NOTES for Mic 7:18
Micah connects the willingness of God to pardon the sins of His people (more exactly, its remnant) with the mercy inherent to God. Such a link is not of course a fate, and it is easier to explain it, from this understanding of the mercy, which was already to Hosea, and later became a part of the prophetic tradition in general. From the point of view of Hosea, God's mercy was in fact the only hope for the people, who, violating more than once the Torah, had lost for a long time the right on what he had formerly according to the union-covenant concluded on Sinai. It remained only to hope that God will not leave all the same His people and will make for him what He is not obliged to do according to any law and any agreement.
However such a possibility could open to the people only after the repentance of the committed sins and a new conversion, which would restore the former relationships. But there was here one major difficulty: the problem is that many of the sins committed by the people were committed consciously and voluntarily. Of course, one could repent of such sin also, but here to be purified of its consequences before the coming of Christ in world was impossible: no rite and sacrifice of purification could help here. Actually, the entire history of the Jewish people of the pre-captivity period ending with the Babylonian captivity, is the visible proof of this truth.
Of course, with the coming of Christ changed everything, but Micah preached naturally back in the pre-Christian world. But all the same God manifested to His people mercy. To free them completely from the consequences of the sins committed during the pre-captivity period was impossible, the captivity was inevitable, in order to avoid it, it would have been necessary to recreate again the world. But here is, to raise in fact new people from this remnant of faithful, that kept their loyalty even when in it, seemed that there was no sense, because everything was finished, was possible.
God acts particularly in that way, manifesting the most genuine mercy: because He gives in fact to His people another historic life on the place of the one which ended after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonian army. According to all the laws of history, the Jewish people after the Babylonian destruction had to disappear, as disappeared in the Babylonian boiler several other peoples populating Palestine. Moreover, the fact that it still exists until now, can be explained only with the mercy of God.