Micah 7:15-20

7:15 “As in the days when you departed from the land of Egypt,

I will show you¹ miraculous deeds.”²

7:16 Nations will see this and be disappointed by³ all their strength,

they will put their hands over their mouths,

and act as if they were deaf.⁴

7:17 They will lick the dust like a snake,

like serpents crawling on the ground.⁵

They will come trembling from their strongholds

to the Lord our God;⁶

they will be terrified⁷ of you.⁸

7:18 There is no other God like you!⁹

You¹⁰ forgive sin

and pardon¹¹ the rebellion

of those who remain among your people.¹²

You do not remain angry forever,¹³

but delight in showing loyal love.

7:19 You will once again¹⁴ have mercy on us;

you will conquer¹⁵ our evil deeds;

you will hurl our¹⁶ sins into the depths of the sea.¹⁷

7:20 You will be loyal to Jacob

and extend your loyal love to Abraham,¹⁸

which you promised on oath to our ancestors¹⁹

in ancient times.²⁰

¹tn Heb “him.” This probably refers to Israel in a collective sense. Because the switch from direct address to the third person is awkward, some prefer to emend the suffix to a second person form. In any case, it is necessary to employ a second person pronoun in the translation to maintain the connection for the English reader.

²sn I will show you miraculous deeds. In this verse the Lord responds to the petition of v. 14 with a brief promise of deliverance.

³tn Or “be ashamed of.”

⁴tn Heb “and their ears will be deaf.” Apparently this means the opposing nations will be left dumbfounded by the Lord’s power. Their inability to respond will make them appear to be deaf mutes.

⁵tn Heb “like crawling things on the ground.” The parallelism suggests snakes are in view.

⁶tn Thetranslationassumesthatthe phrase אֶל־יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵינוּ (’el-yÿhvah ’elohenu, “to the Lord our God”) goes with what precedes. Another option is to take the phrase with the following verb, in which case one could translate, “to the Lord our God they will turn in dread.”

⁷tn Heb “they will be in dread and afraid.”

⁸tn The Lord is addressed directly using the second person.

⁹tn Heb “Who is a God like you?” The rhetorical question expects the answer, “No one!”

¹⁰tn Heb “one who.” The prayer moves from direct address (second person) in v. 18a to a descriptive (third person) style in vv. 18b-19a and then back to direct address (second person) in vv. 19b-20. Due to considerations of English style and the unfamiliarity of the modern reader with alternation of persons in Hebrew poetry, the entire section has been rendered as direct address (second person) in the translation.

¹¹tn Heb “pass over.”

¹²tn Heb “of the remnant of his inheritance.”

¹³tn Heb “he does not keep hold of his anger forever.”

¹⁴tn The verb יָשׁוּב (yashuv, “he will return”) is here used adverbially in relation to the following verb, indicating that the Lord will again show mercy.

¹⁵tn Some prefer to read יִכְבֹּס (yikhbos, “he will cleanse”; see HALOT 459 s.v. כבס pi). If the MT is taken as it stands, sin is personified as an enemy that the Lord subdues.

¹⁶tn Heb “their sins,” but the final mem (ם) may be enclitic rather than a pronominal suffix. In this case the suffix from the preceding line (“our”) may be understood as doing double duty.

¹⁷sn In this metaphor the Lord disposes of Israel’s sins by throwing them into the waters of the sea (here symbolic of chaos).

¹⁸tn More literally, “You will extend loyalty to Jacob, and loyal love to Abraham.

¹⁹tn Heb “our fathers.” The Hebrew term refers here to more distant ancestors, not immediate parents.

²⁰tn Heb “which you swore [or, “pledged”] to our fathers from days of old.”