Micah 2:12

The restoration from "Babylon" (specified (Mic 4:10) is the type of the future one. Israel--the ten tribes' kingdom (Ho 12:2) and Judah (2Ch 19:8; 21:2, 4). remnant--the elect remnant, which shall survive the previous calamities of Judah, and from which the nation is to spring into new life (Isa 6:13;

quarantine:debris (2026-07-29) — unbalanced-parens

YOU will remember, dear Friends, from our reading last Sabbath morning, [Sermon #1952, The Holy Spirit—The need of the Age] in the second chapter of the Book of Micah, that the Prophet was delivering reproofs and rebukes against a sinful people, a people who tried to straiten the Spirit and silence the voice of prophecy and refused to listen to the messengers of God. He threatened them with deserved punishment from the Most High. To our surprise, in the very midst of the threat, he delivers a prediction brimming with mercy! Not only is not the Spirit of the Lord straitened, but even the people of the Lord are not to be straitened, for One has come forth who will be to them both Liberator and Leader. Judgment is God's strange work and He rejoices, even in the midst of threats, to turn aside and utter gracious words to obedient souls! Surely the brightest and most silvery drops of love that have ever distilled upon men have fallen in close connection with storms of Divine Justice. The acceptable year of the Lord is hard by the day of vengeance of our God. The blackness of the tempest of His wrath acts as a foil to set forth more brightly the Glory of His Grace. In this case the thunderbolts stay their course in mid-volley—when the Prophet is hurling destruction upon sin and sinners, he pauses to interpose a passage of promise most rich and gracious—a passage which I wish to open up to you at this time, as the Spirit of God shall enable me. Certain willful persons were proudly confident that no enemy could reach them behind the walls of their cities, though the Lord declared that He would make Samaria a heap and would strip Jerusalem. They coveted fields and took them by violence and went on with their oppressions as if there had been no Judge of all the earth.

I will surely assemble, O Jacob, all of thee; I will surely gather the remnant of Israel - God’s mercy on the penitent and believing being the end of all His threatenings, the mention of it often bursts in abruptly. Christ is ever the Hope as the End of prophecy, ever before the prophets’ mind. The earthquake and fire precede the still small voice of peace in Him. What seems then sudden to us, is connected in truth. The prophet had said Mic 2:10, where was not their rest and how they should be cast forth; he saith at once how they should be gathered to their everlasting rest. He had said, what promises of the false prophets would not be fulfille Mic 2:11. But, despair being the most deadly enemy of the soul, he does not take away their false hopes, without shewing them the true mercies in store for them. Jerome: “Think not,” he would say, “that I am only a prophet of ill. The captivity foretold will indeed now come, and God’s mercies will also come, although not in the way, which these speak of.” The false prophets spoke of worldly abundance ministering to sensuality, and of unbroken security. He tells of God’s mercies, but after chastisement, to “the remnant of Israel.” But the restoration is complete, far beyond their then condition. He had foretold the desolation of Samaria Mic 1:6, the captivity of Judah Mic 1:16; Mic 2:4; he foretells the restoration of all Jacob, as one. The images are partly taken (as is the prophet’s custom) from that first deliverance from Egypt . Then, as the image of the future growth under persecution, God multiplied His people exceedingly Exo 1:12; then “the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of a cloud to lead them the way” Exo 13:21; then God “brought them up” “out of the house of bondage” (see below, Mic 6:4). But their future prison-house was to be no land of Goshen. […]