Micah 4:9,10 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Now Now I have promised such great things to you, why dost thou cry out aloud As a woman in the anguish of her travail? Here the Jewish people are addressed, as bewailing themselves under the miseries of their captivity. Is there no king in thee? Thou hast lost the king Zedekiah, but thy God, thy king, is with thee. Is thy counsellor perished? Hast thou none among thy wise counsellors left? Yet the Wonderful Counsellor is with thee. Messiah, the wisdom of the Father, hath the conduct of thy sufferings, deliverance, and re-establishment. For pangs hath taken thee as a woman in travail This may be understood of the time when Zedekiah and his counsellors were seized by the Chaldeans. Be in pain, and labour to bring forth Be like a woman in her pangs; bow thyself down, and show all the signs of excessive pain, for there is a sufficient cause. For now shalt thou go forth out of the city, &c. Thou shalt not only have troubles, sorrows, and dangers, in the wars against the Babylonians; but shortly thou shalt be driven out from thy city and country, and have no habitation of thy own, but be forced to dwell in a foreign land. The Jews' captivity is expressed thus, because their city and temple being destroyed, they should live in an obscure state. The same condition is elsewhere expressed by their living in the wilderness, Ezekiel 20:35. And thou shalt go even to Babylon; there shalt thou be delivered Thou shalt be carried away, even as far as Babylon; but there, where, according to all human probability, and the expectations of thine enemies, thou mayest seem to be cut off from all relief, even there shalt thou be delivered: such is the power, and lovingkindness, and faithfulness of Jehovah thy God.