Albert Barnes Commentary Micah 2:13

"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." — Micah 2:13 (ASV)

The Breaker has gone up - (gone up) before them; they have broken through (Broken through) and have passed through the gate, and have gone forth. The image is not of conquest, but of deliverance. They “break through,” not to enter in but to “pass through the gate and go forth.”

The wall of the city is ordinarily broken through to make an entrance (Psalms 80:13; Psalms 89:41; Isaiah 5:5; Nehemiah 2:13), or to secure for a conqueror the power of entering in at any time (Proverbs 25:28; 2 Kings 14:13; 2 Chronicles 25:23; 2 Chronicles 26:6), or by age and decay (2 Chronicles 32:5).

But here the object is expressed: to go forth. Plainly, then, they were confined before, as in a prison; and the gate of the prison was burst open to set them free.

It is then the same image as when God says by Isaiah, “I will say to the North, give up; and to the South, Hold not back” (Isaiah 43:6), or, “Go ye forth of Babylon, Say ye, the Lord hath redeemed His servant Jacob” (Isaiah 48:20).

Or, with the same reminiscence of God’s visible leading of His people out of Egypt: “Depart ye, depart ye; for ye shall not go out with haste, nor yet by flight, for the Lord God shall go before you, and the God of Israel will be your reward.”

Or as Hosea describes their restoration (Hosea 1:11; Hosea 2:2, Hebrew): “Then shall the children of Judah and the children of Israel be gathered together and appoint themselves one Head, and they shall go up out of the land.”

Elsewhere, in Isaiah, the spiritual meaning of the deliverance from the prison is more distinctly brought out, as the work of our Redeemer: “I will give Thee for a covenant of the people, for a light of the Gentiles, to open the blind eyes, to bring out the prisoners from the prison, them that sit in darkness out of the prison-house” (Isaiah 42:6–7); and, “the Spirit of the Lord God is upon Me, because the Lord hath anointed Me to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound” (Isaiah 61:1).

From this passage, the “Breaker-through” was one of the titles of the Christ, known to the Jews, as One who should be “from below and from above” also. From it, they believed that “captives should come up from Gehenna, and the Shekhinah” (or the Presence of God) “at their head.”: “He then, who shall break the way, the King and Lord who shall go up before them, shall be the Good Shepherd, who puts them together in the fold. And this He does when, as He says, ‘He putteth forth His own sheep, and He goeth before them, and the sheep follow Him, for they know His Voice’ (John 10:4).

How does He go before them but by suffering for them, leaving them an example of suffering, and opening the entrance of Paradise? The Good Shepherd goes up to the Cross (John 10:15; John 12:32), and is lifted up from the earth, laying down His Life for His sheep, to draw all men to Him. He goes up, trampling on death by His resurrection; He goes up above the heaven of heavens, and sits on the Right Hand of the Father, opening the way before them, so that the flock, in their lowliness, may arrive where the Shepherd went before in His Majesty.

And when He thus breaks through and opens the road, they also ‘break through and pass through the gate and go out by it,’ by that Gate, namely, of which the Psalmist says, ‘This is the Gate of the Lord; the righteous shall enter into It’ (Psalms 118:20).

“What other is this Gate than that same Passion of Christ, beside which there is no gate, no way by which any can enter into life? Through that open portal, which the lance of the soldier made in His Side when crucified, and ‘there came thereout Blood and Water,’ they shall pass and go through, even as the children of Israel passed through the Red Sea, which divided before them, when Pharaoh, his chariots and horsemen, were drowned.”

Dionysius says: “He will be in their hearts, and will teach and lead them; He will show them the way of Salvation, ‘guiding their feet into the way of peace’ (Luke 1:79), and they shall pass through the strait and narrow gate which leadeth unto life; of which it is written, ‘Enter ye in at the strait gate; because strait is the gate and narrow is the way which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it’ (Matthew 7:13–14).

And their King shall pass before them, as He did, of old, in the figure of the cloud, of which Moses said, ‘If Thy Presence go not, carry us not up hence; and wherein shall it be known that I have found grace in Thy sight, I and Thy people, is it not in that Thou goest up with us?’ (Exodus 33:15–16), and as He then did when He passed out of this world to the Father.”

“And the Lord on (that is, at) the head of them,” as of His army.

Rupert says: “For the Lord is His Name, and He is the Head, they the members; He the King, they the people; He the Shepherd, they the sheep of His pasture. And of this passing through He spoke, ‘By Me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out and find pasture’ (John 10:9).

For a man enters in, when, receiving the faith, he becomes a sheep of this Shepherd, and goes out, when he closes this present life, and then finds the pastures of unfading, everlasting life”; “passing from this pilgrimage to his home, from faith to sight, from labor to reward.”

Again, as describing the Christian’s life here, it speaks of progress.

Jerome says: “Whoever shall have entered in, must not remain in the state in which he entered, but must go forth into the pasture; so that, in entering in should be the beginning, in going forth and finding pasture, the perfecting of graces.

He who enters in, is contained within the bounds of the world; he who goes forth, goes, as it were, beyond all created things, and, counting as nothing all things seen, shall find pasture above the Heavens, and shall feed upon the Word of God, and say, “The Lord is my Shepherd” (Psalms 23:1), (and feedeth me,) I can lack nothing.”

But this going forth can only be through Christ, as it follows, “and the Lord at the head of them.” Nor, again, is this in itself easy, or done for us without any effort of our own.

All is of Christ. The words express the closeness of the relation between the Head and the members. What He, our King and Lord, does, they do, because He who did it for them, does it in them.

The same words are used of both, showing that what they do, they do by virtue of His Might, treading in His steps, walking where He has made the way plain, and by His Spirit. What they do, they do, as belonging to Him.

He breaks through; or, rather, in all He is “the Breaker-through.” They, having broken through, pass on, because He passes before them.

He will break in pieces the gates of brass, and cut in sunder the bars of iron (Isaiah 45:2). He breaks through whatever would hold us back or oppose us—all might of sin and death and Satan—as Moses opened the Red Sea, for “a way for the ransomed to pass over” (Isaiah 51:10).

And so He says, “I will go before thee, I will break in pieces the gates of brass, and cut in sunder the bars of iron, and I will give thee the treasures of darkness, and hidden riches of secret places” (Isaiah 45:2–3).

So then Christians, following Him, the Captain of their salvation, strengthened by His grace, must burst the bars of the flesh and of the world, the chains and bonds of evil passions and habits, force themselves through the narrow way and narrow gate, do violence to themselves, and endure hardness, as good soldiers of Jesus Christ (2 Timothy 2:3).

The title of our Lord, “the Breaker-through,” and the saying, “they break through,” together express the same as the New Testament does in regard to our being partakers of the sufferings of Christ (Romans 8:17).

Joint heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him, that we may be also glorified together (2 Timothy 2:11–12).

If we be dead with Him, we shall also live with Him; if we suffer, we shall also reign with Him. Forasmuch then as Christ hath suffered for us in the flesh—arm yourselves likewise with the same mind (1 Peter 4:1).

The words may also include the removal of the souls of the just, who had believed in Christ before His Coming, into Heaven after His Resurrection, and will be fully completed when, in the end, He shall cause His faithful servants, in body and soul, to enter into the joy of their Lord.