This supplement of ours is according to Kimchi's reading and sense of the words which, in some measure, accounts for the difference between the prophet and the Evangelist Matthew, by whom this place is said to be 'not the least', ( Matthew 2:6 ), as it might, and yet be little besides, it might be little at one time, in Micah's time, yet not little at another time in Matthew's it might be little with respect to some circumstances, as to pompous buildings, and number of inhabitants, and yet not little on account of its being the birth place of great men, as Jesse, David, and especially the Messiah: or the words may be rendered with an interrogation, 'art thou little?' &c.

But though Jerusalem should be besieged and taken, and the land of Judea laid waste, yet, before all this should be, the Messiah should be born in Bethlehem, of which this is a prophecy, as is evident from ( Matthew 2:4-6 ) the place is called by both the names it went by, to point it out the more distinctly, and with the greater certainty, ( Genesis 35:19 ) the former signifies 'the house of bread', and a proper place for Christ to be born in, who is the bread of life and it has the name of the latter from its fruitfulness, being a place of pasture, and as we find it was at the time of our Lord's birth for near it shepherds were then watching over their flocks and it is here added, to distinguish it from another Bethlehem in the tribe of Zebulun, ( Joshua 19:15 ) from which tribe the Messiah was not to come, but from the tribe of Judah and in which this Bethlehem was, and therefore called, by Matthew, Bethlehem in the land of Judah as it appears this was, from ( Ruth 1:1 Ruth 1:2 ) and from the Septuagint version of ( Joshua 15:60 ), where, as Jerom observes, it was added by the Greek interpreters, or erased out of the Hebrew text by the wickedness of the Jews: the former seems most correct thou be little among the thousands of Judah

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