Micah 4:9

"Now why dost thou cry out aloud? Is there no king in thee, is thy counsellor perished, that pangs have taken hold of thee as of a woman in travail?"

"Now ..." Here follows a contrast between the judgments already pronounced against the literal "house of Jacob" and about to be reiterated, with the glorious and universal blessings of the kingdom of heaven "in Christ" set forth by Micah in Micah 4:1-8. The "now" is therefore temporal having direct reference to the way it was when Micah wrote and when the times he was prophesying would be fulfilled in the defeat and captivity of the punished "chosen people."

"King...counsellor ..." The loss of king and counselor with the resulting defeat and overthrow of the secular nation would not be cancelled or circumvented by the will of God. The terrible penalties already prophesied would indeed take place; but this and the following verse were given for the encouragement of the faithful remnant. The general meaning of both this and the following verse is that, "The captivity which would destroy the king and the state would be the birthpangs of a better state,"[30] a spiritual one, in which Christ, not some literal earthly monarch, would be the true ruler of God's re-created Israel, the New Israel of the present order. The fantastic notion that God, for some reason, is yet interested in another replay of an earthly kingdom such as that of Solomon and David is sheer nonsense. It was the desire for that very thing that blinded the Jews to their Christ when he came; and it was precisely because Jesus effectively refused to approve of any such thing that they crucified him.