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 entirely fall away. But Micah had all the more ground for speaking of this, inasmuch as Isaiah had already predicted the birth of the Messiah (Isa 7:14). יולדה has no article, and the travailing woman is thereby left indefinite, because the thought, “till He is born,” or “till a mother shall bring Him forth,” upon which alone the whole turns, did not require any more precise definition. In the second clause of the verse there commences the description of the blessing, which the birth of the Messiah will bring to Israel. The first blessing will be the return of those that remain of Israel to the Lord their God. אחיו, the brethren of the Ruler born at Bethlehem, are the Judaeans as the members of the Messiah's own tribe; just as, in 2Sa 19:13, David calls the Judaeans his brethren, his flesh and bone, in contrast with the rest of the Israelites. יתר אחיו, the remnant of his brethren, are those who are rescued from the judgment that has fallen upon Judah; yether, as in Zep 2:9 and Zec 14:2, denoting the remnant, in distinction from those who have perished (= שׁארית, Mic 2:12; Mic 4:7, etc.). ישׁוּבוּן, to return, not from exile to Canaan, but to Jehovah, i.e., to be concerted. על־בּגי ישׂ, not “to the sons of Israel;” for although שׁוּב, construed with על, is met with in the sense of outward return (e.g., Pro 26:11) as well as in that of spiritual return to the Lord (2Ch 30:9), the former explanation would not give any suitable meaning here, not only because “the sons of Israel,” as distinguished from the brethren of the Messiah, could not possibly denote the true members of the nation of God, but also because the thought that the Judaeans are to return, or be converted, to the Israelites of the ten tribes, is altogether unheard of, and quite at variance with the idea which runs through all the prophetic Scriptures of the Old Testament, - namely, that after the division of the kingdom, Judah formed the kernel of the covenant nation, with which the rebellious Israelites were to be united once more. על signifies here together with, at the same time as (Hofmann, Caspari), as in Jer 3:18 with the verb ילכוּ, and in Exo 35:22 with בּוא; and “the sons of Israel” are the Israelites of the ten tribes, and, in this connection, those that are left of the ten tribes. There is no ground for the objection offered by Hengstenberg to this explanation, namely, that “it is absurd that the ten tribes should appear to