The prophet here goes on to speak of the return of the people of Israel from exile. There is some textual difficulty with the list of places mentioned, but the general effect of the list is well expressed by Good News Translation, which begins Your people will return to you from everywhere. Of the places listed, Assyria and Egypt were the opposite ends of the familiar world. The original readers knew in which directions they were, but Good News Translation makes this explicit by saying Assyria in the east and Egypt in the south.

The Hebrew actually contains two reference to Egypt, as shown in Revised Standard Version. Some translators here prefer to follow the Septuagint, the ancient Greek translation of the Old Testament, and read “Tyre” instead of the second reference to Egypt. (The names for these two places were more similar in Hebrew than they appear in English.) Jerusalem Bible is one translation that does this, and the effect is to give two pairs of names (Assyria and Egypt, Tyre and the River [Euphrates]), which form a better balanced list than the three names of Revised Standard Version and Good News Translation. However, the Hebrew makes good sense as it stands, and it should be followed. Translators should note that the Euphrates River is in the same direction as Assyria, so that the two lines seem to describe the same set of directions, first moving from northeast (Assyria) to southwest (Egypt), then from southwest (Egypt) back to northeast (the Euphrates). If this is the intention, it may be clearer just to say it once (“from Assyria and the Euphrates River in the east and from Egypt in the south”), rather than to suggest that three separate places are in mind, as Good News Translation does. Note than in Hebrew the Euphrates in simply referred to as “the River” (Revised Standard Version).

The literal “from sea to sea and from mountain to mountain” (Revised Standard Version) refers to all seas and mountains in general. This idea is well expressed in English by Good News Translation‘s from distant seas and far-off mountains, but many languages may prefer a form closer to the Hebrew, as long as it has the correct meaning.

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 .