Verses 9 and 10 turn away from the theme of future restoration and glory, and deal with the sadness and agony of the people at the time of their exile. Because this is a new subject, some translators may want to begin a new paragraph here, even though Good News Translation does not. However, the prophet here continues to address the city of Jerusalem, and this forms a link with verse 8.

In the Hebrew of verse 9, as reflected in Revised Standard Version, the first and last clauses of the verse speak of the agony of exile, using the picture of a woman in the pain of childbirth. (This image is frequent in Jeremiah; for instance, Jer 4.31; 6.24.) The second and third clauses ask whether the king and counselors of the nation have been removed. Good News Translation has reordered so as to bring together the two clauses that refer to pain, and has put them at the beginning of the verse. Then it joins the two questions in a single sentence to complete the verse. This has the advantage of putting the full figure of speech before its application, rather than moving back and forth from figure to application and then back to figure.

Since the image uses the language of childbirth, some care in the choice of vocabulary in the receptor language may be needed. There may be technical terms for the cry or the pains that are suffered by a woman in labor. If such terms are well known, their use here would add vividness to the translation. However, in some languages there are cultural restrictions on the use of terms related to childbirth, and the translators must be careful not to offend the reader by the terms they choose. The image of childbirth is expressed in question form (Why do you cry out…? Why are you suffering…?), but the questions are rhetorical, and in some languages it may be clearer to use statements here in place of questions. The purpose of these questions is to force the people to think about what is happening to them, so that they will begin to understand what God is really doing to them. By using questions Micah pretends to be surprised at the way they are acting. Translators should decide whether questions or statements here will be best for giving this effect in their languages.

The third question suggests an answer to the first two: Is it because you have no king, and your counselors are dead? But in Hebrew this question is framed so as to indicate that it expects the answer “No.” The prophet does not suppose that the king and counselors have actually been taken away or killed. Rather he is mocking them and implying that even though they are there, they are as useless and helpless as if they were gone. It may be necessary to change the wording in many translations in order to make this clear, but the translator should still try to keep the mocking tone of the original. For example, one might say “What is the matter with your king and your counselors? Can’t they help you?”

The Hebrew, like Revised Standard Version, has the singular noun “counselor” here. This can be understood in two ways. It may be used collectively and refer to the counselors or advisors of the king. If so, it should be translated as a plural noun, as in Good News Translation and Jerusalem Bible. Or it may refer to the king himself as the counselor of the people, in which case it may be translated, “Is it because your king who advises you is dead?” The first possibility seems more likely.

Quoted with permission from Clark, David J. et al. A Handbook on Micah. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1978, 1982, 1993. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .