Micah 4:6–7
6 4:6In that day, declares the LORD,
I will assemble the lame
and gather those who have been driven away
and those whom I have afflicted;
7 4:7and the lame I will make the remnant,
and those who were cast off, a strong nation;
and the LORD will reign over them in Mount Zion
from this time forth and forevermore.
Section Overview
This is the first of a sequence of salvation oracles (matched by one with a similar opening formula in 5:10–15; cf. comments). Yahweh transforms a group of motley survivors of the judgment into the beginning of his new kingdom on earth.
Section Outline
Response
This text is an OT example of Paul’s statement to the Corinthians:
Consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. (1 Cor. 1:26–29)
In reading these words, it is natural to think of what we read in the Gospels as well. When Christ called the twelve disciples, he again gathered the lowly and weak to reconstitute a remnant, which would become a great nation, a new twelve tribes of Israel. Fishermen, tax collectors, prostitutes, sinners, “outsiders” were among the first members of this remnant (Mark 1:16–20; Matt. 9:1–13; Luke 7:36–50). Jesus did not choose the powerful and strong.
In the contemporary church, the concern for status, prestige, and size, as well as for hoping to attract the “right type” of people, continues to mark many congregations, but seeking these qualities is plainly at odds with what God is doing in the building of his kingdom. The lame, the exiles, the blind, the nothings of this world constitute the stuff of which the kingdom is made. Martin Luther once remarked, on Genesis 1:1, “God created the world out of nothing. As long as you are not yet nothing, God cannot make something out of you.”1 The church must never forget its roots. It constitutes the community not merely of the crippled but also of the crucified. Living out of its weakness, the church then becomes strong, a mighty nation over whom the crucified God rules.
1 Martin Luther, quoted in Helmut Thielicke, How the World Began (Cambridge: James Clarke, 1964), 25.