Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

Yer. 18. u And the house of Jacob will be a fire, and tJie house of Joseph aflame, and ilie house of Esau for stubble. And tlu; tlieir I whilst th die will upon th Phili, that i upon their land, and The subject to the ith land and of tin- lowland will n in addition to this of til dm and Samaria* I » u t not irically for land or territory. Along with Ephrmim the land, Samaria the capital is ially menti

In)ij>niun. From the taking of the ten lof the kingdom of the ten tribes by Judah and Benjamin, we are not to infer that the territory of the ten tribes was either compared to an enemy's land, or thought of as depopulated; but the thought is simply this: Judah and Benjamin, the two tribes, which formed the kingdom of God in the time of Obadiah, will extend their territory to all the four quarters of the globe, and take possession of all Canaan beyond its former boundaries. Hengstenberg has rightly shown that we have here simply an individualizing description of the promise in Gen. xxviii. 14, " thy seed will be as the dust of the ground; and thou breakest out to the west and to the eastr, to the north and to the south," etc.; i.e. that on the ground of this promise Obadiah predicts the future restoration of the kingdom of God, and its extension beyond the borders of Canaan. In this he looks away from ieir hai The •nis boat which had t carried an """". which the l.\\. the be i be trench of a I The only he called Canaanites when they had adopted the nature of Canaan. And any who had done this could look for no share in the salvation of the Lord, and no return to the land of the Lord. We must ti ike EPfflB Tt&H afl the object, and supply the v.rl. IBhj from the first clauses of the preceding verse. Obadiah first of all expresses the verb twice, then omits it in the next two clauses (ver. 19d and 20a), and inserts it again in the last clause (ver. 20l>). The meaning is, that the army of these sons of Israel, wdio have been carried away captive, will take possession of what Canaanites there are as far as Zarephath, Le, the Phoenician city of Sarepta, the present Surafend, between Tyre and Sidon on the sea-coast (see comm. on 1 Kings xvii. 9). The capture of the land of the enemy presupposes a return to the fatherland. The exiles of Jerusalem shall take possession of the south country, the inhabitants of which have pushed forward into Edom. T*9? (in Sepharad) is difficult, and has

1 I in its fully developed form. &T\ which i^ written drf -"yj'vr in <>f the ancient M

IsraeL The mountain- ' t V an ore mentioned instead of the pie, partly on account of the antithesis to the mountain of

Zion, and partly also t< thought of supremacy not only over the people, but over the land of the heathen also. t is not to he restricted in this case to the judging or settling of disputes, but includes the conduct of the government, the exercise of dominion in its fullest extent, so that the " judging of the mountains of Esau'' expresses the dominion of the people of God over the heathen world. Under the saviours, as Hengstenberg has correctly observed, the Saviour par excellence is concealed. This is not brought prominently out, nor is it even distinctly affirmed; but it is assumed as selfevident, from the history of the olden time, that the saviours are raised up by Jehovah for His people. The following and concluding thought, that the kingdom will be Jehovah's, i.e. that Jehc.ah will show Himself to the whole world as King of the world, and Ruler in His kingdom, and will be acknow- as Caspari and oth<. although it is apparently favoured by the statement in 1.... xw. 14, that Jehovah would fulfil His vengeance upon Edom hy the hand of I lis people Israel.

For even if this prophecy of Ezekiel may have been fulfilled in the events just mentioned, we are precluded from understanding Ob. 18, and the parallel passages, Amos ix. 11, 12, and Num. xxiv. 18, as referring to the same events, by the fact that the destruction of Edom, and the capture of Seir by Israel, are to proceed, according to Xum. xxiv. 18, from the Ruler to arise out of Jacob (the Messiah), and that they were to take place, according to Amos ix. 11, 12, in connection with the raising up of the fallen hut of David, and according to later than the pi in favour of J mj but although it is quite possible that it is to be time of

Menahein, during the period of the first in of la the Assyrians, this is by no means so probabl assumed. For, inasmuch as Menahem began to reign fiftythree years after the commencement of the reign of Jeroboam, and the war between Jeroboam and the Syrians took place not in the closing years, but in the very first years of his reign, since it was only the continuation and conclusion of the sucsful struggle which his father had already begun with these enemies of Israel; Jonah must have been a very old man when he was entrusted with his mission to Nineveh, if it did not take place till after the invasion of Israel by Pul. Nothing is known of the circumstances of Jonah's life apart from these biblical notices. The Jewish tradition mentioned by Jerome the spot where he was cast uj land, i r the mme of the in king; in brief, he omiti all the move minute details

which an* necessarily conn with a tru— hi Bat the assertion that c 'inpleteness in all l. which nnmicating such things as have no close connection with the main ol if their narrative, or with tl ince have a] n sooghl for in the la m ployed, and in the citvui: dial Jonah9! prayer in ch.iL 8-10 contains

"tfin in the supposed s ring (ch. i. 1!fWl to i. 12), and 0 for Tf&l (ch. iv. 10), belong cither to the speech of Galilee or the language of ordinary inteTCOanOj and are very far from being proofs of a later age, since it cannot proved with certainty that any one of these words was unknown in the early Hebrew usau'', and 0 for "W%j occurs as early afl Judg. v. 7, vi. 17, and even W in Song of Sol. i. G, viii. 12, whilst in the book before us it is only in the sayings of the persons actin g (ch. i. 7, 12), or of God (ch. iv. 10), that it is used. The only non-Hebraic word, viz. C^B, which is used in the sense of command, and applied to the edict of the king of Assyria, was heard by Jonah in Nineveh, where it was used as a technical term, and was transferred by him. The reminiscences which occur in Jonah's prayer are all taken from the Psalms of David or his contemporaries, which were generally known in Israel long before the prophet's day.1 Lastly, the statement in ch. iii. 3, that e nai 1 m m of God and of divine providence a | •]:ir nt in all this, which borders very closel;. means pi natural for the self-ri mind oi gard the Gentiles as simply en of the people and kingdom of God, an!

not only! their cap or sal ration, hut also to interpret the prophetic announcement of the judgment coming upon lore swallowed by a whale, and the prophet remains in it three days and the same number of nights; which appears to be beyond the power of the hearers to betiere, chiefly of those who come to this history fresh from the schools of the Greeks and their wise teaching." This ridicule first found admission into the Christian church, when the rise of deism, naturalism, and rationalism caused a denial of the miracles and inspiration of the Scriptures to be exalted into an axiom of free inquiry. From this time forward a multitude of marvellous hypotheses and trivial ideas concerning the book of Jonah have been brought out, which P. Friedrichsen has collected and discussed in a most unspiritual manner in his Kritische Uebersicht der verschietienen Ansichten von clem Buche Jona.

he confesses hia fault, an 1 direct* the sail I him into the s^i. 1 iusc it is on hi unt thai tl lie will of G "1, typifies thai □ and banishment from the I I which Israel will assuredly bring upon it by i: * livine call. But Jonah, when prays I i the Lord in t! 's belly, he is vomited upon the land unhurt. This miracle has also a syml meaning for mind, should turn to the 1 d in tin- last extremity, it will be raise 1 up again by a divine miracle from destruction to n< ncss of life And lastly, the manner in which God reproves the phetj when he is angry h Nineveh ared

. iv.), is intended to set forth as in a mirror before all Israel the greatness of the divine compassion, which embraces all

But this by no means exhausts the deeper meaning of the history of Jonah. It extends still further, and culminates in the typical character of Jonah's three days' imprisonment in the belly of the fish, upon which Christ threw some light when lie said, "As Jonah was three days and three nights in the whale's belly, so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth" (Matt. xii. 40). The clue to the meaning of this type, i.e. to the divinely-appointed connection between the typical occurrence and its antitype, is to be found in the answer which Jesus gave to Philip and Andrew when they told Him, a short time before His death, that there were certain Greeks among them that came up to worship at the feast who desired to see Jesus. This answer consists of two distinct statements, viz. (John xii. 23, 24): rt The time is come that the Son of man should be glorified. Verily, verily, id in ill natural nationality mu >h in Older that of the old sinful nature there may arise a new people of ( - which, b</;i to the law, may serve the Lord in the will-

I also appointed the mortal anguish and the deliyi I 3 ■ of tin- death and the & r of the world.

of heai urth; i I in the th like a gi t, that Be may bring forth Fruit for the whole world. iT:l_ sinfl of mankind, and went voluntarily to death u One who had life In llin. amplish II Fatl •' will. In this

Christ died for the sin of II hich He had taken upon Himself, to make expiation for it: bat He died is a member of the nation, from which 1 1 * ■ had sprung according to tl!i. when He was made under the law, that

This symbolical and typical significance of the mission of prophet Jonah precludes the assumption that the account in his book is a myth or a parabolical iiction, or simply the description of a symbolical transaction which the prophet experienced in spirit only. And the contents of the book are at variance with all these assumptions, even with the last. When the prophets are commanded to carry out symbolical transactions, they do so without repugnance. But Jonah seeks to avoid executing the command of God by flight, and is punished in consequence. This is at variance with the character of a purely symbolical action, and proves that the book relates historical facts. It is true that the sending of Jonah to Nineveh had not its real purpose within itself; that is to say, that it was not intended to effect the conversion of the Ninevites to the living God, but simply to bring to light the truth that even the Gentiles were capable of receiving divine truth, and to his sin to 1 i i_r 1 1 1 (vers. 4—10); and when the lot singles him out.

as the culprit, lie con that he is guilty; and in accordance with the sentence which he pronounces upon himself, is cast into

1 Samuel (i. 1), and others do. This was the Standing formula with which historical events were linked on to one another, inasmuch as every occurrence follows another in chronological sequence; so that the Van (and) simply attaches to a series of events, which are assumed as well known, and by no means warrants the assumption that the narrative which follows is merely a fragment of a larger work (see at Josh. i. 1). The word of the Lord which came to Jonah was this: u Arise, go to Xineueh, the great city, and preach against it.";V does not stand for?X (ch. iii. 2), but retains its proper meaning, against, indicating the threatening nature of the preaching, as the explanatory clause which follows clearly shows. The connection in ch. iii. 2 is a different one. Nineveh, the capital of the Assyrian kingdom, and the residence of the great kings of Assyria, which was built by Nimrod according to Gen. x. 11, and by Ninos, the mythical founder of the Assyrian empire, according to the Greek and Roman authors, is repeatedly called " the great city" in this book (ch. iii. 2, 3, iv. 11), and its size we still more clearly bom eh. iv. 11, with i': i the importance which Nineveh had, Loth wickedneae had com Jehovah, i.>. 1 I port or the tidings of if iption had penetrated to God in out upon his jounu flee to

:. iv. 16): not to hide himself from the omnipresent G but to withdraw from the service of Jehovah, the God-King of Israel.1 The motive for thifl flight was not fear of the difficulty of carrying out the command of God, hut, as Jonah himself says in ch. iv. 2, anxiety lest the compassion of God should spare the siuful city in the event of its repenting. lie had no wish to co-operate in this; and that not merely because u he knew, by inspiration of the Holy Spirit, that the repentance of the Gentiles would be the ruin of the Jews, and, as a lover of his country, was actuated not so much by envy of the salvation of Nineveh, as by unwillingness that his own people should perish," as Jerome supposes, but also because he really grudged salvation

1 Marck has already correctly observed, that " this must not be understood as flight from the being and knowledge of God, lest we should attribute to the great prophet gross ignorance of the omnipresence and omniscience of God; but as departure from the land of Canaan, the gracious seat of God, outside which he thought, that possibly, at any rate at that time, the gift and office of a prophet would not be conferred upon him"

against ft false estimate of ties, on account of three M carnal. Jcwtah thoug':* attention I* apoatlea also held a si carnal

•■in \>y a calling roodrrs and signs; and it waa at reao! ural council (Act/ Id aiao ahow mercy and feels so safe with his tranquil mind, that he n to the interior of the ship and enjoys a most placid sleep." The truth probably lies between these two views. It was not an evil conscience, or despair occasioned by the threatening dan. which induced him to lie down to sleep; nor was it his fearless composure in the midst of the dangers of the storm, but the careless self-security with which he had embarked on the ship to flee from God, without considering that the hand of God could reach him even on the sea, and punish him for his disobedi- d the contrary, it ii quite in order. The sailor* wanted thereby t<> indu with hi own mouth

Jehovah, against whom I have sinn< \ urbanel). By the hum a right I m in (Hi; but simply then rid. For he admits directly after, that he has sinned against this God, by telling them, ai we may see from ver. IOj of hu flight from Jehovah. 1I« had not told them this as soon as he embarked in the ship, as Hitzig rapp but does so now for the first time when they ask about his people, his country, etc., as we may see most unmistakeably from ver. 10b. In ver. 9 Jonah's statement is not given completely; but the principal fact, viz. that he was a Hebrew and worshipped Jehovah, is followed immediately by the account of the impression which this acknowledgment made upon the heathen sailors; and the confession of his sin is mentioned afterwards as a supplement, to assign the reason for the great fear which came upon the sailors in consequence. Ttfoy DKrno, What hast thou done! is not a question as to the nature of his sin, but an exclamation of horror at his flight from Jehovah, the God of heaven and earth, as the following explanatory sodden ch. in the weather, the arm of the 1. I so suddenly mar. I, that the J ih with vowed that they would offer Ilim still further sacri;' their safe arrival at their destinati

When Jonah had been cast into the sea by the appointment of God, he was swallowed up by a great fish (ch. i. 17), in whose belly he spent three days and nights, and offered an earnest prayer to God (ch. ii. 1—9); whereupon, by command of Jehovah, the fish vomited him out upon the land (ver. 10).

was not a whale, becau ranean, and hat too small a throat to swallow a roan, but a an swallow a 1 psasiHB| sseesdamg so C nrh r, oss Isngos of M lest, sad aoot is the bat fauKMat, an i ha* ah. xnm shaped fish, * it h » huh it sometimes gets into the fishermen's net on the coast of Sardinia, and u caught. A* many at a does* undigested tunn> fiah have been found in a thark weighing tares or four hundredweight; in one a whole hone wat found, at. igfcfl wat tsthnttod at fifteen hue

:&) aavt that he taw one on the western ooost of Prance, through whose throat a fat man could very caeily have passed Oken also mentions a *h it more elaborately de*

-•• nny weather, into the Mediterranean Sea, and wat imroedi taken into the jawa of a sea-dog (carekarias), aod disappeared The T^*'". however, ordered a gun, which wat stunting on the deck, to be discharged at the thark, and the cannon-ball struck it, ao that it tot up again the tailor that it had twaDowed, who wat then taken op i and Tery little hurt, into the boat that had been lowered for hit

S 7) the distress into which be had been brought, and the deliverance out of that iction which epj inevitable, and closes in 8, 9 with a vow of thanksgiving for the deliverance which he had received.

peril of death, to set forth still more perfectly the thought of miraculous deliverance which filled the prophet's mind/ The clause of the fifth verse recals to mind Ps. xviii. 5 and Ixix. 2; the words " the waters pressed (*3) even to the soul" (Ps. Ixix. 2) being simply strengthened by T^BBK after Ps. xviii. 5.

Lord b'qdl tdddh, u with the voice, or vvy, of thanksgiving," *•*« would offer his sacrifices with a prayer of sincere thanksgiving (cf. Ps. xlii. 5), and pay the vow which he had made in his distress (cf. Ps. 1. 14, 23). These utterances are founded upon the hope that his deliverance will be effected (Hitzig); and this irranted is I bat it lay exactly in the j phical at th which into the city. Bnt if Jonah wandered about in different din, Mno( straight it not bo a relating to tlio diameter or length of the city; ^o that the objection to th ral opinion, that the three days1 journ en as the size of the i fera to the circumference, entirely falls to the ground. Moreover, Hitzig has quite overlooked the word Sn-\ in his argument. The; does not affirm that Jonah wont a day's journey into the city, but that he " began to go into the city a day's journey, and cried out."' These words do not affirm that lie did not begin to preach till after he had gone a whole day's journey, but simply that he had commenced his day's journey in the city when he found a suitable place and a fitting opportunity for his proclamation. They leave the distance that he had really gone, when lie began his preaching, quite indefinite; and by no means necessitate the assumption that he only began to preach in the evening, after his day's journey was ended. All that they distinctly affirm is, that he did not preach directly he

homy as in Joel ii. 14), n the preaching, so that the whole city repented in sackcloth and ashes, is quite intelligible, if we simply bear in mind the great cptibility of Oriental races to emotion, the awe of one Supreme Being which is peculiar to all the heathen religions of Asia, and the great esteem in which soothsaying and oracles were held in Assyria from the very earliest times (vid. Cicero, dc divinat. i. 1); and if we also take into calculation the circumstance that the appearance of a foreigner, who, without any conceivable personal interest, and with the most fearless other Greek translators (Aquik, 8)011111., and Theodot.) had, according to Theodoret, the number forty; and so also had the Syriac.

1 hi- objection made to this that the mourning of the cattle in oar book is not analogous to the esse help to appease tin* wrath of G L Ami although this thought might not be the it tlii- troth, thai the irrational

from their evil ways; and He re] the evil that He had said that He would do to them, and did it not xxxii. 1 1 1,

ran be reconciled with this without difficulty. The repentance of the Ninevites, even if it did not last, showed, at any rate, a susceptibility on the part of the heathen for the word of God, and their willingness to turn and forsake their evil and ungodly ways; so that God, according to His compassion, could extend His grace to them in consequence. God always acts in this way. He not only forgives the converted man, who lays aside his sin, and walks in newness of life; but He has mercy also upon the penitent who confesses and mourns over his sin, and is willing to amend. The Lord also directed Jonah to preach et meudax, Calvin and was he angry, as Calvin supposes, because he associatcl his office With the honour of God, and was unwilling that the name of God should be abide by His word;" but, as Luther observes (in his remarks on Jonah's flight), " he was hostile to the city of Nineveh, and when he complains, although he does not keep within proper bounds, but is carried away by a blind and vicious impulse, is nevertheless prepared to submit himself to God, as we shall presently see. This is the reason why he is said to have prayed."

v.'" the in (rod determined him I the city and wait ont>ide, in fooot of Ni what!

- Theod. Mops, correctly observes, that " when he reflected upon greatness of the threat, he imagined that something might possibly occur

after all." And Calvin better still, that "although forty days had pa Jonah stood as if fastened to the spot, because he could not yet believe that what he had proclaimed according to the command of God would fail to be effected.... This was the cause, therefore, of his still remaining, viz.

.use he thought, that although the punishment from God had been suspended, yet his preaching had surely not been in vain, but the destruction of the city would take place. This was the reason for his waiting ca after the time fixed, as though the result were still doubtful."

Dd at the same time murmuring because God has had compassion upon Nineveh with its many thousands of li\ beings, and has spared the city for the sake of these souls, m of whom have no idea whatever of right or wrong. Cha u Thou ha I! the Qiqayon, at which thou hast not laboured, and which thou hast not caused to grow; for (]3B>=13 ~*J;X) son of a night"— Le. in a night, or over night — "has it grown, and night perished, and I should not pity Nineveh?" Wl is a question; but this is only indicated by the tone. If Jonah feels pity for the withering of a small shrub, which he neither tioeoftfcsd: y. i—ri.ii. t.. th. at. a..%•. 174,000 soala Bo thai wt may reck i-opulAtioo ur larger vailed cities at tods to the square mile, or, apart from the two large to account thed is a1 maty of population as that

• that he was i with Isaiah. He of the two kii.. bo say, concerning all Israeli the of the t | itals. The con! of this statement, and at the time the genuineness of the heading, ai of the book. Micah not only predicts, in ch. i. 6, 7, the destruction of Samaria, which took place in the sixth year of Hezekiah; but he also mentions Asshur, the great enemy of Israel at that time, as the representative of the power of the world in its hostility to the kingdom of God (ch. v. 4); and he agrees so thoroughly with Isaiah in his description of the prevailing moral corruption, as well as in his Messianic fact that Micah'a prophecies were committed to writing in the time of Ilezckiah by no means preclud the n that

Attempt to prove that all the three addroses in our book, were npoeed in the time of Hezekiah, is founded upon ■ falae historical interpretation, and npon nnacriptaraJ ideas of the nature of prophecy*

. than what may he gathered from his writings. According to these, he no doubt prophesied in Jerusalem, the capital of his native land. This is evident from the fact that lie chiefly condemns the moral corruption of the great and mighty men of the kingdom, and makes Zion and Jerusalem for the most part the centre of his prophecies. There i- not sufficient ground for Ewald's assertion, that there are many signs which indicate an inhabitant of the plain. The introduction of the names of particular places in Judafa in v\\. i. 10 15 furnishes no pi of any "peculiar interest in the Jewish country, more esj dally the Jewish lowland, as being his home." Only a portion of the places mentioned in this passage were situated in the lowland. Moreover, Isaiah also enumerates a whole list of places in Judah (Isa. X. 28-32), and is minutely acquainted with the circumstances of Zebulun and Naphtali, and the neighbourhood of the Sea of Galilee (ch. viii. 23), although he was settled in Jerusalem, and had probably been born there. Still more precarious is the inference that has been drawn from Micah's somewhat rough and rugged style. For all that can be adduced in support of this is confined to the rapid and abrupt transitions from threatening to promise, in which he resembles Hosea (vid. ch. ii. 1-11, 12, 13, iii. 9-12, iv. 1 sqq.), and generally from one subject to another (eg. ch. vii. 1-7, vii. 11-13), but more especially from one person to another, or from one number and gender to another (ch. i. 10, vi. 16, vii. 15-19). This may be all explained from the vivacity of his own individuality, and the excited state of his mind; and simply indicates the boldness of his words, but not any want of culture in his style. His words are never deficient in clearness or evenness; whilst in abundance of figures, similes (ch. i. 8, 16, ii. 12, 13, iv. 9, etc.), and rhetorical tropes, as well as in speciality, paronomasia, in play upon words (ch. i. 10-15), and dialogue (ch. ii. 7-11, vi. 1-8, vii. 7-20), his style resembles that of his highly cultivated contemporary Isaiah. The traditional accounts respecting his descent from the tribe of Ephraim, his death, and hi dned in Pa. Doi th us and Pa, Bpiphanius in the confounding of our Micah with the elder Micah the flmlah, who lived in the rei Ahab, and and brief reproof of the existing acts of injustice and violence on the part of the great men (ch. ii. 1-5), and a sharp correc- i of their abettors the false propfa 11); after which this address d nth ■ brief promise of the eventual

The iteond address spreads it it still more elaborately in the first half (ch. iii.) over the sins and crimes of the heads of the nation, via, the princes, the false prophets, the unjust judges and bad priests; and because of these sins threatens the destruoand utter devastation of Zion, and the temple hill. As an antithesis to this threat, th< id half (ch, iv, and v.) contains a promise, commencing with th peel of the glorification of Zion and Israel at the end of the days (ch. iv. 1 7), advancing to an assurance of tl toration

•pie have first been carried away to Babel, and i I again out of the hand of their enemies, and of her triumph in the last conflict with the nations of the world (vers. -s 1 1), and culminating in the announcement of the birth of the great Ruler in Israel, who will arise out of Bethlehem, and f< ed His people in the majesty of Jehovah (ch. v. L-5), and not only protect the rescued remnant of Jacob against the attacks of the imperial kingdom, hut exalt it into a beneficent, and at the same time fearful, power to the heathen nations (vers. 6— 8), and establish a kingdom of blessed peace (vers. 9-14). The third address sets forth the way to salvation in the dramatic dress of a law-suit between.Jehovah and His people, by exhibiting the divine benefits for which Israel had repaid its God with ingratitude, and by a repeated allusion to the prevailing sins and unrighteousness which God must punish (ch. vi.), and also by showing how the consciousness of misery will lead to the penitential confession of guilt and to conversion, and by encouraging to believing trust in the compassion or fidelity of the Lord, who will once more have compassion upon His people, rebuild Zion, and humble the foe, and by renewing the miracles of the olden time fill all nations with fear of His omnipotence (ch. vii. 1-17); after which the prophet closes his book with praise for the sin-forgiving grace of the Lord (vers. 18-20).

From this general survey of the contents of the three addresses, their internal connection may be at once perceived. In the first the threatening of judgment predominates; in the second the announcement of the Messianic salvation; in the third there follows the paramesis or admonition to repentance and humiliation under the chastising hand of the Lord, in order to participate in the promised salvation. As this admonition rests upon the threat of judgment and promise of salvation in the two previous addresses, so does the allusion to the judgment contained in the words, "Then will they cry to Jehovah, and lie will not answer thorn n (ch. iii. 4), presuppose the announcement in ch. i. of the judgment about to burst upon the land, without which it would be perfectly unintelligible. Consequently there can be no doubt whatever that Micah has simply concentrated the quintessence of his oral discourses into the addresses contained in his book. This quintessence, moreover, shows dearly enough that our prophet was not at all behind his contemporary [aaiah, either in the clearness and distinctness of his Messianic announcements, or in the power and energy with which he combated the sins and vices of the nation. There is simply this essential difference, so far as the latter point is concerned, that he merely combats the religious and moral corruptness of the rulers of the nation, and does not touch upon their conduct on its political Bide. (For the i getical literature, see my Lelirbuch d>r /uhIcUiukj, p. 290.)

The prophet's first address is throughout of a threatening and punitive character; it is not till quite the close, that the sun of divine grace breaks brightly shining through the thunder clouds of judgment. The announcement of the judgment upon Samaria as well as upon the kingdom of Judah and Jerusalem forms the first part (ch. i. 2-16); the reproof of the sins, especially of the unrighteousness of the great and mighty of the nation, the second part (ch. ii. 1-11); and a brief but very comprehensive announcement of the salvation that will dawn upon the remnant of all Israel after the judgment, the conclusion of the address (ch. ii. 12, 13).

Micah, commencing with the appeal to all nations to observe the coming of the Lord for judgment upon the earth (vers. 2-4), announces to the people of Israel, on account of its sins and its apostasy from the Lord, the destruction of Samaria (vers. 5-7) and the spreading of the judgment over Judah; and shows how, passing from place to place, and proceeding to Jerusalem, and even farther, it will throw the kingdom into deep lamentation on account of the carrying away of its inhabitants.

Vers. 1-7. The heading in ver. 1 has been explained in the introduction. Vers. 2-4 form the introduction to the prophet's address. Ver. 2. " Hear, all ye nations: observe, 0 earthy and that which Jills it: and let the Lord Jehovah be a toitness against you, the Lord out of His holy palace. Ver. 3. For, behold, Jehovah cometh forth from His place, and cometh down, and marcheth over the high places of the earth. Ver. 4. And the mountains will melt under Him, and the valleys split, like wax before the fire, like water poured out upon a slope." The introductory words, " Hear, ye nations all," are taken by Micah from his earlier namesake the son of Imlah (1 Kings xxii. 28). As the latter, in his attack upon the false prophets, called all nations as witnesses to confirm the truth of his prophecy, so does Micah the Morashtite commence his prophetic testimony writh the same appeal, so as to announce his labours at the very outset as a continuation of the activity of his predecessor who had been so zealous for the Lord. As the son of Imlah had to contend against the false prophets as seducers of the nation, so has also the Morashtite (compare ch. ii. 6, 11, iii. 5, 11); and as the former had to announce to both kingdoms the judgment that would come upon them on account of their sins, so has also the latter; and he does it by frequently referring to the prophecy of the elder Micah, not only by designating the false prophets as those who walk after the rudch and lie, sheqer (ch. ii. 11), which recals to mind the rudch sheqer of the prophets of Ahab (1 Kings xxii. 22, 23), but also in his use of the figures of the horn of iron in ch. iv. 13, 14 (compare the horns of iron of the false prophet Zedekiah in 1 Kings xxii. 11), and of the smiting upon the cheek in ch. iv. 14 (compare 1 Kings xxii. 14). 'Ammim kulldm does not mean all the compared with n • and Israel in wet, 5a are synonymous, signifying tfa!e of the covenant nation, as we may iee from tfa that in v Jacob and not 1 is the epithet applied to the ten tribes in distinction from Judah. *Dj who.' — referring to the author. The apostasy of Israel originate* with Samaria; the worship on the high places with Jerusalem. The capitals of the two kingdoms are the authors of the apostasy, as the centres and sources of the corruption which has spread from them over the kingdoms. The allusion to the hamuth of the illegal worship of the high places, which even the most godly kings were unable to abolish (see at 1 Kings xv. 14), shows, moreover, that P?fc denotes that religious apostasy from Jehovah which was formally sanctioned in the king tribes of the Ctlf-1 i<e tliis apostasy oomm I id the k: of t tribes, the pnnishn* iKl fall upon this kingdom n and 'dtsablnm are to be supplied as object qibbdtsti/i (she gathered), and to be regarded as the subject to idolatry was spiritual whoredom* There m do ground for thinking of literal wagea of prostitution, or money which Sowed into the feemi m the voluptuous worship of Aphro- dite, l»«vaus,- Mvali had in his mind not literal (heathenish) idolatry! but limply the transformation of the Jehovah-worship into idolatry by the worship of Jehorafa under the symbol the golden calves, These things return lack to tin- wi ititution,.. they become this once more (cf« Gen* liL 19) by being carried away by the enemies, who conquer the city troy it, and being applied to their idolatrous worship. On the capture of cities the idols and temple I Carried

P, hut spread over.ludah. The prophet depict* this by saying that lie will po about mourniii forth the misery that will come upon.ludah (wrs. 8, 9); and then, to confirm this, he announce to a series of cities the fate awaiting them, or rather awaiting the kingdom, by a continued play upon words founded upon their names (vers. 10-15); and finally he summons Zion to deep mourning (ver. 16). Ver. 8. " Therefore will I lament and howl, I will go spoiled and naked: I will keep lamentation like the jackals, and mourning like the ostriches. Ver. 9. For her stripes are malignant; for it comes to Judah, reaches to the gate of my people, to Jerusalem!' nxrby points back to what precedes, and is then explained in ver. 9. The prophet will lament over the destruction of Samaria, because the judgment which has befallen this city will come upon Judah also. Micah does not speak in his own name here as a patriot (Hitzig), but in the name of his nation, with which he identifies himself as being a member thereof. This is indisputably evident from the expression Diiin b)"U> TOf*, which describes the costume of a prisoner, not that of a mourner. The form riD^K with « appears to have been simply suggested by nW*K. 5^ is formed like TW1 in Isa. xvi. 9, 10, and other similar words (see Olshausen, Gramm. p. 342). The Masoretes it would not bare been able to come I aaalem; and.still more clearly so from tl. tact

(2 Sam. i. ■ Publish it not in Gath," in which there ii i play upon the wnr.N in b'gath and tappidd. The Philistines are scence of the mourning i i David I. S ml, which the greatness of the grief, and is all the m< re significant, h< cause

Bqq.) in the opinion that \22 ■ the name of a city, a contraction of Japa, 1 weep not at Area." 11. re is no force in the objection brought this by I i (M -. p. 110), nani.lv. that in that case the inhabitants of both kingdoms must haw stood out before the prophet's mind in hemistich «, which, though not l i actually in le by ver. 9a, and the expression riK* "?]} in ver. 8, is hardly reconcilable with the fact that from ver. 11 onwards Judah only stands out before his mind, and that in vers. 8-10 the distress of his people, in the stricter sense {i.e. of Judah), is obviously the pre-eminent object of his mourning. For Acco would not be taken into consideration as a city of the kingdom of Israel, but as a city inhabited by heathen, since, according to Judg. i. 31, the Canaanites were not driven out of Acco, and it cannot be shown from any passage of the Old Testament that this city ever came into the actual possession of the Israelites. It is evidently a more important objection to the supposed contraction, that not a single analogous case can be pointed out. The forms np'z1} for nypVl (Amos viii. 8) and n^3 for r6yn (Josh.

- such an assumption. All that we can infer from the I Euscbiu* has adopted the It lie smallest degree prove the correctness i •loot the position of \22 before v -h an/ tenable groun:

i primary meaning of the oai tin; the more modern continental obine it with;sv, in the bably to the north of J( • Jem. Tl of the clause can hardly be any other than this, that the population of Zaanan had not £one out of their city to this war from fear of the enemv, but, on the contrary, had fallen back behind their walls (Kos., Casp., Hitzig). TJfKH ITS is most likely the same as «flj in Zech. xiv. 5, a place in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem, to the east of the Mount of Olives, as Beth is frequently omitted in the names of places (see Ges. Hies. p. 193). Etsel signifies side, and as an adverb or preposition, " by the side of." This meaning comes into consideration here. The thought of the words mispad beth, etc., might be:

this city \sill the judgment fall with it has grievou I. I: is the beginning of.sin to the daughi to 1 tion of J tm; it the firs! to gr the iniquities f ] ra. to the idolatry of t!. ten tribei

•. 5 and Am iiL 14), which penetrated to the capital. Nothing more i^ known of this, as the hi I hooks contain no rat of it. For tl. namely, 1 the sin of Israel foand admission inl Jerusalem, she (the daughter Zion) will '_'■ 1 to renounce M resheth-Gath. This is the thought of ver, 1 1 \ the dra] f which rests upon the thing belonging to a man, which he disil j;ives up for a time, or for ever. It is applied in Ex. xviii. 2 to the lending away of wife and children to the father-in-law for a time; and in 1 Kings ix. 16 to a dowry, or the present which a father gives to his daughter when she is married and leaves his house. The meaning "divorce," i.e. Bipher k'nthuth (Deut. xxiv. 1, 3), has been arbitrarily forced upon the word. The meaning is not to be determined from shillt&ch in Jer. iii. 8, as Hitzig supposes, but from 1 Kings ix. 16, where the same expression occurs, except that it is construed with?, which makes no material difference. For?V jro signifies to give to a person, either to lay upon him or to hand to him; p jnj, to give to him. The object given by Zion to Moresheth as a parting present is not

• tkan l that they were in m I CMMtti n i f (jatli it this time. The play uj n words in the relal I Judah). ah will also pan into other ban la. Thii m affirmed In the i u I will bring the heir to 1 *?sj for N'rs.

The description is roun Ik by returning to the thought thai / d would mourn deeply over ti rying away of the people, with which it ba 1 first Ml out in ver. <s. In Hh *-~7 ^'"n is" iddreei the mother of the people. ~~^, to shave smooth, and RJ, to cut off the hair, are synonyms, which arc here combined t<» strengthen the ning. The children of thy delights, in whom thou hast thy pi the mem-

- of the nation. Shaving the head bald, or shaving a bald plac a sign of mourning, which had been handed down

Deut. xiv. 1 (see at Lev, lix, 28). The bald place is to be made to spread out like that of a nether, i.e. not the true eagle, but the vulture, which was also commonly classed in the eagle family, — either the bearded vulture, vultur barbatus (see Oedmann. Verm, SammL i. p. 54 sqq.), or more probably the carrion vulture, vultur pcrcnoplerus L., common in Egypt, and also in Palestine, which has the front part of the head completely bald, and only a few hairs at the back of the head, so that a bald place may very well be attributed to it (see Ilasselquist, lleise, p. 286 sqq.). The words cannot possibly be understood as referring to the yearly moulting of the eagle itself.

pnnished l Qod with the withdrawal of the inheritance of His peo] naan. V< r. I. u Woe to tl of in j rive th I the inheritance them as those who devise plans by night upon their ing th. and carry 1 the ways and means I ir wicked plans. ^B, the at daybreak, without delay. rUl B* '-. lit "for their hand is for;. to them; they know of no higher power than their own arm; whatever they wish it is in their power to do {c\\ Gen. xxxi. 29: J v. v. iii.27; Bab. L 11; Jul) xii. 6). Ewald and Ruckert weaken the thought by adopting the rendering, "because it stands free in their hand;" and Hitzigfs rendering, "if it stands in their hand," is decidedly false. Kl cannot be a conditional particle here, because the thought would thereby be weakened in a manner quite irreconcilable with the context. In ver. 2 the evil which they plan by night, and carry out by day, is still more precisely defined. By force and injustice they seize upon the property (fields, houses) of the poor, the possessions which the Lord has given to His people for their inheritance. Chdmad points to the command against coveting (Ex. xx. 14 (17); cf. Deut. v. 18). The second another |MK>.'sNi)r, nam i the heath d. The wordi ire their explanation from the m which folio* i B fields of His people* I i withdrawal of the land is the punishment for the Way in which the wick I I men have fore) the three 'I with lakhsn in i med and applied to individual sinners. The whole nal addr I in v, still less the prophet, Bil but every individual among the tyrannical great men (vera. 1,2).

from the threatened judgment V r a similar transition from the plural to the singular, see ch. iii. 1<>. The expn ision, to cast the measure b'gtirdl, i.e. in the nature of a lot (equivalent to for a lot, or as a lot), may be explained on the ground that the land was divided to the Israelites by lot, and then the portion that fell to each tribe was divided among the different families by measure. The words are not to be taken, however, as referring purely to the future, as Caspari supposes, i.e. to the time when the promised land would be divided afresh among the people on their return. For even if the prophet does proclaim in vers. 12, 13 the reassembling of Israel and its restoration to its hereditary land, this thought cannot be

-1 'h. There little I tion, thai this of the person bearing the name. The part, paid of 'dmar only occurs here; and although the uiphal, when used in this sense, is generally construed with ^, the same rule may apply to ">EX as to &OP in the sense of naming, — namely, that in the passive construction the p may either be inserted or omitted (cf. Isa. lvi. 7, liv. 5; Deut. iii. 13), and THDItn may just as well be used in the sense of dicta (domus) as DWpan in Isa. xlviii. 1 in the sense of vocati = qui appellantur. The whole nation is addressed, although the address points especially to the unrighteous great men. Is Jehovah indeed wrathful f i.e. has He not patience, does He not exercise long-suffering? Qatsar prophet havit: q in yen. 7 to his threatening prophecies, by potntii the people, now repeats the arm.: of punishment, and that in the form of a summons to <:o out of the land into captivity, because the land cannot bear the defilement consequent i; ach in Lev. xviii. 25, 28, that the land is defiled by the sins of its inhabitants, and will vomit them out because of this defilement, in connection with such passages as Dent xii. 9, 10, where coming to Canaan is described as coming to rest, nsr (this) refers to the land. This (the land in which ye dwell) is not the place of rest (hammf?iuchdhy as in Zech. ix. 1 and Ps. exxxii. 14). If utkwn were to be taken as referring to their sinful conduct, in the sense of " this does not bring or cause rest," it would be difficult to connect it with what follows, viz. " because of the defilement;" whereas no difficulty arises if we take "this" as referring to the land, which the expression " rise up and go" naturally suggests. HK2D = WOO, defilement;?2nn is to be taken in a relative sense, " which brings

I. and LTmbreit, bul even Maurer and among other things, quite i tlv, that utb< lea ezpn ill himself also utters in eh. i\ The emphasis lies upon the assembling, ami hence \rxs and J'-'N i by rely a portion, and yet only the remnant of i This involves the thought, that the whole nati the twelve tribes, or of the two kingdoms, will be reduced to a remnant the judgment. Jacob and. are identical epithets applied to the whole nation, as in cli. i. 5, and the two clauses of the verse are synonymous, so that V- IpT coincides in actual fact with ^0** r'-NL". The further description n upon the fact of the leading of Israel out of Egypt, which is to be renewed in all that is essential at a future time. The following clauses also predict the miraculous multiplication of the remnant of Israel (see Hos. ii. 1, 2; Jer. xxxi. 10), as experienced by the people in the olden time under the oppression of Egypt (Ex. i. 12). The comparison to the flock of Bozrah presupposes that BozrahV wealth in flocks was well known. Now, as the wealth of the Moabites in flocks of sheep is very evident from 2 Kings iii. 4, many have understood by »TTCa not the Edomitish Bozrah, but the Moabitish Bostra {e.g. Hengstenberg). Others, again, take hotsrdh as an appellative noun in the sense of hurdle or fold (see Hitzig, Caspari, and Dietrich

sianir chacact- ' 1 I ■■ announcement of the utter desolation of i on account of the corruption of both the civil rulers ritual s of the nation, with which thi opens in ch. hi., - to a certain extent simply as a foil for the which follows in ch. iv. and v. of the salvation with which the remnarit of 1 m —1, that lias been I throughout the j: it, will he blessed in the future. This salvation is depicl t of all in all its fulness (ch. iv. 1-7);

then in its gradual development, in the re-erection of the former dominion of the daughter of Zion, by her redemption out of Babylon, and lv over the powers of the world

(ch. iv. 8-14): and lastly, in its realization by the Ruler proceeding out of Bethlehem, and by the power and blessing of His rule (ch. v.).

The threatening of punishment contained in this chapter is specially directed against the heads and leaders of Israel, and proclaims, in three strophes of four verses each, (a) to the princes, who turn right into wrong and flay the people (vers. 1-4), and (b) to the false prophets, who lead the people astray, and confirm them in their sin by lying prophecies of peace then break their bones, cut the flesh into | boil it in the p t. In this figure, wli'u •: the t minnte details, pre mu ecial meanin the particnlar features, roch a.-, thai Mthe skin, and boiling irhich are cut nj» and put into the area

I 1 will not hear their crying to Him for help, bnl will hide ii thriii, i.e. withdraw His m >m them, tx and HWj r -t hack to the evil time announced in ch. ii. 8.

godless princes and judges to the prophets who lead the people astray, with whom he contrasts the true prophets and their

\ er. 5. u Tims naith Jehovah concerning the prophets who lee, tray, who bite with tl>- } and preach

. and whoever should put nothing into their mouths, aga him they sanctify war. Ver. G. Th-.refore night to you because of the visions, and darkness to you because of the soothsaying! and the sun icill set over the prophets, and the day blacken itself over them. Ver. 7. And the seers will be ashamed, and the soothsayers blush, and all cover their beard, because (there is) no answer of God. Ver. 8. But I, I am filed with pjower, with the Spirit of Jehovah, and with judgment and strength, to show to JaGob his transgression, and to Israel his sin'3 As the first strophe attaches itself to ch. ii. 1, 2, so does the second to ch. ii. 6 and 11, carrying out still further what is there affirmed concerning the false prophets. Micah describes them as people who predict peace and prosperity for a morsel of bread, and thereby lead the people astray, setting before them prosperity irith their t clo6- reach peace," in sense of u who preach pea ran bite With their teeth,"

In ver. b Micah conti and his own d with these false prophetSj us being fill I pint who abhor rigid, and bend all that it. Ver. 10. Jluild-

Z n with bloody and Jerusalem with wickedness. Ver. 11. Their i ju^(J<-' ttnd their priests, they teach

Jehovah, saying, Is not Jehovah among us will not come upon i With the words " Hear this, I pray," the address returns to its starting-point in ver. 1, but only to announce to the leaders of the people the threat of punishment for which the way has been prepared by vers. 2-7. To this end their God-forgetting conduct is briefly summed up once more in vers. 10, 11. The summons to hear is really attached to the end of ver. 8. They are to hear the sin of Jacob (vers. 9-11); but they are also to hear the punishment for their sin, to which the word " this " points. The civil rulers only are addressed in ver. 9, — namely, those who were charged with the administration of justice and of the affairs of the state, but who did the very opposite, who abhorred justice, and made the straight crooked, because they passed sentence for bribes (ver. 11).

Bid with the nations of t!. l >. 'I he tion with the destruction i f the temple, with ■ picture of th awaiting in, iotest fature the mon "use will he established on ■ I of the

K up to the mountain of Jehovah, and to the house of the God of Jacob, that He may (each us of His ways, and we may walk in His paths: for from Zion will law go forth, and the word of rom Jerusalem. Ver. 3. And lie will judge between

1 This promise is placed by Isaiah I) at the bead J his be passage in Micah is open to no queetic acknowledge* thia, and has given the principal aigmiMSlls in iu fan the Commentary on Itauik. For still more elaborate proofs, see Caspan's

DO this that the mountain of the boose of ' it thought of hej iip, but as the act of divine revelation, the tie uf the k • o.l. X is the source of the I I word of the Lord, from which the nations draw instruction how to walk in the ways of God, to make it their own, take it to their homes, and walk according to it. The fruit of this adoption of the word of the Lord will be, that they will no longer fight out their disputes with weapons of war, but let Jehovah judge and settle them, and thus acknowledge Him as their King and Judge. Cr'f signifies to act as judge; rvpin (lit. to set right), to settle and put a stop to a dispute. " Many nations," in contrast with the one nation, which formerly was alone in acknowledging Jehovah as its King and Judge. This is strengthened still further by the parallel

Strang:!)..Jehorah, on the contrary, ii the only true < I i, the na' e peace which II- will

\ ran the Israel tl r be in mil rv or scattered abroad will d h the aa limp*, and g,n tJir u,{ collectively. Limpii miserable condition into which the disj have been brought (cf.

lie has punished for their sins. The gather!: if the nation has already been promised in ch. ii. 12; hut there the assembling of all Israel was foretold, whereas here it is merely the assembling of the miserable, and of those who are scattered far and wide. There is no discrepancy in these two promises. The difference may easily be explained from the different tendencies of the two addresses. " All Jacob " referred to the two

„-dom of Darid, bat to show that prore that He was the author of that kingdom. and that all I

I jr although God governed the ancient people by the hand of David, fch* hand of Joaiah and Hesekiah, yet there was aa it were a cloud interposed, so that m reigned obscurely. The prophet ther.

atea a certa rence here between that shadowy kingdom and the kingdom w! D openly manifest at the sdrent of the Messiah. "

to the holy seer on Patmos in the Spirit, on I mountain (Rev. xxi. 10). In this holy city of Qod then will be B r the L I:.:;.- A': ighty Q:.,::nb, the temple th -.;. M. The word of the L to tl aritan woman concerning the time when men would neither worship God on this mountain, nor yet in Jerusalem, but worship Him in spirit and in truth (John iv. 21, 23), applies not only to the kingdom of God in its temporal development into the Christian church, but also to the time of the completion of the kingdom of God in glory.

Vers. 8-10. The prophecy turns from the highest glorification of Zion to the throne of Zion, which had been founded by David, and swept away with the destruction of Jerusalem (ch. iii. 12), and predicts its restoration in the future. Consequently the reign of Jehovah upon Mount Zion, promised in ver. 7, is still further defined as effected through the medium of the Davidico-Messianic dominion. Ver. 8. "And thou flocktower, hill of the daughter Zion, to thee will the former dominion reach and come, the reign over the daughter Jerusalem."'' This announcement is attached primarily to vers. 6 and 7. As the remnant of Israel gathered together out of the dispersion will become a strong nation, so shall the reign of the daughter Zion be also restored. The address to the flock-tower, the hill of the daughter Zion, shows that these two notions express the same thing, looked at from two sides, or with two different bearings, so that the flock-tower is more precisely defined as the " hill of the daughter Zion." Now, m the daughter Zion is the city of Zion personif! virgin, the hill of the daughter Zion might be understood as denoting the hill upon which the city stood, I <>. Bat this is precluded are mentioned in parallelism with the palace formtifl), as places or buildings which are to serve as dens for ever. From this it is obvious that 'Cphel was a place either at the side or at the top of Zion. If we compare with this 2 Chron. xxvii. 3 and xxxiii. 14, according to which Jotham built much against the wall of the Ophel (ha Ophel), and 1 i encircled the Ophel with a wall, and made it very high, Ophel must have been a hill, possibly a bastion, on the south-eastern border of Zion, the fortification of which was of great importance as a defence to the city of Zion against hostile attacks.1 Consequently migdal-

1 The opinion that Ophel is the whole of the southern steep rocky promontory of Moriab, from the southern end of the temple ground to its extreme point (Robinson, Schultz, Williams), viz. the Ophla or Ophlas of Josephus, as Arnold (Herzog's Cycl.) and Winer {Bill R.W.) suppose, would be in perfect harmony with this. At the same time, all that can be inferred with any certainty from the passages from Josephus which are cited in support of it (viz. Wars of the Jews, v. 6, 1; cf. vi. 6, 3 and v. 4, 2) is, that the place called Ophla was in the neighbourhood of the valley of Kidron and of the temple mountain. The question then arises, whether the Ophla of Josephus is identical with the Ophel of the Old Testament, since Josephus does not mention the Ophel in his list of the hills of Jerusalem, but simply mentions Ophla as a special locality (see Reland, Pal p. 855). And lastly, the situation of the Ophel, upon which the Nethinim dwelt (Neh. iii. 26), is still a matter of dispute, Bertheau supposing it to be the habitable space to the east of the eastern side of the temple area.

'ider cannot be the flock-tower in the neighbourhood of Bethlehem, which is mentioned in Gen. xxxv. 21, but can only be a (or rather the) tower of the Davidic palace, or royal castle upon Zion, namely the town mentioned in Neh. iii. 25, which stood out against the upper king's house, by the court of the prison (cf. ver. 26). For the prison, which also belonged to the king's house, according to Jer. xxxii. 2, formed a portion of the royal castle, according to the custom of the East. And that it had a lofty tower, is evident from Song of Sol. iv. 4: " Thy neck is like David's tower, built for an armoury: a thousand shields hang thereon, all heroes' weapons;" according to which the tower of the royal castle was ornamented with the weapons or shields of David's heroes (1 Chron. xii. 1). And the tower of the king's castle was so far specially adapted to represent the sovereignty of David, u that by its exaltation above Zion and Jerusalem, by the fact that it ruled the whole city, it symbolized the Davidic family, and its rule over the city and all Israel" (Caspari). This tower, which is most likely the one called bachan (the watch-towTer) in Isaiah (I.e.), is called by Micah the flock-tower, probably as a play upon the flock-tower by which the patriarch Jacob once pitched his tent, because David, the ancestor of the divinely-chosen royal house, had been called from being the shepherd of a flock to be the shepherd of the nation of Israel, the flock of Jehovah (Jer. xiii. 17; cf. 2 Sam. vii. 8; Ps. lxxviii. 70). This epithet was a very natural one for the prophet to employ, as he not only describes the Messiah as a shepherd in ch. v. 3, but also represents Israel as the sheep of Jehovah's inheritance in ch. vii. 14, and the flocktower is the place where the shepherd takes up his position to see whether any danger threatens his flock (cf. 2 Chron. xxvi. 10, xxvii. 4). nnsn T!W? " unto thee shall it come."1 V*}V affirms more than T/K, to thee: expressing the conquest of every obstacle that blocks up the way to the goal, nngn is separated from wdiat follows, and exhibited as independent not only by the athaach, but also by the change of tense occurring in n^n: " to thee will it come," sc. What the prophet has in his mind and mentions in the next clause, but brings into special promi- the figure, and predicts in literal ten itrophe awaiting the nation. from 1. is the ideal the near or more:e futui.. without an article, is a kind of proper name, like nrbs for Rome C ri). In or to set forth the certainty of the threatened judgment, and at the same time the greatness of the calamity in the most impressive manner, Micah tills up the details of the drama: viz. going out of the city, dwelling in the field, without shelter, delivered up to all the chances of weather, and coming to Babel, carried thither without delay. Going out of the city presupposes the conquest of the city by the enemy; since going out to surrender themselves to the enemy (2 Kings xxiv. 12; 1 Sam. xi. 3) does not fit in with the prophetic description, which is not a historical description in detail. Nevertheless Israel shall not perish. There {sham, i.e. even in Babel) will the Lord its God deliver it out of the hand of its foes.

The prediction that the daughter Zion, i.e. the nation of Israel which was governed from Zion, and had its centre in Zion — the covenant nation which, since the destruction of the kingdom of the ten tribes, existed in Judah only — should be carried ivJem, and here in ver. 10 the ca awa; and this < has tx passages a where Asshur is flM 1 as the enemies of Israel, and ii its hostility to the people of God in the Mestime of r in

Zion be ].if he I nent upon Judah through the medium of tl I:-i thinks) not only hare thrt ntemj with a judgment which again and again." This argument falls to the ground with the untenable assumptions upon which it is four M ah neither ltions the A nor the Babylonians as executing the judgment, nor does he say a word concerning the time when the predicted devastation or n of Jerusalem will occur.

In the expression DJTWXj for your takes (ch. iii. 12), it is by no means affirmed that it will take place in his time through the medium of the Assyrians. The persons addressed are the scandalous leaders of the house of Israel, i.e. of the covenant nation, and primarily those living in his own time, though by no means those only, but all who share their character and ungodliness, so that the words apply to succeeding generations quite as much as to his contemporaries. The only thing that would warrant our restricting the prophecy to Micah's own times, would be a precise definition by Micah himself of the period when Jerusalem would be destroyed, or his expressly distinguishing his own contemporaries from their sons and descendants. But as he has done neither the one nor the other, it cannot be said that, inasmuch as the destruction of Jerusalem and the carrying away of the people was not effected by the Assyrians, but by the Babylonians (Chaldaeans), he would have been altogether silent as to the approaching Assyrian judgment, and only threatened them with the Chaldaean catastrophe, which did not take place till a long time afterwards. His words refer to all the judgments, which took place from his own time onwards till the utter destruction of Jerusalem and the carrying away of the people to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar. The onesided reference of the prophecy to the Assyrians is simply based upon an incorrect idea of the nature of prophecy, and its relation to the fulfilment, and involves the prophet Micah in an irreconcilable discrepancy between himself and his contemporary the prophet Isaiah, who does indeed predict the severe oppression of Judah by the Assyrians, but at the same time foretels the failure of the plans of these foes to the people of Jehovah, and the total destruction of their army.

This contradiction, with the consequence to wThich it would inevitably lead, — namely, that if one of the prophets predicted the destruction of Jerusalem by the Assyrians, whereas the other prophesied that it would not be destroyed by them, the two contemporary prophets would necessarily lead the people astray, and render both the truth of their contradictory utterances and their own divine mission doubtful, — cannot be removed by the assumption that Isaiah uttered the prophecies in ch. xxviii.— xxxii. at a somewhat later period, after Micah had published his book, and the terribly severe words of Micah in ch. iii. 12 had produced repentance. For Isaiah had predicted that the Assyrian would not conquer Jerusalem, but that his army would be destroyed under its walls, not only in ch. xxviii.- xxxii., at the time when the Assyrians are approaching with threatening aspect under Shalmaneser or Sennacherib, but much earlier than that, — namely, in the time of Ahaz, in ch. x. 5-xii. 6. Moreover, in Isa. xxviii.-xxxii. there is not a single trace that Micah's terrible threatening had produced such repentance, that the Lord was able to withdraw His threat in consequence, and predict through Isaiah the rescue of Jerusalem from the Assyrian. On the contrary, Isaiah scourges the evil judges and false prophets quite as severely in ch. xxviii. 7 sqq. and xxix. 9-12 as Micah does in ch. iii. 1-3 and

5-8. And lastly, although the distinction between conditional prophecies and those uttered unconditionally is, generally speaking, correct enoughj and is placed beyond all doubt by Jer. xviii. 7-10; there is nothing in the addresses and threatenings of the two prophets to indicate that Micah uttered his threats conditionally^ i.e. in case there should be no repentance, whereas Isaiah uttered his unconditionally. Moreover, such an explanation is proved to be untenable by the fact, that in Micah the threat of the destruction of Jerusalem and of the desolation of the temple mountain (ch. iii. 12) stands in the closest connection with the promise, that at the end of the days the mountain of God's house will be exalted above all mountains, and Jehovah reign on Zion as king for ever (ch. iv. 1-3 and 7). If this threat were only conditional, the promise would also have only a conditional validity; and the final glorification of the kingdom of God would be dependent upon the penitence of the great mass of the people of Israel, — a view which is diametrically opposed to the real nature of the prophecies of both, yea, of all the prophets. The only difference between Isaiah and Micah in this respect consists in the fact that Isaiah, in his elaborate addresses, brings out more distinctly the attitude of the imperial power of Assyria towards the kingdom of God in Israel, and predicts not only that Israel will be hard pressed by the Assyrians, but also that the latter will not overcome the people of God, but will be wrecked upon the foundation-stone laid by Jehovah in Zion; whereas Micah simply threatens the sinners with judgment, and after the judgment predicts the glorification of Zion in grand general terms, without entering more minutely into the attitude of the Assyrians towards Israel. In the main, however, Micah goes hand in hand with his contemporary Isaiah. In Isa. xxxii. 14, Isaiah also foretels the devastation, or rather the destruction, of Jerusalem, notwithstanding the fact that he has more than once announced the deliverance of the city of God from Asshur, and that without getting into contradiction with himself. For this double announcement may be very simply explained from the fact that the judgments which Israel had yet to endure, and the period of glory to follow, lay, like a long, deep diorama, before the prophet's mental eye; and that in his threatenings he plunged some- nouncement when this purpose fa n communicated to the prophet's mind. Micah accon: hcts the carrying away of the dau. /ion to Babel, and her deliverance there out of the power of her enema ause B along with Nineveh was the metropolis of the world-empire of his time, of i chit f city of that empire, but le Babe),

1, is not only warranted, hut. by the announcement which follows in wen* LI— 18 of the victorious

Vera. 11-13. The daughter Zion, when rescued from Babel, overcomes all hostile powers in the strength of her God. Ver. 11. " And now many nation fainei thee,

\ 12. Hut they know not the thoughts of Jehovah, and under- 1 not His counsel; for He has gathered them together like brass; and thou unit crush i7iany nations: and I ban their gain to Jehovah, and their n the Lord of the whole earth"

With HBJRj corresponding to nny in ver. 9, there commences a new scene, which opens to the prophet's mental eye. Many nations have assembled together against the daughter Zion Cn*?? pointing hack to P'V H2 in ver. 10), with the intention of profaning her, and feasting their eyes upon the profaned one. It is the holiness of Zion, therefore, which drives the nations to attack her. pi;"n, let her be or become profaned: not by the sins or bloodguiltiness of her inhabitants (Jer. iii. 2; Isa. xxiv. 5), for this is not appropriate in the mouths of heathen; but through devastation or destruction let her holiness be taken from her. They want to show that there is nothing in her holiness, and to feast their eyes upon the city thus profaned. ntn with 2, to look upon a thing with interest, here with malicious pleasure. On the singular tachaz, followed by the subject in the plural, see Ewald § 317, a. To this design on the part of the heathen, the prophet (ver. 12) opposes the counsel of the Lord. Whilst the heathen assemble together against Zion, with the intention of profaning her by devastation, the Lord has resolved to destroy them in front of Zion. The destruction which they would prepare for Zion will fall upon themselves, for the Lord gathers them together like sheaves upon the threshing-floor, to thresh, i.e. destroy, them. *3 does not ir poeaeasions from them, and taking than back to II i i uji.Ut the ban belonged lj as

.s to the L • 1. Then ii more to favour the allusion to the victorious conflicts of the M -es with the Syrians, for which of the Jewi from the Babylonian captiril. 10) tnd the ring of the Metriah (eh« v. 1 >. But eren this allusion cor- tble to 1 it as correct. Although, for example, the war of the Maccabees was a religion! war in the strict sense of the ITOld) since the Syrians, ami with them the small neighbouring nations of the.!« Ives to attack.Jmlah as the nation of God, and to exterminate Judaism, the goylm;,m, who have assembled against Zion, and whom the Lord gathers together thither (vers. 11, VI), point to a much greater event than the attacks made bj the Syrians and the surrounding tribes upon.lerusalem in the time of the Maccal >, ','tni rabblm (many nations) points hack I u rabblm and 'ar)imim rabblm in vers. '2 and 3, so that, both here and there, all the nations of the world that are hostile to God are included. Again, the defeat which they suffer before Jerusalem is much greater than the victory which the Maccabees achieved over their enemies. On the other hand, the circumstance that the Babylonian captivity is predicted in ver. 10, and the birth of the Messiah in ch. v. 1, 2, and that the victorious conflicts of the Maccabees with the Svrians and the heathen neighbours of the Jews lie in the interim between these events, furnishes no sufficient proof that these conflicts must be referred to in vers. 11-13, simply because the assumption that, in vers. 9-14, the attacks of the Chaldaeans, the Graeco-Syrians, and the Romans upon Zion are foretold in the order in which they followed one another in history, has no firm basis in the threefold recurrence of 'attdh (now) in vers. 9, 11, and 14. As an event is introduced with * attdh in ver. 9, which does not follow the one predicted in ver. 8 in chronological sequence, but, on the contrary, the prophet comes back in ve'attdh from the more remote to the more immediate future, it cannot be inferred from the ' 'attdh in ver. 14 that the oppression mentioned there must follow the victory over many nations predicted in vers. 11-13 in chronological order, or that the siege and capture of Jerusalem by the

I. re proof of the correctness of this allusion is to be found in the circumstance, that the attack of the nations is directed a Zion, which has now become holy, that it pro- of much; r than tl. o which it will not be delivered in the immediate future, and also that the refined and sanctified Zion will conquer and <; in in<- succumb, it follows, in the clearest and most conclusive \v that in the nearest future it must be pven up to the power of the world, because it is DOW unholy" (Campari). This thought prepares the way for the transition to ch. v. 1, where the prophecy returns to the oppression foretold in vers. 9 and 10.

Ch. v. 1 (II k Bib. iv. 14). "Now wilt thou gather in troops, thou daughter of troops; th*y lay siege against us; with the staff they smite the judge of Israel upon the cheek." With 'attah (now) the prophet's address turns once more to the object introduced with 'attah in ch. iv. 9. For we may see clearly enough from the omission of the cop. Far, which could not be left out if it were intended to link on ch. v. 1 to ch. iv. 11-13, that this 'attah points back to iv. 9, and is not attached to the r'' attah in iv. 11, for the purpose of introducing a fresh occurrence to follow the event mentioned in iv. 11-13. "The prophecy in ch. iv. 11-13 explains the ground of that in vers. 9, 10, and the one in ch. v. 1 sounds like a conclusion drawn from this explanation. The explanation in vers. 11-13 is enclosed on both sides by that which it explains. By returning in ch. v. 1 to the thoughts expressed in ch. iv. 9, the prophet rounds off the strophe in iv. 9-v. 1 " (Caspari). The words are addressed to the daughter Zion, who alone is addressed with every 'attah, and generally throughout the entire section. Bath-g'dud, daughter of the troop, might mean: thou nation accustomed or trained to form troops, thou warlike Zion. But this does not apply to what follows, in which a siege alone is mentioned. This turn is given to the expression, rather " for the purpose of suggesting the thought of a crowd ed as unjust snd ungodly judges, and on I hand as an antithesis to nuthtl in ver. 2. As the Messiah \s not called king there, but imdtkiL, ruler, as assessor of is called shdphit, to indicate the reproach which would fall upon the king and the leaders of the nation on ac unrighteousness. The threat in this verse does not refer, however, t Roman invasion. > I h an idea can only be connected be assumption already refuted, that ch. iv. 11-13 point to the times of the Maccabees, and no valid argument can be adduced to support it. In the verse before us the prophet reverts to the oppression predicted in ch. iv. 9 and 10, so that up to the power of the empire of the world until the oomillg of the 16 Hiafa: it to say, not merely till His birth Off public

•arance, hut till the nation thill t the Messiah, who has appeared as its own Redeemer.

At the time of Zion >D the ruler in I will anse out of Bethlehem, who will not only secure for His people deliverance from their foes, but raise them into | fioeot an 1 yet dreaded power to all nations, founding a kingdom of peace, and glorifying Israel into a holy nation.

V r>. 2-4. The previous announcement of the glory which Zion is eventually to attain, is now completed by the announcement of the birth of the great Ruler, who through His government will lead Israel to this, the goal of its divine calling. Ver. I, " And thou, Bethlehem EjJiratah, too small to be among the thousands of Judah, out of thee will He come forth to me who will be Ruler over Israel; and His goings forth are from the olden time, from the days of eternity." The n^^\ with which this new section of the proclamation of salvation opens, corresponds to the nrisi in ch. iv. 8. Its former government is to return to Zion (ch. iv. 8), and out of little Bethlehem is the possessor of this government to proceed, viz. the Ruler of Israel, who has sprung from eternity. This thought is so attached to ver. 1, that the divine exaltation of the future Ruler of Israel is contrasted with the deepest degradation of the judge. The names Bethlehem Ephratah (Ephrdth and 'Ephrdthdh, i.e. the fertile ones, or the fruit-fields, being the earlier name; by the side of which Beth-lechem, bread-house, had arisen even in the patriarchal times: see Gen. xxxv. 19, xlviii. 7; Ruth iv. 11) are connected together to give greater solemnity to the address, and not to distinguish the Judaean Bethlehem from the one in Zebulun (Josh. xix. 15), since the ring words, u arm thousands of.

:*oauseof used as early as Num. i. 1

The c*uaaioo of the artkU betas -17*. andtheuseof - -.stead of Jo not warrant the alteration in the test which proposes, in apposition, must haTe the article, is just as unfounded as the still fu: remark, th. \y that Bethlehem waa too small to be among the in which even the form nfacrto ii oi I in the Am in 2 Ki x. 27, which is the only other passage in which this form occurs, does not suit the predicate WSp W3 here, since the days of ity cannot be called places of departure; nor is it required by the correlate!—, i.e. out of Bethlehem, because the idea which predominates in Bethlehem is that of the population, and not that of the town or locality; and in general, the antithesis between hemistich a and b does not lie in the idea of place, but in the insignificance of Bethlehem as a place of exit for Him whose beginnings are in the days of eternity. We take rtWSto in the sense of goings forth, exits, as the meaning "times of going forth" cannot be supported by a single passage. Both Dip and D&fo) *DJ are used to denote hoary antiquity; for example in ch. vii. 14 and 20, where it is used of the patriarchal age. Even the two together are so used in Isa. Ii. 9, where they are combined for the sake of emphasis. But both words are also used in Prov. viii. 22 and 23 to denote the eternity preceding the creation of the world, because man, who lives in time, and is bound to time in his mode of thought, can only picture eternity to himself as time without end. Which of these two senses is the one predominating here, depends upon the precise meaning to be given to the whole verse.

It is now generally admitted that the Ruler proceeding from Bethlehem is the Messiah, since the idea that the words refer to Zerubbabel, which was cherished by certain Jews, according to the assertion of Clr. id, Theodoret, and others, is too arbitrary to have met with any acceptance. Coming forth out of Bethlehem involves the idea of descent. Consequently we must not restrict fTltato (I lis goings forth) to the appearance of the predicted future Ruler in the olden time, or to the revelations of the Messiah as the Angel of Jehovah even in the patriarchal ag-% but mutt so interpret it that it at least affirms His origin M well. Now the origin of the Angel of the Lord, who is equal to G QOt in the olden time in which He the world — in eternity. Consequently we must not restrict DMJ...... r-~. i o|(j^ frum tjie (|a^.s of gtjmliyj ^0 the ling of the Son from the Father, or of the Logos from God, the (ji • arlier orthodox commentators lappoeedL This is precluded by the plural VT.XT.S, which cannot be taken either as the j>lur. majestatis, or as denoting the abstract, or as an indefinite n, but points to a repeated going out, and forces us to the assumption that the words arlirm both the origin of the Mcnieh before all worlds and His appearances in the olden time, and do not merely express the thought, that " from an inconceivably remote and lengthened period the Ruler has gone forth, and has been engaged in coming, who will eventually issue from Bethlehem" (Hofmann, N ' ri/tbewtis, ii. 1, p. 9).1 The announcement of the origin of

1 We must reject in the most unqualified manner the attempts that have been mai Jlabbins in a polemical interest, and by rational- istic commentators from a dread of miracles, to deprive the words of their deeper meaning, so as to avoid admitting that we have any supernatural prediction here, whether by paraphrasing "His goingB forth" into "the going forth of His name" (we have this even in the Chaldee), or the eternal origin into an eternal predestination (Calv.), or by understanding the going forth out of Betlilehem as referring to His springing out of the family of tliia Ruler as being before all worlds unquestionably presupposes His divine nature; but this thought was not strange to the prophetic mind in Micah's time, but is expressed without ambiguity by Isaiah, when he gives the Messiah the name of "the Mighty God" (Isa. IX. 5; see Delitzsch's comm. in loc). We must not seek, however, in this affirmation of the divine nature of the Messiah for the full knowledge of the Deity, as first revealed in the New Testament by the fact of the incarnation of God in Christ, and developed, for example, in the prologue to the Gospel of John. Nor can we refer the " goings forth" to the eternal proceeding of the Logos from God, as showing the inward relation of the Trinity within itself, because this word corresponds to the N¥*. of the first hemistich. As this expresses primarily and directly nothing more than His issuing from Bethlehem, and leaves His descent indefinite, vnwno can only affirm the going forth from God at the creation of the world, and in the revelations of the olden and primeval times.

The future Ruler of Israel, whose goings forth reach back into eternity, is to spring from the insignificant Bethlehem, like His ancestor, king David. The descent of David from Bethlehem forms the substratum not only for the prophetic announcement of the fact that the Messiah would come forth out of this small town, but also for the divine appointment that Christ was born in Bethlehem, the city of David. He was thereby to be made known to the people from His very birth as the great promised descendant of David, who would take possession of the throne of His father David for ever. As the coming forth from Bethlehem implies birth in Bethlehem, so do we see from Matt. ii. 5, 6, and John vii. 42, that the old Jewish synagogue unanimously regarded this passage as containing a prophecy of the birth of the Messiah in Bethlehem.

David, -which belonged to Bethlehem (Kimchi, Abarb., and all the later Rabbins and more modern Rationalists). According to this view, the olden time and the days of eternity would stand for the primeval family; and even if such a quid pro quo were generally admissible, the words would contain a very unmeaning thought, since David's family was not older than any of the other families of Israel and Judah, whose origin also dated as far back as the patriarchal times, since the whole nation was descended from the twelve sons of Jacob, and through them from Abraham. (See the more elaborate refutation of these views in Hengstenberg's Christology, i. p. 486 sqq. translation, and Caspari's Micha, p. 216 sqq.)

The correctness of this view is also confirmed by the account in Matt. ii. 1-1 1; for Matthew simply relates the arrival of the Magi from the East to worship the new-born King in accordance with the whole arrangement of his Gospel, because he saw in this event a fulfilment of Old Testament prophecies.1