Mikha 3:11

3:11 Her ¹  leaders take bribes when they decide legal cases, ² 

her priests proclaim rulings for profit,

and her prophets read omens for pay.

Yet they claim to trust ³  the Lord and say,

“The Lord is among us. ⁴ 

Disaster will not overtake ⁵  us!”

Mikha 4:10

4:10 Twist and strain, ⁶  Daughter Zion, as if you were in labor!

For you will leave the city

and live in the open field.

You will go to Babylon,

but there you will be rescued.

There the Lord will deliver ⁷  you

from the power ⁸  of your enemies.

Mikha 4:13

4:13 “Get up and thresh, Daughter Zion!

For I will give you iron horns; ⁹ 

I will give you bronze hooves,

and you will crush many nations.” ¹⁰ 

You will devote to the Lord the spoils you take from them,

and dedicate their wealth to the sovereign Ruler ¹¹  of the whole earth. ¹² 

[3:11]  ¹ sn The pronoun Her refers to Jerusalem (note the previous line).

[3:11]  ² tn Heb “judge for a bribe.”

[3:11]  ³ tn Heb “they lean upon” (so KJV, NIV, NRSV); NAB “rely on.”

[3:11]  ⁴ tn Heb “Is not the Lord in our midst?” The rhetorical question expects the answer, “Of course he is!”

[3:11]  ⁵ tn Or “come upon” (so many English versions); NCV “happen to us”; CEV “come to us.”

[4:10]  ⁶ tn Or perhaps “scream”; NRSV, TEV, NLT “groan.”

[4:10]  ⁷ tn Or “redeem” (KJV, NASB, NIV, NRSV, NLT).

[4:10]  ⁸ tn Heb “hand.” The Hebrew idiom is a metonymy for power or control.

[4:13]  ⁹ tn Heb “I will make your horn iron.”

[4:13]  ¹⁰ sn Jerusalem (Daughter Zion at the beginning of the verse; cf. 4:8) is here compared to a powerful ox which crushes the grain on the threshing floor with its hooves.

[4:13]  ¹¹ tn Or “the Lord” (so many English versions); Heb “the master.”

[4:13]  ¹² tn Heb “and their wealth to the master of all the earth.” The verb “devote” does double duty in the parallelism and is supplied in the second line for clarification.

[4:13]  sn In vv. 11-13 the prophet jumps from the present crisis (which will result in exile, v. 10) to a time beyond the restoration of the exiles when God will protect his city from invaders. The Lord’s victory over the Assyrian armies in 701 b.c. foreshadowed this.