And now many nations are assembled against thee, that say, Let her be profaned, and let our eye look upon Zion.
The prophet has just pictured Zion, the city of Jerusalem, at the centre of a world at peace. Now the scene darkens. Many nations ring the city, and they say out loud what they mean to do to her. One question runs under the whole scene: whose plan does this siege serve?
The verses around this one speak of exile and rescue. One writer says the timing does not fit the old exile in Babylon.
Notice that verse 10 goes beyond the Babylonian captivity. No one could say that the Lord redeemed Israel from the hands of her enemies in that past captivity. Nor was it true then that many nations were gathered against her. The Babylonian captivity is a type of the greater dispersion throughout this present age. When it ends, and it will end, the Lord will redeem His people. He will then judge the enemy nations that gather at last against Jerusalem.
Another reader of the chapter treats the verse the same way — as a quick backward look at the trouble that has to pass before the reign described earlier can begin.
From verse 11, we have a passing glance at the events which precede this peaceful reign.
This siege is more than politics. God uses it to deal with His own people, and one writer names the invader who leads it.
He will not take them up and restore them without moral testing and a deep spiritual work in their souls... Every Israelite who is saved then will face the question of his own sin. There will also be outward distress under the punishing hand of God, when the nations gather intending to defile and destroy Zion... It is the Assyrian who will then come up — the last king of the north... A siege of Jerusalem is still to come. The Jews will have returned to their land in unbelief, and God will be starting to work in some of their hearts.
The nations state their aim in the verse. The next verse states God's aim, and the two do not match.
They go there hoping to carry out their own aims of plunder and ambition. But it is God who gathers them there, like sheaves onto the threshing floor, to be threshed in judgment.
One writer sees the same pattern in Revelation. There, spirits go out and gather the kings of the earth.
Who is He? I take this to be the power and providence of God working by Christ. Satan may have had influence, or been the tool used, but the work was still Christ's, even when done through that. The spirits were to go out and gather, and they gathered. But in truth it was the Lord's doing in judgment. Compare Micah 4:11-13.
Enemies stand in front. A deceiver works behind them. Above both is a hand that disciplines but does not destroy.
The nations surround her in hatred, and Satan seeks to destroy. But above them all Jehovah disciplines her, and painfully, yet He does not hand her over to death. All the nations of the earth will stand around Jerusalem against her, but they will pass away like a dream before Jehovah.
The attackers want more than conquest. They want to watch Zion shamed. That is the wish that turns back on them.
The nations have sunk into the pit which they had made. They planned the destruction of Jehovah's sanctuary. Their thought had been, "Let her be defiled, and let our eyes gaze upon Zion." But the shame they hoped to gloat over suddenly became their own, and it stays with them.
The prophet does call Zion herself to rise and thresh. Yet the rescue does not start with her.
True, the prophet does call the daughter of Zion to "arise and thresh," and Israel will no doubt carry out God's vengeance. But the book of Revelation shows, along with certain Old Testament passages, that Christ Himself strikes the first blow against this wicked alliance. He comes down suddenly with His heavenly armies, when no one expects Him.
- Gathered — this siege is no accident of history. Commentators place it long after the captivity in Babylon, in the last crisis, when the Jews have come back to their land and the nations close in.
- Blind — the attackers say their plan out loud and never guess God's. They march out to plunder and arrive as sheaves on His threshing floor.
- Governed — enemies press in front and Satan works behind. Above them both, Jehovah disciplines His people and does not give them up to death.
- Reversed — they came to watch Zion shamed. The shame becomes theirs, and it stays.
- Delivered — Zion does rise and thresh. But the rescue starts when Christ appears suddenly with His heavenly armies.
But they know not the thoughts of Jehovah, neither understand they his counsel; for he hath gathered them together as the sheaves into the threshing-floor.
Micah's scene is a siege. Hostile nations have massed around Zion, sure that they decide how this ends. The verse cuts in to say they have read the moment backwards. They are not the harvesters here. They are the harvest.
The verse opens with ignorance. The nations have not weighed God's plan and rejected it. They do not know it is there. One writer explains why the two sets of thoughts never meet:
This must always be so, for man's thoughts centre around himself, whereas the thoughts of God are centred in Christ, the Son of His bosom. The prophet could say of the "many nations," "They do not know the thoughts of the LORD; they do not understand His plan."
The nations gather themselves. God also gathers them. Both are true at once, and the second one settles the outcome. Their march is real and their motives are their own. But God chose where it ends:
They go there hoping to carry out their own aims of plunder and ambition. But it is God who gathers them there, as sheaves to the threshing floor, to be threshed in judgment.
The picture comes from harvest, and nothing in it is accidental. Sheaves reach the threshing floor because someone carries them there. The armies think they are laying siege. In God's account they are already stacked for threshing.
Commentators read this as a scene still ahead. One writer traces the reason back to verse 10, whose promise Babylon never fulfilled:
Notice that verse 10 goes beyond the Babylonian captivity. No one could say that the Lord redeemed Israel from the hands of her enemies in that past captivity. Nor was it true then that many nations had gathered against her... He gathers the nations for the harvest time, when the sheaves are to be threshed.
The same crisis works on two fronts. God deals with the nations on the threshing floor. He also deals with His own people, and the pressure from outside is part of how He does it:
He will not take them up and restore them without moral testing and a deep spiritual work in their souls... The question of sin will be raised in the heart of every Israelite who is then saved. There will also be outward distress under the punishing hand of God, when the nations gather intending to defile and destroy Zion.
Micah next calls Zion to rise and thresh, which raises the question of whose hand actually executes the sentence. Commentators hold both together rather than choosing, with the order mattering:
True, in the prophet the daughter of Zion is told to "arise and thresh," and God will no doubt use Israel to carry out His vengeance. But Revelation shows, along with certain Old Testament passages, that Christ will overthrow the godless alliance first of all by His own sudden, unexpected descent with His heavenly armies.
The verse reads like a threat, and it is one. Yet its comfort runs the other way. What the nations lack — a share in God's thinking — is what God gives to His own:
God Himself will purge the land and the people... Even so, the true saint of God can enjoy the deepest rest and peace of mind. Grace has brought him into the secret of God's thoughts about everything. These mighty nations think they can carry out their own will and do as they like, "but they do not know the thoughts of the LORD; they do not understand His plan, that He has gathered them as sheaves to the threshing floor."
- Ignorance. The nations are not defying a plan they understand. They do not know God's thoughts at all. Their thinking circles around themselves, while His centres on Christ.
- Gathering. They assemble for plunder and ambition. God is the one assembling them, as sheaves carried to the threshing floor.
- Timing. The scene goes past the Babylonian captivity, which brought no such rescue and no such alliance of nations. It belongs to the harvest still ahead.
- Two edges. The same crisis judges the nations outside and works deep inside God's people. God does not restore them without it.
- Rest. What the nations lack, grace gives the believer — a place inside God's thoughts. So a believer can watch world events that look like chaos and still rest.
Arise and thresh, daughter of Zion, for I will make thy horn iron, and I will make thy hoofs brass; and thou shalt beat in pieces many peoples; and I will devote their gain to Jehovah, and their substance to the Lord of the whole earth.
Micah has just shown the nations massing against Zion with contempt, sure that the city lies open to them. The verse turns that scene inside out. God hands the intended victim a threshing floor, an iron horn and hooves of bronze. And the plunder she takes is not hers to keep.
The armies come with their own plans. What they do not know is whose harvest they are walking into.
They go to carry out, as they hope, their own plans of plunder and ambition. But God is really the one gathering them there, like sheaves onto the threshing floor, to be threshed in judgment.
The call to thresh rests on that. Threshing means crushing the cut grain on an open floor to separate it from the useless chaff. God stacks the invaders like cut grain, and only then does He speak to Zion.
God does not thresh over Zion's head. He gives her a share in the work, and He supplies the strength for it.
In the overthrow of these enemies, Israel plays some part. In Micah 4:13 the daughter of Zion is called to arise and thresh, with the promise that Jehovah will make her horn iron, and her hooves bronze, so that she may beat in pieces many peoples. In Micah 5:6 we read that Israel will lay waste the land of Assyria with the sword. That is how Jehovah will deliver His people from the Assyrian when he comes into their land.
The same picture belongs to a wider set of promises about that day, where a weak people is suddenly made irresistible.
When He has bent Judah for Him, and filled the bow with Ephraim — when they shall grow up as calves in the stall, and tread down the wicked under the soles of their feet — when his horn shall be iron, and his hoof bronze, and Zion shall break in pieces many people.
The order matters. Israel will thresh the nations, but not before God has dealt with her.
The picture of threshing comes up often in the prophets, and it nearly always applies to the nations. Israel herself will one day thresh the nations. But first she must pass through a purifying discipline of her own. It will drive the chaff away and leave only the pure grain. In that separating time of suffering and trial, the remnant will lay hold in faith of Him who is Lord of the threshing.
So the call to arise does not come to a nation in good standing. It comes to a people God has first put through His own hands.
Meanwhile they taste sorrow, for Jehovah will surely deal in discipline with His people. He will not take them up and restore them without moral exercise and a deep spiritual work in their souls… Every Israelite who is then to be saved will face the question of sin in his own heart. There will also be outward distress under the punishing hand of God, when the nations gather with the thought to defile and destroy Zion.
The people who thresh are the ones who have been threshed — few, scattered, then gathered.
So the first dominion will come to Judah's remnant. They are scattered like a flock without a shepherd. But once they are gathered and shepherded, few as they are, their horn will be iron and their hoof bronze, and they will beat many peoples in pieces.
The victory ends with a change of ownership. The nations gathered wealth for themselves, and Zion does not keep it either.
The wealth of the Gentiles, who wanted the world without God, is consecrated to the "Lord of the whole earth." (Micah 4:13.) "And the LORD will be king over all the earth. On that day the LORD will be one and his name one." (Zech. 14:9.)
Scripture has more than one title for God's link with the whole earth, and this verse uses a particular one.
There is the "God of all the earth," Isaiah 54. Otherwise, it is "King of all the earth" (Psalm 47)… Otherwise, it is "Lord" (Adon) "of all the earth," from Joshua 3:13, Micah 4:13, and here.
- Gathered. The nations march on Zion by their own choice, but God is stacking them like sheaves on a threshing floor.
- Given. Zion does not supply her own strength; the iron horn and bronze hooves are made for her by the Lord.
- Ground. She threshes only after God has threshed her. The chaff blows away, the pure grain stays, and the remnant clings in faith to the Lord of the threshing.
- Gathered again. The winners are a small flock, scattered without a shepherd, then gathered and shepherded — and the first dominion comes back to them.
- Given up. Zion keeps none of the plunder. The wealth of nations who wanted the world without God goes to the Lord of the whole earth.