Micah 4:1–8

The Making of God’s People

^1–44But when all is said and done,

God’s Temple on the mountain,

Firmly fixed, will dominate all mountains,

towering above surrounding hills.

People will stream to it

and many nations set out for it,

Saying, “Come, let’s climb God’s mountain.

Let’s go to the Temple of Jacob’s God.

He will teach us how to live.

We’ll know how to live God’s way.”

True teaching will issue from Zion,

God’s revelation from Jerusalem.

He’ll establish justice in the rabble of nations

and settle disputes in faraway places.

They’ll trade in their swords for shovels,

their spears for rakes and hoes.

Nations will quit fighting each other,

quit learning how to kill one another.

Each man will sit under his own shade tree,

each woman in safety will tend her own garden.

God-of-the-Angel-Armies says so,

and he means what he says.

⁵Meanwhile, all the other people live however they wish,

picking and choosing their gods.

But we live honoring God,

and we’re loyal to our God forever and ever.

^6–7“On that great day,” God says,

“I will round up all the hurt and homeless,

everyone I have bruised or banished.

I will transform the battered into a company of the elite.

I will make a strong nation out of the long lost,

A showcase exhibit of God’s rule in action,

as I rule from Mount Zion, from here to eternity.

⁸“And you stragglers around Jerusalem,

eking out a living in shantytowns:

The glory that once was will be again.

Jerusalem’s daughter will be the kingdom center.”