fruit of their works.
Before her pains came, she gave birth; before her pains, she gave birth to a man-child. When has such a story come to men's ears? who has seen such things? will a land come to birth in one day? will a nation be given birth in a minute? For when Zion's pains came on her, she gave birth to her children straight away. Will I by whom the birth was started, not make it complete? says the Lord. Will I who make children come to birth, let them be kept back? says your God.
Now in the first year of Cyrus, king of Persia, in order that the word of the Lord given by the mouth of Jeremiah might come true, the spirit of Cyrus, king of Persia, was moved by the Lord, so that he made a public statement through all his kingdom, and put it in writing, saying, These are the words of Cyrus, king of Persia: The Lord God of heaven has given me all the kingdoms of the earth; and he has made me responsible for building a house for him in Jerusalem, which is in Judah.
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Commentary on Micah 4 Keil & Delitzsch Commentary
Glorification of the House of the Lord, and Restoration of the Dominion of Zion - Micah 4:1-13
Zion will eventually be exalted from the deepest degradation to the highest glory. This fundamental thought of the announcement of salvation contained in Micah 4:1-13 and Micah 5:1-15 is carried out thus far in Micah 4:1-13 : the first section (Micah 4:1-7) depicts the glorification of the temple mountain by the streaming of the heathen nations to it to hear the law of the Lord, and the blessing which Israel and the nations will derive therefrom; and the second section (Micah 4:8-13) describes the restoration of the dominion of Zion from its fallen condition through the redemption of the nation out of Babel, and its victorious conflict with the nations of the world.
The promise of salvation opens, in closest connection with the destruction of Jerusalem and of the temple, with a picture of the glory awaiting in the remotest future the temple mountain, which has now become a wild forest-height. Micah 4:1. “And it comes to pass at the end of the days, that the mountain of Jehovah's house will be established on the head of the mountains, and it will be exalted above the hills, and nations stream to it. Micah 4:2. And many nations go, and say, Up, let us go up to the mountain of Jehovah, and to the house of the God of Jacob, that He may teach us of His ways, and we may walk in His paths: for from Zion will law go forth, and the word of Jehovah from Jerusalem. Micah 4:3. And He will judge between many nations, and pronounce sentence on strong nations afar off; and they forge their swords into coulters, and their spears into pruning-hooks: nation will not lift up sword against nation, nor will they learn war any more. Micah 4:4. And they will sit, every one under his vine, and under his fig-tree, and no one will make them afraid: for the mouth of Jehovah of hosts hath spoken it.”