9 You are destroyed, Israel, because you are against me, Against your help.
Your own wickedness shall correct you, and your backsliding shall reprove you: know therefore and see that it is an evil thing and a bitter, that you have forsaken Yahweh your God, and that my fear is not in you, says the Lord, Yahweh of Hosts.
Haven't you procured this to yourself, in that you have forsaken Yahweh your God, when he led you by the way?
Your way and your doings have procured these things to you; this is your wickedness; for it is bitter, for it reaches to your heart.
For we were also once foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving various lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another. But when the kindness of God our Savior and his love toward mankind appeared, not by works of righteousness, which we did ourselves, but according to his mercy, he saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, which he poured out on us richly, through Jesus Christ our Savior; that, being justified by his grace, we might be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ; even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and without blemish before him in love; having predestined us for adoption as children through Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his desire,
"Now, please entreat the favor of God, that he may be gracious to us. With this, will he accept any of you?" says Yahweh of Hosts.
Israel, return to Yahweh your God; For you have fallen because of your sin.
Your iniquities have turned away these things, and your sins have withheld good from you.
Happy are you, Israel: Who is like you, a people saved by Yahweh, The shield of your help, The sword of your excellency! Your enemies shall submit themselves to you; You shall tread on their high places.
The look of their faces testify against them. They parade their sin like Sodom. They don't hide it. Woe to their soul! For they have brought disaster upon themselves.
But he who sins against me wrongs his own soul. All those who hate me love death."
Happy is he who has the God of Jacob for his help, Whose hope is in Yahweh, his God:
> I will lift up my eyes to the hills. Where does my help come from? My help comes from Yahweh, Who made heaven and earth.
Our soul has waited for Yahweh. He is our help and our shield.
It was so, because the children of Israel had sinned against Yahweh their God, who brought them up out of the land of Egypt from under the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt, and had feared other gods, and walked in the statutes of the nations, whom Yahweh cast out from before the children of Israel, and of the kings of Israel, which they made. The children of Israel did secretly things that were not right against Yahweh their God: and they built them high places in all their cities, from the tower of the watchmen to the fortified city; and they set them up pillars and Asherim on every high hill, and under every green tree; and there they burnt incense in all the high places, as did the nations whom Yahweh carried away before them; and they worked wicked things to provoke Yahweh to anger; and they served idols, of which Yahweh had said to them, You shall not do this thing. Yet Yahweh testified to Israel, and to Judah, by every prophet, and every seer, saying, Turn you from your evil ways, and keep my commandments and my statutes, according to all the law which I commanded your fathers, and which I sent to you by my servants the prophets. Notwithstanding, they would not hear, but hardened their neck, like the neck of their fathers, who didn't believe in Yahweh their God. They rejected his statutes, and his covenant that he made with their fathers, and his testimonies which he testified to them; and they followed vanity, and became vain, and [went] after the nations that were round about them, concerning whom Yahweh had charged those who they should not do like them. They forsook all the commandments of Yahweh their God, and made them molten images, even two calves, and made an Asherah, and worshiped all the host of the sky, and served Baal. They caused their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire, and used divination and enchantments, and sold themselves to do that which was evil in the sight of Yahweh, to provoke him to anger.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible » Commentary on Hosea 13
Commentary on Hosea 13 Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
CHAPTER 13
Ho 13:1-16. Ephraim's Sinful Ingratitude to God, and Its Fatal Consequence; God's Promise at Last.
This chapter and the fourteenth chapter probably belong to the troubled times that followed Pekah's murder by Hoshea (compare Ho 13:11; 2Ki 15:30). The subject is the idolatry of Ephraim, notwithstanding God's past benefits, destined to be his ruin.
1. When Ephraim spake trembling—rather, "When Ephraim (the tribe most powerful among the twelve in Israel's early history) spake (authoritatively) there was trembling"; all reverentially feared him [Jerome], (compare Job 29:8, 9, 21).
offended in Baal—that is, in respect to Baal, by worshipping him (1Ki 16:31), under Ahab; a more heinous offense than even the calves. Therefore it is at this climax of guilt that Ephraim "died." Sin has, in the sight of God, within itself the germ of death, though that death may not visibly take effect till long after. Compare Ro 7:9, "Sin revived, and I died." So Adam in the day of his sin was to die, though the sentence was not visibly executed till long after (Ge 2:17; 5:5). Israel is similarly represented as politically dead in Eze 37:1-28.
2. according to their own understanding—that is, their arbitrary devising. Compare "will-worship," Col 2:23. Men are not to be "wise above that which is written," or to follow their own understanding, but God's command in worship.
kiss the calves—an act of adoration to the golden calves (compare 1Ki 19:18; Job 31:27; Ps 2:12).
3. they shall be as the morning cloud … dew—(Ho 6:4). As their "goodness" soon vanished like the morning cloud and dew, so they shall perish like them.
the floor—the threshing-floor, generally an open area, on a height, exposed to the winds.
chimney—generally in the East an orifice in the wall, at once admitting the light, and giving egress to the smoke.
4. (Ho 12:9; Isa 43:11).
no saviour—temporal as well as spiritual.
besides me—(Isa 45:21).
5. I did know thee—did acknowledge thee as Mine, and so took care of thee (Ps 144:3; Am 3:2). As I knew thee as Mine, so thou shouldest know no God but Me (Ho 13:4).
in … land of … drought—(De 8:15).
6. Image from cattle, waxing wanton in abundant pasture (compare Ho 2:5, 8; De 32:13-15). In proportion as I fed them to the full, they were so satiated that "their heart was exalted"; a sad contrast to the time when, by God's blessing, Ephraim truly "exalted himself in Israel" (Ho 13:1).
therefore have they forgotten me—the very reason why men should remember God (namely, prosperity, which comes from Him) is the cause often of their forgetting Him. God had warned them of this danger (De 6:11, 12).
7. (Ho 5:14; La 3:10).
leopard—The Hebrew comes from a root meaning "spotted" (compare Jer 13:23). Leopards lurk in thickets and thence spring on their victims.
observe—that is, lie in wait for them. Several manuscripts, the Septuagint, Vulgate, Syriac, and Arabic read, by a slight change of the Hebrew vowel pointing, "by the way of Assyria," a region abounding in leopards and lions. English Version is better.
8. "Writers on the natures of beasts say that none is more savage than a she bear, when bereaved of her whelps" [Jerome].
caul of … heart—the membrane enclosing it: the pericardium.
there—"by the way" (Ho 13:7).
9. thou … in me—in contrast.
hast destroyed thyself—that is, thy destruction is of thyself (Pr 6:32; 8:36).
in me is thine help—literally, "in thine help" (compare De 33:26). Hadst thou rested thy hope in Me, I would have been always ready at hand for thy help [Grotius].
10. I will be thy king; where—rather, as the Margin and the Septuagint, Syriac, Vulgate, "Where now is thy king?" [Maurer]. English Version is, however, favored both by the Hebrew, by the antithesis between Israel's self-chosen and perishing kings, and God, Israel's abiding King (compare Ho 3:4, 5).
where … Give me a king—Where now is the king whom ye substituted in My stead? Neither Saul, whom the whole nation begged for, not contented with Me their true king (1Sa 8:5, 7, 19, 20; 10:19), nor Jeroboam, whom subsequently the ten tribes chose instead of the line of David My anointed, can save thee now. They had expected from their kings what is the prerogative of God alone, namely, the power of saving them.
judges—including all civil authorities under the king (compare Am 2:3).
11. I gave … king in … anger … took … away in … wrath—true both of Saul (1Sa 15:22, 23; 16:1) and of Jeroboam's line (2Ki 15:30). Pekah was taken away through Hoshea, as he himself took away Pekahiah; and as Hoshea was soon to be taken away by the Assyrian king.
12. bound up … hid—Treasures, meant to be kept, are bound up and hidden; that is, do not flatter yourselves, because of the delay, that I have forgotten your sin. Nay (Ho 9:9), Ephraim's iniquity is kept as it were safely sealed up, until the due time comes for bringing it forth for punishment (De 32:34; Job 14:17; 21:19; compare Ro 2:5). Opposed to "blotting out the handwriting against" the sinner (Col 2:14).
13. sorrows of a travailing woman—calamities sudden and agonizing (Jer 30:6).
unwise—in not foreseeing the impending judgment, and averting it by penitence (Pr 22:3).
he should not stay long in the place of the breaking forth of children—When Israel might deliver himself from calamity by the pangs of penitence, he brings ruin on himself by so long deferring a new birth unto repentance, like a child whose mother has not strength to bring it forth, and which therefore remains so long in the passage from the womb as to run the risk of death (2Ki 19:3; Isa 37:3; 66:9).
14. Applying primarily to God's restoration of Israel from Assyria partially, and, in times yet future, fully from all the lands of their present long-continued dispersion, and political death (compare Ho 6:2; Isa 25:8; 26:19; Eze 37:12). God's power and grace are magnified in quickening what to the eye of flesh seems dead and hopeless (Ro 4:17, 19). As Israel's history, past and future, has a representative character in relation to the Church, this verse is expressed in language alluding to Messiah's (who is the ideal Israel) grand victory over the grave and death, the first-fruits of His own resurrection, the full harvest to come at the general resurrection; hence the similarity between this verse and Paul's language as to the latter (1Co 15:55). That similarity becomes more obvious by translating as the Septuagint, from which Paul plainly quotes; and as the same Hebrew word is translated in Ho 13:10, "O death, where are thy plagues (paraphrased by the Septuagint, 'thy victory')? O grave, where is thy destruction (rendered by the Septuagint, 'thy sting')?" The question is that of one triumphing over a foe, once a cruel tyrant, but now robbed of all power to hurt.
repentance shall be hid from mine eyes—that is, I will not change My purpose of fulfilling My promise by delivering Israel, on the condition of their return to Me (compare Ho 14:2-8; Nu 23:19; Ro 11:29).
15. fruitful—referring to the meaning of "Ephraim," from a Hebrew root, "to be fruitful" (Ge 41:52). It was long the most numerous and flourishing of the tribes (Ge 48:19).
wind of the Lord—that is, sent by the Lord (compare Isa 40:7), who has His instruments of punishment always ready. The Assyrian, Shalmaneser, &c., is meant (Jer 4:11; 18:17; Eze 19:12).
from the wilderness—that is, the desert part of Syria (1Ki 19:15), the route from Assyria into Israel.
he—the Assyrian invader. Shalmaneser began the siege of Samaria in 723 B.C. Its close was in 721 B.C., the first year of Sargon, who seems to have usurped the throne of Assyria while Shalmaneser was at the siege of Samaria. Hence, while 2Ki 17:6 states, "the king of Assyria took Samaria," 2Ki 18:10 says, "at the end of three years they took it." In Sargon's magnificent palace at Khorsabad, inscriptions mention the number—27,280—of Israelites carried captive from Samaria and other places of Israel by the founder of the palace [G. V. Smith].
16. This verse and Ho 13:15 foretell the calamities about to befall Israel before her restoration (Ho 13:14), owing to her impenitence.
her God—the greatest aggravation of her rebellion, that it was against her God (Ho 13:4).
infants … dashed in pieces, &c.—(2Ki 8:12; 15:16; Am 1:13).