The Comforting Words of Micah

By Greg Christiansen

Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. – Mark 1:3

One of the significant depictions of the last days can be found in the fourth chapter of Micah, where Micah prophesies of the ushering in of the Millennium with contrasting imagery. In one verse he depicts a setting of peace, saying, “they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up a sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more,” and then the imagery is quite the opposite in another verse where he says, “I will make thine horn iron, and I will make thy hoofs brass: and thou shalt beat in pieces many people.” The contrast between these two images is stark, as in one it depicts men converting their tools of war and destruction into agricultural tools, while in the other it depicts the Lord converting the natural parts of the daughter of Zion into something more suited for beating people in pieces. She is conveyed as a form of cattle, with horn and hooves, which natural implements the Lord will make hard as iron and brass for His purposes.[1]

Similarly, in one verse Micah speaks comfortingly, providing a hopeful image to the faithful, saying, “They shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid.” Yet in another verse of that same chapter he gives us a very contrasting image, saying, “Be in pain, and labour to bring forth, O daughter of Zion, like a woman in travail: for now shalt thou go forth out of the city, and thou shalt dwell in the field, and thou shalt go even to Babylon.” Rather than resting peacefully under the shade of a fig tree, the daughter of Zion will be unsheltered in an open field, and will be in the midst of her enemies in the land of Babylon, all the while being in pain and heavy with child. Still, despite her many troubles, the Lord would redeem her from her enemies.

Essentially, this is a chapter about both breaking and gathering, and about both peace and war. The first message in the chapter is one of comfort, telling us to look forward to the day of peace, which message is quickly followed upon by a warning of the tribulations that the faithful will have to suffer through before they can dwell peacefully in Zion. It is a chapter rich with symbolism.

According to Micah, this contrasting state will also apply to those who are gathered when the Lord gathers His people to Zion. Their blessed condition in the Millennial Day is conveyed as being opposite to the unfavorable condition that they were in previously. Through the prophet Micah, the Lord specifically identifies three groups of people who He will gather: “In that day, saith the Lord, will I assemble her that halteth, and I will gather her that is driven out, and her that I have afflicted” (Micah 4:6).

Immediately after, we see another contrast as the Lord says he “will make her that halted a remnant,” and “her that was cast far off a strong nation.” Remnant identifies something small, being only a fragment of the whole, while strong nation identifies something large and united. This beautiful contrast seems to convey both the mighty work that the Lord will do, while also conveying that He will do it by small and simple means. From the scattered remnants, He will produce a strong nation. Interestingly, Micah identifies the idea of remnant with her that halted, and the idea of a strong nation with her that was driven out. Because her that was halted will become a remnant, we might suspect that this was a large group before the gathering. Likewise, because her that was driven out is to be made a strong nation, we might suspect that this was a smaller group before the gathering which will become something large.

Her that was halted

I have found myself pondering upon who Micah was referring to with these descriptions. Halted. Driven out. Afflicted. Three different categories of people which the Lord will assemble and gather together, forming a strong nation and a Zion people. Most intriguing to me of the three is the first, being “her that halteth.” In the Hebrew, halted equates to “lame.” Someone who cannot walk. This condition of being lame contrasts with the description Micah gives in the verse prior, where he describes the people of the Millennial Day, saying, “For all people will walk every one in the name of his god, and we will walk in the name of the Lord our God for ever and ever” (Micah 4:5). In other words, connecting these two verses seems to imply that in the days before the Lord comes to reign, one of the great ailments of the people is their inability to walk in the name of the Lord God. There are many that are halted, or lame. Others are driven out. Others are afflicted.

Considering this idea of being unable to walk, I am reminded of the missive that the Lord gave to Peter, towards the end of His mortal ministry. He said, “when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren” (Luke 22:32). When Peter heard this, perhaps he felt the Lord was questioning his faithfulness, because he replied by declaring to the Lord that he was ready to follow him both into prison and into death. Yet the Lord told him that before the night was over he would deny him three times. Perhaps Peter suffered from a form of lameness, being not yet able to walk in the name of His Lord similar to his attempt to walk on the water in the way that his Lord was walking on the water. He could only go a short way before his faith failed him and he needed to be rescued. In other words, the Lord might have been saying to him, Peter, when you can walk like I can, help your brethren to walk too.

After all, the first miracle Peter would perform after the Savior’s departure was to heal a man who was “lame from his mother’s womb” (Acts 3:2-10). He healed a man who was halted, who had to be carried every day to the gate of the temple so he could beg for alms. Moreover, the language used to describe this healing said that the man’s “feet and ankle bones received strength.” In other words, here we see a literal fulfillment of the Lord’s missive to Peter to strengthen his brethren, and it was directly related to the ability to walk. After this healing, the lame man “leaping up stood, and walked, and entered with them into the temple, walking, and leaping, and praising God. And all the people saw him walking and praising God.”

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Is it possible that this lame man represented the state of the contemporary Jews? Israel was their mother, and they were lame from her womb. Surely, there was something about the state of Israel in those days that was preventing them from progressing, and becoming converted, and becoming like the Savior. The strict traditions and false beliefs of the society which they were born into had handicapped them. Indeed, their traditional beliefs had such power over them to promote the murder of the Savior, and a fairly universal rejection of His teachings and the persecution of His followers. Could it be that the mother Israel had given birth to a people who could not walk, but instead had to be carried to the gate of the temple to beg for alms like the lame man?

The prophecy of Micah implies that many suffer from a similar or identical condition in our day. There is something about our day that has bound our feet, and prevented us from walking in the manner that the Lord walks. It has prevented us from having strength in our feet and in our ankles, making us reliant on others to move us closer to the Lord’s house. Micah is not the only prophet who identified this as an ailment of the last days. Isaiah prophesied of the Millennial day saying, “Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing: for in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert” (Isaiah 35:6). Jeremiah identified that the blind and the lame would be gathered to Zion at the same time as the lost tribes from the north. Of those brought together in this great gathering he goes on to say in the name of the Lord, “I will cause them to walk by the rivers of waters in a straight way, wherein they shall not stumble” (Jeremiah 31:8).

Surely, these prophetic references to ailments that will be healed in the last days have as much to do with spiritual ailments as physical ones, if not more so. The lame will leap. The dumb will sing. The blind will see. And they shall be gathered to Zion. Indeed, the Apostle Paul was one who identified lameness as a spiritual ailment, teaching that it can come about because of those who lead others astray. He informed the Saints of his day that if they did not walk in straight paths the lame would be “turned out of the way” (Hebrews 12:13). Plainly, any form of walking that comes short of the straight paths of the Lord is not walking at all. At the same time, Paul’s words teach us that blindly following others is a characteristic associated with those who are lame. Yet, Paul also suggested a way that we could help remedy this ailment, implying that if we walk in straight paths then the lame could “be healed.”

With these thoughts in mind, it is worth pondering certain questions. What does it mean to be spiritually lame, or halt? What conditions in our day promote such an ailment? What does it mean to walk in the name of the Lord, and how is it accomplished?

We might safely assume that the invitation that the Lord gave to Peter by saying “when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren” extends also to us today. Up until that day, Peter had been the most loyal and devout follower of the mortal Lord, and yet a change was quickly coming that would reveal that Peter was not yet as he would need to be. A conversion still needed to take place, so that he could walk in the name of the Lord in a day when the mortal Lord was no longer there at his side. Perhaps Peter had come to lean too heavily on a Lord of flesh, and still needed to learn how to commune with a resurrected God of glory and to walk in the Spirit of the Lord rather than following in his mortal Lord’s footsteps.

Ultimately, if we cannot walk, then we can only go where others carry us. Certainly, it is not a desirable condition to be a lame man who must be carried to the temple by others so that he can beg for his support. Yet just as the lame man which Peter healed was born into that condition, perhaps we also have been born into such a condition that makes it difficult or even makes it seem unnatural for us to walk on our own. At the very least, we must acknowledge that the prophet Micah identified such an inability to walk as one of three conditions suffered by those who would be gathered in the last days.

I cannot help but find myself asking if I too suffer from such an ailment, looking to others to carry me to the Lord rather than learning to walk as He walks. Or am I lame because I blindly follow the paths that others are walking, or the traditional paths I was born into, rather than the straight paths of the Lord. Certainly, we must do our best to follow the Lord and not to follow the crowd, otherwise we too will be promoting people’s inability to walk. Yet if we can learn to walk in straight paths, it seems to me that we will be doing our part to heal the world of lameness. We will be doing our part to prepare the earth for the Second Coming. We will be following the counsel of John the Baptist to ancient Israel, “The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight” (Mark 1:3).

They who are driven out

With all this said, it is natural to wonder about the other two groups which Micah mentions will be gathered by the Lord. He describes a second group in two ways, calling them her that is driven out and her that was cast far off. I must confess that I have a lot of thoughts when I think of this group. I cannot help but wonder if it has a connection to John the Revelator’s depiction of a great earthquake and the darkening of the heavens, when he describes that “the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind” (Revelation 6:13). I throw that out just because I find that it is an interesting verse to think about, which I believe is relevant.

Yet we might more plainly look to the words of Isaiah, as he also seems to identify this group. In one place, he says, “The Lord God which gathereth the outcasts of Israel saith, Yet will I gather others to him, beside those that are gathered unto him” (Isaiah 56:8). Here and elsewhere, Isaiah seems to imply that the outcasts will be the first of the three groups which the Lord gathers in. Considering what it means to be an outcast, I cannot help but think of a story that my mother-in-law shared with me just yesterday. She recently met a Baptist pastor who was from Ukraine. He spoke to her of how much good had been spread to the world by American missionaries, of various faiths, who had left their homes to preach of Christ. It was because of such missionaries that his family was converted to Christianity.

While he was a Christian youth attending school in Ukraine, he said that he and other Christian youth would be visited by government officials who would attempt to persuade them to abandon Christianity. They were told that unless they did so, they could not attend university. My mother-in-law asked him if he had considered pretending not to be Christian so that he could go to school. He said that his convictions would never have allowed him to do such a thing. As she conveyed this story to me, I could not help but think of Paul’s declaration to the Romans, when he said, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth” (Romans 1:16).

Just as these Christian youth were driven out of the universities of Ukraine because they were not ashamed of Christ, I would argue that such is ultimately the fate of all of those who are valiant to the truths of Christ while they dwell in Babylon. Their fate is to be cast out, driven out, ostracized, excommunicated, and even persecuted. Perhaps these are those who took the Lord’s words to heart, when He said, “For whosoever shall be ashamed of me and of my words, of him shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he shall come in his own glory, and in his Father’s, and of the holy angels” (Luke 9:26). With this warning in mind, I find myself looking at my own heart, and wondering if I am sometimes afraid to defend my Lord and His words when confronted by the popular lies and deceptions of the Babylon where I dwell.

Those who are afflicted by the Lord

According to Micah, the Lord describes a third group of people to be gathered as “her that I have afflicted.” The Hebrew might render this as something like “the one to whom I brought evil.” In my opinion, this is the most cryptic of the three groups that Micah mentions. While in Micah 4:6 he says that all three of these groups will be assembled and gathered, in the following verse he only makes mention of the first two groups. The Lord says, “I will make her that halted a remnant, and her that was cast far off a strong nation.” That verse omits to mention her that was afflicted.

For that reason, when Micah suddenly addresses a figure in the following verse, I have to wonder if he is speaking to that third person or group. He addresses someone that he calls the “tower of the flock,” and the “stronghold of Zion.” He compares her to a woman in travail, who has been overtaken by pangs, who he encourages to continue in her pains and labor. “And thou, O tower of the flock, the strong hold of the daughter of Zion, unto thee shall it come, even the first dominion; the kingdom shall come to the daughter of Jerusalem. Now why dost thou cry out aloud? is there no king in thee? is thy counsellor perished? for pangs have taken thee as a woman in travail. Be in pain, and labour to bring forth, O daughter of Zion, like a woman in travail” (Micah 4:8-10).

Certainly, the description here is consistent with someone who is afflicted. The source of her affliction is the Lord, because scripturally the woman in travail is the bride of God, which would make Him the father of her child which she travails to bring forth. On a symbolic level, we may even look at this woman in Micah 4 as the American nation, whose destiny it is to bring forth Zion upon the earth. At the very least, the Lord seemed to describe America in such a way in a revelation given to Brigham Young at Winter Quarters, comparing the nation to a woman in travail.

“Thy brethren have rejected you and your testimony, even the nation that has driven you out; And now cometh the day of their calamity, even the days of sorrow, like a woman that is taken in travail; and their sorrow shall be great unless they speedily repent, yea, very speedily. For they killed the prophets, and them that were sent unto them; and they have shed innocent blood, which crieth from the ground against them” (D&C 136:34-36).

The Saints of those days fell under the category of those who are driven out of the land because of their testimony of Christ. It seems also that the nation which drove them out fell under the category of “her that was afflicted by the Lord,” as its people had murdered the prophets Joseph and Hyrum and had thus come under condemnation. In consequence, America became like a woman in travail, and the travail that soon followed was quite arguably the Civil War, which terrible devastation would bring about a rebirth of the nation. One which was purged of the abomination of slavery, and where the central government was empowered to enforce the Constitution so that state governments like Missouri could no longer freely trample on the natural rights of its citizens, as it had done to the Saints.

In our day, America seems to be falling into the cycle of travail again. Certainly, America has a divine destiny to bring forth Zion. Just as Israel of old, many argue that America entered into a covenant with God at its beginning, its early leaders acknowledging God’s role in her founding and tying future blessings to a continued “pious gratitude” toward Him.[2] Indeed, just as the daughter of Zion is compared to a tower, Lady Liberty stands upon a tower in New York’s harbor, proclaiming to the world that she is a refuge for all the Lord’s sheep who are seeking freedom from oppression—a place where they should be free to worship God. Yet because America has increasingly begun to reject the principles on which it was founded—often trampling upon the Constitutional rights of its citizens and persecuting Christ and His gospel—rather than receiving Zion like a crown upon her head she must instead deliver Zion like a woman who travails to give birth. Surely, America’s condemnation grows greater with each day, as it continues to distance itself further and further from God, and its former sins of murdering the prophets are returning to her (D&C 82:7). Even so, the day is coming where the land of America will be delivered of her pains, and the King will sit upon His throne in the New Jerusalem.

With these things in consideration, it seems to me that D&C 136 unlocks the meaning of that third group mentioned by Micah. She that is afflicted by the Lord might make reference to all of those who have been called upon to defend the cause of Zion, and yet who will only be delivered after a period of great suffering. In the Lord’s words, “My people must be tried in all things, that they may be prepared to receive the glory that I have for them, even the glory of Zion; and he that will not bear chastisement is not worthy of my kingdom” (D&C 136:31). Indeed, history teaches us that tribulation, trial, and suffering often transform the weak things of the world into people of great strength. Just as the pioneers of old were refined through suffering, we may anticipate that the great suffering which knocks upon the doors of America will eventually yield great fruits.

We might speculate that this third category Micah referred to also includes those other nations and peoples who have suffered for many generations because of the wickedness of their fathers, who In times past rejected and murdered the prophets. Surely, this condition applies to the Jewish people of the old world, who have suffered terrible persecutions for a great many generations. We might look similarly to the Native Americans, who have suffered greatly in consequence of the fall of the Nephites, despite the great light they once enjoyed. Perhaps such multi-generational suffering is another way that children bring about the redemption of their ancestors, suffering generation after generation because of the sins of their fathers, just as the Savior also suffered great travail for sins which were not His own. Ultimately, we might say that this category would likely include every nation, people, or individual who was called upon to prepare for the wedding of the Lord, and yet who for one reason or another fell under condemnation and required redemption by travail.

Be comforted

Ultimately, we might find a little bit of ourselves in each of these groups. We may at times feel like we have halted, and that we lack sufficient strength in our feet and in our ankles to walk in the straight paths of the Lord. We may also feel like we have been driven out or cast off, having lost friends, family, and associations because of our love for the truths of Christ. Perhaps we also at times feel like we are suffering through great afflictions, like a woman who travails to give birth. Yet no matter how we feel about our current state in these last days, let us not forget that Micah’s words to us are meant to be words of comfort, to all of those who love the Lord. Each of those three groups he described were in an unfavorable condition prior to the establishment of Zion, and yet a change was coming. The Lord would gather them in and heal them.

Let us take comfort as we look forward to that day. The lame will walk. The outcasts will not be alone. The afflicted will sit in peace, every one under his own fig tree.

P.S. This is not meant to be a comprehensive analysis of Micah 4, as the chapter is rich with layers of meaning.

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[1] This would be a wild ox in the Hebrew, or a unicorn in the KJV, which beasts are a symbol of Ephraim and Manasseh (Deut 33:17). The horn was a tool for gathering and herding the other cattle together. Interestingly, the symbol of the unicorn became incorporated into the early history of England, along with the symbol of the lion of Judah, further identifying the land of England as a place where the seed of Joseph and of Judah had been scattered.

[2] https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/american_originals/inaugtxt.html