Micah 2:12-13

JUDGEMENTS TEMPERED BY PROMISES. Micah 2:12-13

RV. I will surely assemble, O Jacob, all of thee; I will surely gather the remnant of Israel; I will put them together as the sheep of Bozrah, as a flock in the midst of their pasture; they shall make great noise by reason of the multitude of men. The breaker is gone up before them: they have broken forth and passed on to the gate, and are gone out thereat; and their king is passed on before them, and Jehovah at the head of them.
LXX. Jacob shall be completely gathered with all his people: I will surely receive the remnant of Israel; I will cause them to return together, as sheep in trouble, as a flock in the midst of their fold: they shall rush forth from among men through the breach made before them: they have broken through and passed the gate, and gone out by it: and their king has gone out before them, and the Lord shall lead them.

COMMENTS

A word must be said here regarding the textual unity of the Scriptures. The sudden shift from threats and warnings of doom to glowing promises of restoration is seen by some scholars as evidences that the book of Micah was not actually written by the prophet, or that it was not all written by the same man no matter what his identity. An example of this is seen in Professor J. E. McFayden's statement made as part of his comments on Micah 2:12-13. Dr. McFayden wrote, It is curious to find so gracious a promise following immediately upon denunciation and threat. This, however, is not an uncommon feature in prophecy. Sometimes it is open to suppose the promise was appended by a later hand: here, the scattered sheep seem to suggest the Exile, note that a century after Micah's time. whoever added these and similar promises was inspired by the sound conviction that threat and disaster could never exhaust the whole purpose of God.

The idea that, because the stern judgements of the prophet are interspersed with promises, the book must have been compiled by an editor, completely fails to grasp the distinction in the mind of the prophet between the unfaithful majority who are the objects of God's wrath and the faithful remnant who are the recipients of His promises.
The idea of a restored remnant presupposes the capture and destruction of the political commonwealth and the rejection of the race per se. If it was ever in the purpose of God to redeem a total political commonwealth or a race as an ethnic unit, that concept is abandoned with the introduction of the remnant idea. Few real students of the Bible believe such was ever the intent of God in the nation or race.

The remnant concept so dominated the thought of Isaiah that he named his son Shear-Jashub, the Salvation of the Remnant. (Cf. Isaiah 7:3; Isaiah 8:2; Isaiah 8:18; Isaiah 9:12; Isaiah 2:21; Isaiah 6:9-13) It is not strange to find the same idea voiced by Isaiah's contemporaries such as Micah.

In Romans 11:5, Paul refers to Isaiah 10:22 in his exposition of the final grafting together of the faithful Gentiles and the faithful remnant of Israel into a single people of God. In referring to the rejection of the race and commonwealth per se, Paul insists that God has not rejected His true people.

In identifying the remnant, as distinct from the whole of the race and nation descended from Abraham, Paul refers to Elijah's seven thousand men, who have not bowed the knee to Baal, i.e. those Israelites indeed who had refused to compromise their covenant relationship to Jehovah. So, says Paul, the present remnant (the faithful of the first century) is the people chosen by the grace of God. This choice, or election, of grace is everywhere in the Bible related to the covenant.

Paul's argument is that God has not repudiated His true people, in allowing the Gentiles access to the ranks of the election. He has rather identified them! His true people, the real Israel of God prior to the beginning of the gospel age as well as now, are not marked off from other men by their semetic ancestry or their national citizenship. They are those within the national-racial structure of the commonwealth, as well as those Jews now citizens of other nations, who are faithful to the covenant of God. As Barclay has it, The prophet began to see that there never was a time, and there never would be a time, when the whole nation was true to God, but at the same time, always within the nation there was a remnant left who had not forsaken their loyalty or compromised their faith.

Amos 9:8-10 sees the separation of the remnant from the race. Zephaniah 3:12-13 sees the gathering of the remnant people from among the dispersed Jews throughout the world. Ezekiel 14:14; Ezekiel 14:20; Ezekiel 14:22 sees salvation itself not as a national matter but as an individual matter; not determined by racial origins of family heredity, but based on personal righteousness. Righteousness which is acceptable to God is always related to God through the covenant on the basis of obedient faith. All else, as Isaiah says is as filthy rags.

As we have seen, Isaiah's entire concept of the people of God is dominated by the remnant idea.
In our present text, and later in chapter 5, verse three, Micah conceives of God gathering the remnant first from Babylon and then in specific Messianic terms.
The threats against the northern and southern kingdoms, coupled with the promises of salvation to the faithful remnant should serve a real purpose today. We need to know, for our own sakes, and to shout from the rooftops for the sake of others. NO nation or race is saved per se. God commands all men everywhere to repent. The remnant. the real Israel of God is the fellowship of individuals related to one another on the basis of a common covenant with God. God has not, and never will reject His people, regardless of outward appearances to the contrary. No nation or religious institution is his people. The remnant of the human race, as well as of the commonwealth of Israel is saved by grace through faith.

The sin of denominationalism is essentially the sin of counting oneself part of God's people on the basis of identity with a religious institution just as the Jews of Micah's day, and Jesus-' day, and Paul's day, and one suspects even of our day, counted themselves as God's people because they were citizens of a kingdom whose identity was based on a religious law.
The sin of racism is the twin brother to the sin of denominationalism. The Jews could trace their ancestry back to a common origin in Abraham. God had worked with them, through the influence of faithful men, in special ways. To prevent the entrance of paganism into their thinking as a deterrent to faith, He had forbidden them to marry non-Hebrew mates. All this and many other similar factors combined to bring them to the conclusion that as a race God considered the Hebrews superior to all others. During the reign of terror that was Nazi Germany this race found itself threatened with extinction by the very same kind of thinking that historically they had exercised toward other races and which they today evidence toward their middle-eastern neighbors. The conclusion of the Christian Gospel is that, among God's people there is no East or West, North or South, Jew or Greek, Black or White. God's covenant people are one in the promised Seed of Abraham.

Micah's first mention of the remnant has as its primary concern the promise that God's people would not be brought to extinction in the judgements just pronounced. Rather, a remnant would return from the captivity. The restoration, as history shows, was to be only partial. The deeper meaning of the words; I will assemble, O Jacob, all of thee. is to be realized in the Messianic fulfillment of the everlasting covenant. In Chapter s four and five Micah will expound this theme in some depth.

Those who did return from Babylon were Judah, Benjamin, and Levi, the components of the southern kingdom, which God had preserved for His covenant purposes. (Cf. 1 Kings 12:23-24) It is doubtful if even all of these who returned were true Israelites in the covenant sense of the word. At the beginning of the nation, all its people had been given the opportunity to be true Israel. From the captivity on, Israel's national identity was (and is) important only as it bears directly on the fulfillment of the everlasting covenant.

Another indication of the Messianic overtones of Micah's remnant is the great noise by reason of the multitude of men. This would seem to indicate a much more numerous gathering than the faithful few within the small number who actually returned after the captivity. The terminology is more reminiscent of the multitude whom no man could number, i.e. all God's covenant people through all time, finally gathered together in His presence. (Cf. Revelation 7:9)

In connection with the remnant, Micah pictures Jehovah by the use of three figures; the shepherd, the breaker (or lead ram), and the king. He is pictured as the shepherd of the sheep of Bozrah. The sheep of Bozrah was a popular saying, like the kine of Bashan (Amos 4:1), and alludes to the fine flocks which were the wealth of Bozrah, a key city of Moab. Jehovah is pictured as shepherd of the finest of flocks, and the remnant is that flock.

The breaker, or lead ram, was the ram who went before the flock to butt or break down any and all barriers. So the Lord, leader of the remnant flock, will break through all barriers to the ultimate accomplishment of God's purpose in the covenant people, If God be for us, who can stand against us?
The Messianic overtones expressed in the figure of the Lord passing as king before the remnant are obvious. It was in David particularly that the Messianic prophecies of the Lord's kingship found their personification. From David's reign on, the Messiah was expected to sit upon the throne of His father David. There have been many and conflicting ideas as to the nature of His kingship and His kingdom, but there is a unanimity of conviction among God's people that the Lord is King over His people.

Beginning with Abraham and the Patriarchs, the covenant emphasis was nearly, if not entirely, upon the development of a people. In David is added the idea that this people are to compose a kingdom. The king idea, which became the obsession of the first century Jew, was introduced by God only after He had made it crystal clear that all His dealings with Israel, including the establishment of a king over them, were primarily concerned with the fulfillment of His promise to Abraham to bless all the people of the earth, through the people of the covenant.

David was taken from his father's pasture to become a prince over the people of God. To this end God was with him and reduced his enemies to defeat. For this reason God made the name of David ring out even above that of Moses in the assemblies of Israel. And it was for the accomplishment of His eternal purpose that the Lord promised David, And it shall come to pass when the days are fulfilled that thou must go to thy fathers, that I will set up thy seed after thee who shall be of thy sons and I shall establish his kingdom. and his throne shall be established forever. (1 Chronicles 17:7-14)

Two things are to be noted here. First, the throne of the son of David is to be established forever. In view of what happened just following the death of Solomon, who succeeded David on his earthly throne, and of the subsequent desolation of the commonwealth, the fulfillment of God's promise to David must be found elsewhere than in the perpetuation of an earthly dynasty. The eternal, or everlasting throne of David is to find its fulfillment in the King of Kings.

Secondly, the promise to David that his seed would sit upon the everlasting throne of His people was unconditional! The promises made to Abraham were conditioned by obedient faith. Among these was the promise of a land in which to dwell. To break the covenant was to forfeit all claim to the land. God's determination to set the seed of David over this faithful people was absolute and unconditioned.

From David on the faithful within Israel, who were of the Davidic line became the particular branch of Abraham's progeny through which the Promised Seed would come.

It must be kept in mind that the Davidic covenant is simply the Abrahamic covenant restated. As with the conditional promise to Abraham, so the unconditional promise to David had universal purposes in the blessing of all men. That Micah was aware of this is obvious in Micah 4:1 -ff as we shall see in a later chapter. In his presentation of the fulfillment of the Kingly promise, Matthew identifies the two covenants as one and the same. Matthew 1:1 begins the genealogy of the Eternal King with the words, The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham. (Italics mine)

From the demise of Solomon and the division of the kingdom onward, God preserved the institutions of Israel for David's sake. The southern kingdom is established to preserve the Davidic line (1 Kings 11:11-13) Jerusalem was saved for David's sake. (2 Kings 19:34) Throughout the prophets, the Messianic hope is Davidic. (Cp. Isaiah 55:1-3, Amos 9:11, Hosea 3:5, Zechariah 12:17-21)

And so, for at least a thousand years before the birth of the King, God's concern is seen to be not with the race or the national political entity but with the unconditional promise to set the Seed of David upon the throne of His people. More than ever, the people existed for the sake of the Seed. When the time came that the Jews as a nation and the religious institutions of that nation rejected the Christ, God would cast them off. But the promise which was the heart of the covenant would be fulfilled through a covenant remnant ruled by the promised Seed of David.
It does violence to the awesomeness of this promise to limit it to any earthly experience of God and His people.

Chapter VIIQuestions

Second Cycle

1.

Discuss the relationships between individual and social sins.

2.

Discuss power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely in reference to the situation denounced by Micah.

3.

How do power and authority test a persons character?

4.

Discuss Pascal's statement power without justice is tyranny.

5.

How is this evidenced in the circumstances addressed by Micah?

6.

How can a just God devise evil? (Micah 2:3)

7.

What was the power by which the social leaders of Micah's day enforced their evil designs?

8.

How does God's punishment predicted by Micah fit the crime of those He will punish? (Micah 2:5)

9.

What is the relationship between the wickedness addressed by Micah and the false prophets of the day?

10.

What part did national pride and racial arrogance play in the downfall of the wicked northern and southern kingdoms?

11.

How does God's purpose in Israel rule out such pride and arrogance on the part of the faithful?

12.

How do you answer the tendency to blame God for social calamities?

13.

Discuss mistreatment of people as evidence of enmity with God.

14.

What single fact made God's punishment of social sin in Israel and Judah necessary to the accomplishment of His purpose in the covenant?

15.

What single characteristic of the Israelites during the Babylonian captivity stood out above all else?

16.

Describe the kind of prophet the people desired in Micah's time. (Micah 2:11)

17.

Discuss the problem of textual unity of the scriptures. (cf. Micah 2:12-13)

18.

The idea of a restored remnant, as presented by Micah, presupposes the destruction of ____________ and the rejection of the ____________ per se.

19.

The doctrine of election, divine choice, is, in the Bible, always related to the ____________.

20.

What is the similarity of modern denominationalism and the attitude of racial and national priority with God on the part of the Jewish people of Bible times?

21.

Discuss the figures of the shepherd, the breaker, and the king in connection with the remnant.