NOTES for Mic 4:10

The logic of Micah seems paradoxical: it turns out that for God, His people have to be in Babylon, in exile, and only there will appear to God the possibility to redeem (the Jewish corresponding word means in particular that; all other semantic connotations connected to it, with all their importance, are all the same secondary) His people. On one hand, we have before us, certainly, the continuation of the subject of the loss by the people of the land given by God because of their sins, and from another - the subject of the remnant, about which spoke all the prophets of the pre-captivity period. But the prophet brings to an old subject something new: he says that the people are in captivity because of their sins, but here is, redeems them from captivity God. Such a look gave the topic somewhat unexpected angle.

Indeed, it was in this case about such sins, of which it is impossible to deliver from the consequences, according to the Torah and the traditional representations. The Torah admits of course a possibility of purification from the consequences of the sin committed by man, but only when the sin is committed involuntarily, and not when it is about a conscious and voluntary sin. However, the people are in captivity in particular because of the conscious and voluntary sin: because captivity, according to the testimony of all the prophets of the pre-captivity period, became the result of a conscious violation of the Torah, until the apostasy.

And if God, in spite of everything, is ready to redeem the people, is ready to forget all that they committed, it means only a thing: He is ready to manifest to the world and His people all the fullness of His mercy. Such fullness, which can do the impossible, redeem the unredeemable, deliver from what, according to all the laws of the not transformed world, is impossible to be delivered. And here is, appear then these semantic connotations, which lead us directly towards the New Testament: because without the coming of the Messiah, without the approached Kingdom, the task of the redemption of the people of God is absolutely impossible. So the logic of the opposition to sin leads the people of God to the doorstep of the Kingdom. The only place, where one can be delivered from the power of any sin once for all.