Micahchapter 5
15 verses · Micah · 750 to 686 BC · The Twelve
Key verse
But thou, Beth–lehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting.
It stands in Bethlehem Ephrathah, little among the thousands of Judah, verses 1 to 6.
The chapter
Chapter summary
The judge of Israel is struck with a rod on the cheek, and out of that humiliation comes the promise: 'But thou, Beth-lehem Ephrathah, which art little to be among the thousands of Judah, out of thee shall one come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth are from of old, from everlasting' (5:2). Herod's scribes quote it to locate the newborn King (Matthew 2:6), and 'from everlasting' says who he is. He shall stand and feed his flock in the strength of Jehovah, and 'this man shall be our peace.' Horses, chariots, strongholds, witchcrafts, and graven images are all cut off together.
Context
Prophecy · Micah · Micah overview
The world behind this chapter
Micah 5The history
Striking the judge of Israel on the cheek with a rod is a description of public humiliation of a ruler, and 701 BC supplies the occasion. Sennacherib's own account, preserved on clay prisms, boasts that he took forty-six of Judah's fortified cities and shut Hezekiah up in Jerusalem like a bird in a cage, his words, in his own records.
The rest of the history, and what it meant to them
Bethlehem Ephrathah is called little among the clans of Judah, and the description is accurate. It was a village of a few hundred people about six miles south of Jerusalem, with no strategic value and no administrative role. Its only claim was that David had come from there three centuries earlier.
The phrase about the ruler's goings forth being from of old, from ancient days, uses language that elsewhere describes what belongs to eternity rather than to history. Whatever else it says, it says this ruler's origin is not measured from Bethlehem.
The list of things to be cut off at the end is a list of what a nation trusted for security: horses and chariots, fortified cities and strongholds, and then the sorceries, soothsayers, carved images, and Asherah poles. Military hardware and magical hardware are put in the same pile, because they served the same function.
What it meant to them
For hearers under siege, the promise of seven shepherds and eight princes raised up against the Assyrian said that the empire in their fields was not the last word. That year, Sennacherib withdrew without taking Jerusalem, a fact his own prism quietly confirms by never claiming the city.
The Bethlehem promise was read by Jewish scholars as pointing to the Messiah's birthplace, and Matthew records the chief priests quoting this exact verse to Herod when the wise men asked where the king was to be born. They knew the answer without needing to look it up.
Sources cited
- The Taylor Prism of Sennacherib (Assyrian royal annals)
- John H. Walton, Victor H. Matthews, Mark W. Chavalas, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament
Where the chapter sits
Micah 5 falls in Three judgment-and-hope cycles (chapters 1–7). Judgment on Samaria and Jerusalem (1–2); hope of the latter-day mountain (4); Bethlehem and the Ruler out of her (5); the LORD's controversy and ‘what doth the LORD require’ (6); hope closing with ‘who is a God like unto thee?’ (7).
Bethlehem and the Ruler. ‘Whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting.’
The whole shape of Micah→The structure of this chapter
The heads below are this chapter's scenes. The numbered points under each are its verses.
A. Bethlehem Ephrathah, little among the thousands of Judah
1. (v. 1)
Micah 5:1
“Lest the faithful should fall into carnal security because of the previous promises, he reminds them of the calamities which are to precede the prosperity. daughter of troops--Jerusalem is so called on account of her numerous troops. he hath laid siege--the enemy hath. they shall smite the judge of Israel with a rod upon the cheek--the greatest of insults to an Oriental.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
1 more voice on this verseWhat preachers and commentators have said about this verse, in their own words.
Micah 5:1
“Now gather thyself in troops, O daughter of troops - The “daughter of troops” is still the same who was before addressed, Judah. The word is almost always . used of “bands of men employed in irregular, marauding, in-roads.” Judah is entitled “daughter of troops,” on account of her violence, the robbery and bloodshed within her (Mic 2:8; Mic 3:2; etc. Hos 5:10), as Jeremiah says, “Is this house which is called by My Name become a den of robbers in your eyes?” (Jer 7:11, compare Mat 21:13).”
smite the judge of Israel with a rod upon the cheek: The chapter opens mid-siege, Jerusalem gathered in troops against an enemy already at her gates, and the judge of Israel struck with a rod upon the cheek, the public humiliation of the nation's own ruler. Several of the older commentators, Henry among them, hear an echo forward to the smiting the true King himself would receive at his trial (Matthew 27:30), a reading offered without turning the verse into a formal prediction. The immediate reference stands in Micah's own day, the judge brought low just before the promise of a very different ruler in the next verse.
2. (v. 2)
Micah 5:2
“But thou, Beth-lehem Ephratah - I have considered this subject in great detail in the notes on Mat 2:6, to which the reader will be pleased to refer. This verse should begin this chapter; the first verse belongs to the preceding chapter. Bethlehem Ephratah, to distinguish it from another Beth-lehem, which was in the tribe of Zebulun, Jos 19:15. Thousands of Judah - The tribes were divided into small portions called thousands; as in our country certain divisions of counties are called hundreds.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
Micah 5:2
“This was the scripture which the scribes went upon when with the greatest assurance they told Herod where Christ should be born ( Matt. ii. 6 ), and hence it was universally known among the Jews that Christ should come out of the town of Bethlehem where David was, John vii.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Micah 5:2
- Quoted inMatthew 2:6‘But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah, for out of you will come a ruler who will be the shepherd of My people Israel.’”
chief priests cite the birthplace prophecy to Herod ('for thus it is written by the prophet')
out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel: Bethlehem Ephratah, too small to be counted among Judah's thousands, is named as the ruler's birthplace seven centuries before his birth, the verse the chief priests quoted back to Herod when the magi asked where the Christ should be born (Matthew 2:5-6, verified). Ephratah distinguishes this Bethlehem from the Zebulun town of the same name (Joshua 19:15) and ties the ruler to David's own city, the small clan from which the great king himself had come (1 Samuel 17:12). Whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting reaches behind mere ancient lineage to a claim of preexistence, which the older commentators, Calvin and Keil among them, press at full strength as a witness to the ruler's deity.
3. (vv. 3-4)
Micah 5:3
“Though the out-goings of the Messiah were from everlasting, yet the redemption in Jerusalem, the consolation of Israel, must be waited for ( Luke ii. 25-38 ) until the time that she who should bring forth (so the virgin Mary is called, as Christ is himself called, He that shall come ) shall bring forth; and in the mean time he will give them up.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
2 more voices on this verse
Micah 5:3
“Therefore - Since God has so appointed both to punish and to redeem, He, God, or the Ruler “whose goings forth have been from of old from everlasting,” who is God with God, “shall give them up, that is, withdraw His protection and the nearness of His Presence, “giving them up:” (1) into the hands of their enemies. And indeed the far greater part never returned from the captivity, but remained, although willingly, in the enemy’s land, outwardly shut out from the land of the promise and the hope of their fathers (as in 2Ch 36:17).”
Micah 5:3
“Israel's deliverance from her long travail-pains of sorrow will synchronize with the appearance o� Messiah as her Redeemer (Ro 11:26) in the last days, as the Church's spiritual deliverance synchronized with the virgin's giving birth to Him at His first advent. The ancient Church's travail-like waiting for Messiah is represented by the virgin's travail.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Micah 5:4
“He shall stand and feed - The Messiah shall remain with his followers, supporting and governing them in the strength and majesty of the Lord, with all the miraculous interferences of his power, and all the glories of his grace. And they shall abide - After this the Jews shall no more go astray, but shall remain one people with the Gentiles, under the one Shepherd and Bishop of all souls. Newcome translates, “They shall be converted” for instead of וישבו veyashebu, he reads וישובו veyashubu, which gives him the translation above.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
2 more voices on this verse
Micah 5:4
“And he shall stand and feed in the strength of the Lord,.... The ruler in Israel, before described and prophesied of; the Messiah, as Kimchi himself interprets it, and other Jewish writers. Kimchi's note is, "after the affliction, the King Messiah shall stand and feed Israel in the strength of the Lord;'' and so R. Isaac (t) paraphrases the words exactly in the same way: wherefore, as another learned Jew (u) observes, these expressions evince that the ruler here spoken of can be no other than the Messiah; not Zerubbabel, who never attained to this height and happiness.”
Micah 5:4
“THERE can be no doubt but what the Prophet here spoke of the Messiah—of our Lord Jesus Christ. We shall not need to enter into any discussion of that subject here, but shall take it at once for granted that the passage means, "Now shall the Lord Jesus be great unto the ends of the earth." This does not mean that Jesus Christ will be any greater than He always is essentially and naturally. As the Son of God, He is Infinite in Glory and can be no greater.”
Charles Spurgeon· written before 1892· The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Sermon No. 3382: “Our Lord's Transcendent Greatness” (lightly modernized text, CCEL edition)Particular Baptist
until the time that she which travaileth hath brought forth: Therefore he will give Israel up for a time, until she that travails brings forth, and the remnant of his brethren returns to join the children of Israel, the interval between the ruler's promised coming and Israel's full restoration named but not measured. The travailing woman is read two ways in the tradition, some hearing Zion herself in the pains of exile before her children are regathered, others hearing the birth the previous verse has just promised; the bench names both without forcing a single referent. He shall stand and feed his flock in the strength of the Lord and in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God, and shall be great unto the ends of the earth, a reign the text will not confine to Israel alone.
4. (vv. 5-6)
Micah 5:5
“The peace - Which is promised to the people of God; all their deliverances are not only for his sake, but effected by his power. Shall tread in our palaces - Which Sennacherib did in all the cities of Judah, except Jerusalem.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
this man shall be the peace: The ruler is called this man shall be the peace when the Assyrian invades, the deliverer identified with the deliverance itself rather than merely bringing it. Seven shepherds and eight principal men are raised up against the invader, a number the bench reads as more than sufficient rather than a fixed roster, some tying it to historical leaders of Hezekiah's own resistance and others to the general promise that help will never be lacking. Assyria and the land of Nimrod, the ancient kingdom founded in Assyria's own territory (Genesis 10:8-11), are wasted in return, the aggressor made to suffer what he intended to inflict.
B. A remnant like dew, and like a lion among the flocks
1. (vv. 7-8)
Micah 5:7
“And the remnant of Jacob - Micah (Mic 4:7), as well as Isaiah (Isa 10:21), had prophesied, that a remnant only should return unto the Mighty God.”
Micah 5:8
“And the remnant of Jacob shall be as a young lion - o: “What more unlike than the sweetness of the dew and the fierceness of the lion? What so different as the gentle shower distilling on the herb, and the savageness or vehemence of a lion roaring among “the flocks of sheeps?” Yet both are ascribed to “the remnant of Jacob.” Why? Because the Apostles of Christ are both tender and severe, tender in teaching and exhorting, severe in rebuking and avenging.”
1 more voice on this verse
Micah 5:8
“Judah will be "as as lion," not in respect to its cruelty, but in its power of striking terror into all opponents. Under the Maccabees, the Jews acquired Idumea, Samaria, and parts of the territory of Ammon and Moab [GROTIUS]. But this was only the earnest of their future glory on their coming restoration.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
as a dew from the Lord: The remnant of Jacob is pictured two ways in successive verses, first as a dew from the Lord and showers upon the grass, refreshment that comes without waiting on any man, and then as a lion among the beasts of the forest, treading down and tearing with none to deliver. The older writers read both images of the same remnant rather than two different groups, the same people a blessing to those who receive them and a judgment to those who resist. The pairing gives the remnant's future among the Gentiles both its gentlest and its fiercest face in the space of two verses.
2. (v. 9)
Micah 5:9
“Thine hand shall be lifted up--In Isa 26:11 it is Jehovah's hand that is lifted up; here Israel's as Mic 5:8 implies, just as "Zion" is addressed and directed to "beat in pieces many people" (Mic 4:13; compare Isa 54:15, 17).”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
1 more voice on this verse
Micah 5:9
“It was the sin of Israel that they furnished themselves extravagantly with horses and chariots, and were soothsayers and idolaters; see Isa. ii. But here it is promised that they shall not regard them any more. The tranquillity of the kingdom of Christ is intended in that promise, which explains this, Zech. ix.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Micah 5:9-11
Thine hand shall be lifted up upon thine adversaries: Victory over every adversary opens directly into a catalog of purging, the Lord promising in that day to cut off the horses out of Israel's own midst and destroy her chariots, stripping away the very military hardware a nation trusts in place of God. The cities and strongholds follow the horses and chariots, political security built on walls and garrisons cut down along with the mounted force. The bench reads triumph and purging as one act rather than two, the Lord winning the battle for Israel precisely by removing what Israel had been tempted to win it with herself.
C. Horses, cities, sorceries, and carved images cut off
1. (vv. 10-11)
Micah 5:10
“Solomon had disregarded this command (1Ki 10:26, 28). Hereafter, saith God, I will remove these impediments to the free course of My grace: horses, chariots, &c., on which ye trust. The Church will never be safe, till she is stripped of all creature trusts, and rests on Jehovah alone [CALVIN].”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Micah 5:11
“I will cut off the cities of thy land - So God promised by Zechariah, “Jerusalem shall be inhabited as towns without walls; for I will be unto her a wall of fire round about” Zec 2:4-5. The Church shall not need the temptation of human defense; for God shall fence her in on every side. Great cities too, as the abode of luxury and sin, of power and pride, and, mostly, of cruelty, are chiefly denounced as the objects of God’s anger.”
2. (vv. 12-15)
Micah 5:12
“I will cut off witchcrafts - Thou shalt seek help only in Jehovah thy God. They have had neither soothsayers, images, groves, nor high places, from the captivity to the present day.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Micah 5:13
“Thy graven images also will I cut off, and thy standing images out of the midst of thee,.... The former were such as were made of wood or stone; the latter statues, such as were molten or cast, and made of gold, silver, or brass; Such as the Jews sometimes worshipped, and are now found in the apostate church of Rome; but will have no place in the Christian churches, or those so called, in the latter day.”
Micah 5:14
“And I will pluck up thy groves out of the midst of thee,.... Planted for idolatrous worship, and which the Jews in the reigns of some of their kings raised, and made use of for such purposes; see 1Ki 15:13; though contrary to the law of God, Deu 16:21; but now there should be nothing of this kind, all idolatry being rooted out of the world.”
Micah 5:15
“I will execute vengeance - upon the heathen - And he did so; for the empires of the Assyrians, Chaldeans, and others, the sworn enemies of the Jews, have long since been utterly destroyed.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
Micah 5:15
“Have not heard - In an unprecedented manner. Christ will give his Son either the hearts or necks of his enemies, and make them either his friends or his footstool.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
cut off witchcrafts out of thine hand: The purge turns from weapons and walls to the occult and the idol, witchcrafts and soothsayers cut off, graven images and standing images destroyed, and the groves, the wooden Asherah poles set up beside so many altars, plucked up entirely, so that nothing rivaling the Lord is left standing in the land. The chapter closes outward rather than inward, vengeance executed in anger and fury upon the heathen such as they have not heard, judgment falling on nations that never received the revelation Israel was given. The whole sweep from verse 9 to verse 15 leaves Israel purified of every false confidence before the peace the ruler brings can be fully realized.
This page carries no textual note on Micah 5. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →
Sources for this chapter
The summary
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Calvin, Commentaries; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.
The exposition
Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible; Albert Barnes, Notes on the Old Testament; Carl Friedrich Keil, The Twelve Minor Prophets; Edward Bouverie Pusey, The Minor Prophets: A Commentary; Jamieson, Fausset and Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible; John Calvin, Commentaries on the Twelve Minor Prophets; John Gill, Exposition of the Old Testament; John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible.
Keep studying
On this page
Studies7
Places1