Albert Barnes Commentary Micah 4:13

"Arise and thresh, O 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 unto Jehovah, and their substance unto the Lord of the whole earth." — Micah 4:13 (ASV)

Arise - (It may be) from the dust in which they were lying, I will make thine horn iron, and I will make thy hoofs brass. Threshing in the East is partly with oxen, partly with wheels of iron, or with planks set with sharp flints on an open place made hard for this purpose.

The prophet joins another image with this, representing Judah as being by God endowed with strength, first as with a “horn of iron” (1 Kings 22:11) to cast the enemy to the ground, and then with “hoofs of brass,” with which to trample them to dust, like the stubble and chaff. And I will consecrate their gain unto the Lord, that is, to Myself. The Lord gathered them into the floor by His Providence; the Lord gave His people strength to subdue them; and now, in His own Person, He says, I will complete My own work.

The very image of “threshing” implies that this is no mere destruction. While the stubble is “beaten” or bruised into small pieces, and the chaff is far more than the wheat and is carried out of the floor, there still remains the seed-corn. So in the great judgments of God, while most is refuse, there still remains what is severed from the lost heap and wholly “consecrated” to Him. Whatever things were the object of the חרם chêrem (Leviticus 27:28), or “thing devoted to the Lord,” could not be redeemed but must remain wholly the Lord’s. If it had life, it was to be put to death (Leviticus 27:29).

And so, the use of the word here may thus show how those converted to God, and who became gain consecrated to Him, were to pass through death to life—to die to themselves that they might live to Him. It means that what was evil was to be slain in them, so that they themselves might live.

The Israelites and God’s dealings with them are ensamples of us upon whom the ends of the world are come (1 Corinthians 10:11).

And so the whole section fits wonderfully with the condition of the single soul. Ribera speaks of “She who halteth”—the soul who would serve God, yet not so as wholly to give up the service of the world, which it had in Baptism renounced.

This soul, after it had gone astray like a lost sheep and been scattered amid the multiplicity of earthly things, was gathered again into the fold to love One only, long for One only, and give itself to One, its Good Shepherd.

Over it the Lord reigns forever, if, taught by experience the deceitfulness of Satan’s promises, stung by the sense of its own thanklessness and vileness, and conscious of the peril of self-confidence, it abides more closely than others with God.

He shall gather her that is driven out—that is, He shall restore her from whom He had, for the time, withdrawn His grace—and her that was afflicted, trouble being God’s most effectual instrument in recalling the soul to Himself. For the Lord raiseth them that are bowed down (Psalms 146:8).

And He will make her that halts a remnant, placing her among the elect and holy, and her that was cast off strong. For Christ often gives to such souls great richness of divine graces, so that where sin abounded, grace should much more abound (Romans 5:20).

Ribera states: “To it, when enlightened and purified by affliction and by repentance, it is promised that its Lord, the Great King, shall come to it and again reign in it, which is the great bliss of souls in grace.

For then the soul really reigns when it submits wholly to Christ—whom to serve is to reign—and so, under Him, receives power to command its wrong desires and rule itself.”

This is that great and wonderful power which the Evangelist expresses in words so brief: To them gave He power to become the sons of God (John 1:12).

Thus He makes it strong, so that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, can separate it from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:38–39).

Then, “he describes the condition of the soul fluctuating between good and evil, called one way by God through inward inspirations, and another way by the enticements and habits of sin. And, wishing to follow God, yet not to be without its sinful pleasures, and knowing this to be impossible, it is in anguish and hesitates. Her the prophet justly rebukes, ‘Why thus cry aloud, as though you must be led captive by the Devil, not knowing or unable to extricate yourself? Do you have no King, aided by whose power, you may fight against all enticements, habit, the flesh?’”

Paul felt this and cried aloud, I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? (Romans 7:23–24).

You see his grief. But he does not despair. He knows that he has a King: I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Or why do you grieve, as if you had no “counsellor,” by whose counsels to free you from these snares? “Your Counsellor” indeed “perished” on the Cross, but for your sake, that you may live.

He died to destroy him who has the power of death. But He rose the third day and is still with you; at the Right Hand of the Father He still reigns Immortal forever.

See how many counsels He has left you in the Gospel, how many admonitions, by which you may lead a happy and tranquil life.

Now pain seizes thee like a woman in travail. For such a soul travails, having conceived inspirations from God, which it wishes to obey, but the flesh, overcome by concupiscence, resists. And so it never brings forth, nor experiences that joy of which the Lord speaks: When she is delivered of the child, she remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world (John 16:21).

Therefore he adds: Be in pain, for you are indeed in travail; you will not cease to be in pain until you bring forth. You will go forth, etc.

“God, by a provision of His great mercy, allows lukewarm souls, who will be at no pains to gain grace, to fall into the foulest sins, so that, owning at last their misery, they may cease to be lukewarm, and with great ardor of soul may embrace virtue.

For, warned by the result, they understand that they themselves emboldened the tempter (for he chiefly attacks the lukewarm and remiss), and they become ardent in the conflict and in well-doing.”

Therefore he says, you shall go forth out of the city—that City of God, of which He is the Builder and Maker (Hebrews 11:10), which is gladdened by the river of His spirit.

He continues: “and it dwells in the open field, unprotected, ready to be a prey, in the broad way of its own concupiscences, out of the narrow road which leads to life, and goes even to Babylon, the city of ‘confusion,’ in tumult and din and unrest, and the distractions of this life.”

Yet even there shall it be delivered, like the poor Prodigal, who came to himself in a far country when worn out by its hard service.

Even there it must not despair, but remember, with him, its Father’s house, its former home, the Heavenly Jerusalem. Its pains within or without, by which it is brought back, are travail-pains.

Though all is dark, it must not say, I have no Counsellor. For its Redeemer’s Name is “Counsellor” (Isaiah 9:6), one Counsellor of a thousand . “Your Intercessor never dies.”

Out of the very depth of misery will the Divine Mercy draw you. Though you seem held by the strong hand of the enemy, and he seems to triumph over you and to jeer you, There, there so would we have it, we have devoured him (Psalms 35:25), and hosts of devils seek your utter destruction, and you seem to be “delivered over” (1 Corinthians 5:5) to them to the destruction of the flesh; yet it is only that the spirit may be saved in the Day of the Lord.

Even Satan, when he is tormenting souls, does not know the thoughts of the Lord, nor understands His counsels.

He does not understand how, by the very pain which he inflicts, God is bidding them, Rise and (as Ribera says) “look up to heaven and long for heavenly things and trample on all which they had previously foully served—honor or vain glory or covetousness or lust.”

Satan does not understand how God will exalt their horn in the Lord, make it strong as iron so that they should do all things through Christ who strengthens them, and conquer all through the might of Christ.

Nor does he understand how God should bruise Satan under their feet shortly, and how they will consecrate wholly to God their whole strength—every power of soul and body which previously had been the adversary’s.