"But as for you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, too little to be among the clans of Judah,
From you One will go forth for Me to be ruler in Israel. His goings forth are from long ago,
from the days of eternity.”
~ Micah 5:2
If you’re like most people, the tense of verbs is something that you use by rote, but don’t think too much about. Conversation rarely turns to grammar over the holiday meal.
But this passage in Micah has a marv!elous set of parallel statements that tell us something about the coming Messiah. Twice Micah uses the phrase ‘going forth’ (the root word in Hebrew is the same in both statements).
Micah tells us that someone ‘will go forth’ from Bethlehem who will one day be the king of Israel. A day is coming (in the future for Micah) when the promise would be fulfilled and the Messiah would come who would fulfill the Davidic covenant. Born in David’s home town of Bethlehem, this son of David would someday rule.
And, of course, we know who and when that was—the very first Christmas with the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem. Angels sang about the birth of the One who had come to the ‘city of David’—the Savior.
But remarkably, Micah uses the same word, but in the past tense. Prior to the days of Micah, this same One, this same Messiah, had already gone forth. In fact, Micah says that His goings forth are from eternity! This One who would come in the end is the One who has always been from the beginning—this is the Messiah, the Lord, Yahweh.
No wonder then, when Jesus identifies Himself to John at the end of the Revelation, He says, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end” (Rev. 22:13).
The prophet Micah looked forward and saw the coming of the One who had always been.
The angels sang of the One who had come who was the Lord.
Jesus Himself told John that He was the One who is the beginning and the end.
Jesus is not only the future tense, or the past tense. Jesus is all tenses in one great being. He is the eternal God, and He has taken on flesh in order to give His life as a ransom for the many. This, above all else, is the great message of Christmas.
