Micah 2:12

"I will surely assemble, O Jacob, all of thee; I will surely gather the remnant of Israel; I will put them together as the sheep of Bozrah, as a flock in the midst of their pasture; they shall make great noise by the reason of the multitude of men."

"I will surely assemble, O Jacob, all of thee..." The actual meaning of this clause is revealed in the second member of the Hebrew parallelism in the next clause, "I will surely gather the remnant of Israel." This restricts the promise to the spiritual Israel, the new Israel to become visible in the kingdom of the Messiah. Some of the critical community have had a fit about so gracious a promise as this appearing in the midst of Micah's powerful threats of doom and punishment. Of course, as Clark said, "There is no need to follow those scholars who regard this and Micah 2:13 as a later insertion into the text."[25] There is no textual evidence whatever of any such thing as these verses being a gloss or an interpolation; but critical scholars blindly following one of their false rules, reject them anyway. The rule referred to is the conceit, accepted as axiomatic truth in some of the critical communities, to the effect that, "No prophet could predict judgment and hope at the same time."[26] Of course, that rule has been absolutely repudiated by the most recent scholarship, as indicated by the same writer; but in the meanwhile, enemies of the Bible are still parroting their old and outdated objections.

This promise of hope belongs exactly where Micah placed it. It comes near the conclusion of section 1 of the prophecy (near the end of Micah 1-2); and the same pattern of including a message of ultimate hope for the righteous remnant was followed by Micah also in the following two divisions of his prophecy.

"I will put them together as the sheep of Bozrah ..." This is a prophecy of the widespread acceptance of Christianity throughout the world in the times of Messiah. Allen accurately discerned that this casts "light upon the predictions in Micah 2:1-5."[27] He also recognized that these verses fit perfectly into the larger framework of the whole prophecy, especially that of the chapter in which they are found. "It dovetails neatly into those which precede, answering questions they (the verses) raise and developing hints they drop."[28]

"Bozrah ..." This place "was a chief city of Edom, noted for its large flocks of sheep,"[29] indicating, of course, that there would be many in the coming kingdom of Christ. Hailey's summary of these last two verses is, "The dark cloud is penetrated by a Messianic promise: a remnant will be saved."[30] As Keil pointed out, "The assembling together here presupposes a dispersion among the heathen, such as Micah had threatened in this section Micah 1:11,16, and Micah 2:4."[31] Thus, we have another example of how these verses are part and parcel of the whole prophecy, being exactly where they belong, and exactly where Micah placed them.