Attributed commentary excerpt
Barnes' Notes on Micah 4:2
A historical reference excerpt for this verse. Read it alongside the biblical text and other available sources.
Notes on the Whole Bible
Albert Barnes (1798–1870) · 19th-century historical commentary
Source: BibleWord.ai's local reference edition of this named work.
And many nations shall come - Isaiah Isaiah 2:2 added the world all to Micah’s prophecy. So our Lord said, “This Gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations” Matthew 24:14; and the elect are to be gathered out “of all nations and kindreds and people and tongues” Revelation 7:9. All nations shall flow into it. The all might be many or few. Both prophets say that those all should be many. Judah probably knew already of many. The history of Genesis gave them a wide-expanding knowledge of the enlargement of mankind alter the flood, in Europe, Asia, Africa, as they then existed in their nations. The sons of Japhet had already spread over the whole coast of our Western sea, and far North; the Cimmerians , or Cwmry, Scandinavians , Carpathians , (probably Celts,) Armenians ; (including the kindred Phrygians,) Scythians , Medes, Ionians , Aeolians , Iberians , Cypriotes , Dardani , Tybarenes , Moschi , and the Turseni , or perhaps the Thracians. On the East, the sons of Shem had spread in Elam, Asshur, Arrapachitis ; they occupied the intervening tract of Aram; in the northwest they reached to Lydia. Southward the sons of Joktan were in Arabia. Micah’s hearers knew how, of the sons of Ham, Cush had spread far to the southeast and south from Babylonia to Aethiopia; Egypt they remembered too well, and, beyond it, they knew of the far-scattered tribes of the Libyans, who extended along the coast of Africa. Phoenician trade filled up this great outline. They themselves had, in Solomon’s time, traded with India ; about this time, we know that they were acquainted with the furthest East, China . Such was the sight before the human mind of the prophet; such the extent of the nations whom his people knew of. Some were the deadly enemies of his people; some were to be its conquerors. He knew that the the ten tribes were to be abidingly wanderers among the nations , despised by them ; “a people, the strangers and sojourners of the whole world” . He knew many of those nations to be sunk in idolatry, viciousness; proud, contemptuous, lawless; he saw them fixed in their idolatries. “All people will walk every one in the name of his god.” But he saw what eye of man could not see, what the will of man could not accomplish, that He, whom now Judah alone partially worshiped, would turn the hearts of His creatures to Himself, to seek Him, not in their own ways, but as He should reveal Himself at Jerusalem. Micah tells them distinctly, that those who should believe would be a great multitude from many nations. In like way Isaiah expresses the great multitude of those for whom Christ should atone Isaiah 53:12. He bare the sin of many Isaiah 53:11. By knowledge of Him shall My righteous Servant make many righteous. And our Lord Himself says Matthew 20:28; The Son of man came to give His life a ransom for many (Matthew 26:28, add Romans 5:15). This is my Blood - which is shed for many for the remission of sins. In Micah’s time not one people, scarcely some poor fragments of the Jewish people, went up to worship God at Zion, to call to remembrance His benefits, to learn of Him. Those who should thereafter worship Him, should be many nations. And say - Exhorting one another, in fervor and mutual love, as Andrew exhorted his brother Simon, and Philip Nathanael, and the woman of Samaria those of her city, to come to Christ: and so all since, who have been won by Him, by word or example, by preaching or by deed, in public or…
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