Micah 4:8 - Meaning and Application

These verses speak of Zion and Jerusalem, here called the tower of the flock, or the tower of Edar. We read of such a place in (Genesis 35:21), near Bethlehem. Some think this was the same place where shepherds were watching their flocks when the angels announced Christ’s birth. Others think Bethlehem itself is meant here, as in (Micah 5:2). Some say it was a tower by the sheep gate in Jerusalem (Nehemiah 3:32), and they suppose Christ rode through that gate in triumph into Jerusalem.

Still, the meaning seems to be Jerusalem itself, or Zion, the tower of David. All the sheep of Israel gathered there three times a year. It was the stronghold, or fortress, of the daughter of Zion. Here we have a promise of the glory of spiritual Jerusalem, the gospel church, which is the tower of the flock, one fold where all Christ’s sheep are kept safe under one Shepherd. “Unto you shall it come,” that which you have long lacked and longed for, even the first dominion, a rule and honor like that of David and Solomon, who first raised Jerusalem up. That kingdom would come again to the daughter of Jerusalem, from which it was lost at the captivity.

It would shine among the nations and have influence over them as it once had. This is the first, or chief, dominion. This could not have been fulfilled in Zerubbabel, for his rule was nothing like the first dominion, either in splendor at home or in power abroad. So it must point to the kingdom of the Messiah, and the Chaldee paraphrase takes it that way. It was fulfilled when God gave our Lord Jesus the throne of his father David (Luke 1:32), set him as king on Zion’s holy hill, and gave him the nations for his inheritance (Psalm 2:6). He was made higher than the kings of the earth (Psalm 89:27; Daniel 7:14).

David, speaking by the Spirit, called him Lord. And, as Dr. Pocock notes, Christ himself bore witness that he was greater than Solomon, because none of their kingdoms matched his in size or lasting power. The common people welcomed Christ into Jerusalem with hosannas to the Son of David, showing that the first dominion had come to the daughter of Zion. The evangelist applies this to the promise of Zion’s King coming to her (Matthew 21:5; Zechariah 9:9). Some take the words this way: to Zion and Jerusalem, that tower of the flock, to the Jewish nation, came the first dominion. That is, there Christ’s kingdom was first set up, and there the gospel of the kingdom was first preached (Luke 24:47), and Christ was first called King of the Jews.

This is then explained by a prediction of the troubles of literal Jerusalem, to which some relief would still be given, as a sign of what God would do for gospel Jerusalem in the last days, even in distress. First, Jerusalem is shown in pain under God’s providence. She cries out loudly so all her neighbors may notice her grief, because there is no king in her, no longer the honor and power she once had. Instead of ruling the nations, as when she sat like a queen, she is ruled by them and made captive. Her counselors have died, and she is no longer free to act for herself, but is handed over to her enemies and ruled by their advisers. Pains have taken hold of her.

This happened when she was carried captive to Babylon and suffered grief there. She went out of the city and was forced to live in the field, exposed to hardship. She went even to Babylon and spent seventy long years in bitter captivity, all the while in pain like a woman in labor, waiting to be delivered and finding the time very long. Then, when she was brought back from Babylon and rescued from her enemies there, she was still in fear. One trouble ended only for another to begin, because even when Jerusalem was being rebuilt, many nations gathered against her (Micah 4:11).

This happened in Ezra’s and Nehemiah’s time, when enemies did all they could to stop the rebuilding of the temple and the wall. It also happened in the time of the Maccabees. They said, “Let her be defiled, let her be treated as unclean and abandoned by both God and man, let her holy places be polluted and all her honors thrown down. Let us look at Zion and enjoy the sight of its ruins,” just as Edom is described in (Obadiah 1:12). When enemies join together like this and mock them, it is no wonder they are in pain and cry out loudly. There are struggles outside and fears inside.

Yet Jerusalem is also comforted by God’s promises. “Why do you cry out loudly? Let your grief and fear be quiet. Do not give yourself over to them, for though things are bad now, they will end well. Your pain is great, but it is like a woman’s labor pains (Micah 4:9), pains that bring forth life (Micah 4:10), and the result will be good in the end.” Jerusalem’s pains are not the pains of death, but the pains of labor, which after a while are forgotten because of the joy that a child has been born.

The literal Jerusalem could take comfort in this, that no matter how hard her troubles became, she would remain until the Messiah came, because there his kingdom had to be first established. She would not be destroyed while that blessing was still in her. And even when she was later plowed like a field and turned into ruins, as threatened in (Micah 3:12), her privileges would pass to spiritual Jerusalem, and in that city the promises made to her would be fulfilled.

So Jerusalem may be at ease. Her captivity in Babylon will end, and it will end well (Micah 4:10). There she will be delivered, and the Lord will redeem her from the hand of her enemies. Cyrus brought this about as God’s servant, and that rescue pointed ahead to our redemption by Jesus Christ and the release from our spiritual bondage announced in the everlasting gospel, that acceptable year of the Lord. In that year Christ himself preached liberty to the captives and opening of the prison to those who were bound (Luke 4:18, 19).

The plans of her enemies after that will fail, and in fact will turn back on themselves (Micah 4:12, Micah 4:13). They think they have a day of victory, but it will turn out to be God’s day. They gather against Zion to destroy it, but their gathering will end in their own destruction, and Israel and Israel’s God will receive the glory. Their coming together against Zion will become the means of their ruin. They band together and prepare themselves to break Jerusalem in pieces, but they will be broken in pieces themselves (Isaiah 8:9).

They do not understand the Lord’s thoughts. When the nations gather, and God in his providence allows it, they do not see what he is planning through it. They know what they mean to do by coming together, but they do not know what God means by bringing them together. They aim at Zion’s ruin, but God aims at their own.

This is often how God uses people as tools to carry out his purposes. One person plans one thing, while God is working toward something very different. The king of Assyria was to be a rod in God’s hand, used to correct his people and lead them back to right living, but he did not mean it that way at all (Isaiah 10:7). It is the same here. The nations are gathered against Zion like soldiers gathering for battle, but God gathers them like sheaves on the threshing floor, ready to be beaten apart. They could not have been destroyed so easily and so completely if they had not gathered against Zion.

The enemies’ plans to destroy the church often end up destroying themselves. In trying to ruin God’s people, they put themselves in the path of their own ruin. They are trapped by the work of their own hands.

Zion will also have the honor of victory over them (Micah 4:13). When they are gathered like sheaves on the threshing floor, ready to be trodden down as grain was by oxen, then Zion is told, “Arise and thresh, daughter of Zion.” Do not fear them or run from them. Instead, boldly take the chance God gives you to trample them down. Do not say you are too weak or that you cannot stand against so many enemies joined together. God will make your horn iron, so you can push them down, and your hoofs brass, so you can trample them when they fall. Then you will crush many people who have long been crushing you.

When God wants his people to conquer, he will give them the strength and ability for it. He makes the horn iron and the hoofs brass, and when he does, they must use the power he gives and carry out his command. Even the daughter of Zion must rise and thresh. When God brings down one power and lifts up another, he can change the whole scene. Babylon becomes the threshing floor, and Jacob becomes the threshing instrument with which God threshes the mountains and makes them like chaff (Isaiah 41:14-15; Jeremiah 51:33).

The glory of the victory will go back to God. Zion will thresh the sheaves on the floor, but the grain threshed out will be brought as a grain offering to God’s altar. “I will set apart their gain for the Lord,” that is, it will be dedicated to him, “and their wealth for the Lord of the whole earth.” The spoils won by Zion’s victory will be brought into the sanctuary and devoted to God, either in part, like the spoil of Midian, or in full, like the spoil of Jericho (Numbers 31:28; Joshua 6:17).

God is the Lord, the source of all being, and he is the Lord of the whole earth, the source of all power. So he does not need any of our gain or wealth, but he has the right to claim it all if he chooses. We ourselves must devote all we have to his honor and use it as he directs. Everything we have should be marked as belonging to the Lord. All our gain and wealth should be consecrated to the Lord of the whole earth (Isaiah 23:18). Great success calls for great thankfulness, whether the gain comes from war or from trade. It is God who gives us the power to get wealth, however honestly it comes, and so he must be honored with what we receive.

Some understand all this as pointing to Sennacherib’s defeat when he besieged Jerusalem, others to Babylon’s fall, and others to the victories of the Maccabees. But Dr. Pocock and others think it had its full meaning in the spiritual victories won by the gospel of Christ over the powers of darkness that opposed it. The nations thought they would destroy Christianity in its beginning, but the gospel proved victorious over them. Those who kept fighting against it were broken to pieces (Matthew 21:44), especially the Jewish nation. Yet by God’s grace, many were brought into the church, and they and their wealth were devoted to the Lord Jesus, the Lord of the whole earth.