Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

Ver. 4. “ And Jehovah said to him, Call his name Jezreel; for yet a little, and I visit the blood of Jezrcel upon the house of Sehu, and put an end to the kingdom of the house of Israel.” The prophet is directed by God as to the names to be given to his children, because the children, as the fruit of the marriage, as well as the marriage itself, are instructive signs for the idolatrous Israel of the ten tribes. The first son is named Jezreel, after the fruitful plain of Jezreel on the north side of the Kishon (see at Josh. xvii. 16); not, however, with any reference to the appellative meaning of the name, viz. “ God sows,” which is first of all alluded to in the announcement of salvation in ch. ii. 24, 25, but, as the explanation which follows clearly shows, on account of the historical importance which this plain possessed for Israel, and that not merely as the place where the last penal judgment of God was executed in the kingdom of Israel, as Hengstenberg supposes, but on account of the bloodguiltiness of Jezreel, ze. because Israel had there contracted such blood-guiltiness as was now speedily to be avenged upon the house of Jehu. At the city of Jeercel, which stood in this plain, Ahab had previously filled up the measure of his sin by the ruthless murder of Naboth, and had thus brought upon himself that blood-guiltiness for which he had been threatened with the extermination of all his house (1 Kings xxi. 19 sqq.). Then, in order to avenge the blood of all His servants the prophets, which Ahab and Jezebel had shed, the Lord directed Hlisha to anoint Jehu king, with a commission to destroy the whole of Ahab’s house (2 Kings ix. 1 sqq.). Jehu obeyed this command. Not only did he slay the son of Ahab, viz. king Joram, and cause his body to be thrown upon the portion of land belonging to Naboth the Jezreelite, appealing at the same time to the word of the Lord (2 Kings ix. 21-26), but he also executed the divine judgment upon Jezebel, upon the seventy sons of Ahab, and upon all the rest of the house of Ahab (ch. ix. 30-x. 17), and received the following promise from Jehovah in consequence: “Because thou hast done well in executing that which is right in mine eyes, because thou hast done to the house of Ahab according to all that was in mine heart, sons of thine of the fourth generation shall sit upon the throne of Israel” (ch. x. 30). It is evident from this that the bloodguiltiness of Jezreel, which was to be avenged upon the house of Jehu, is not to be sought for in the fact that Jehu had there exterminated the house of Ahab; nor, as Hitzig supposes, in the fact that he had not contented himself with slaying Joram and Jezebel, but had also put Ahaziah of Judah and his brethren to death (2 Kings ix, 27, x. 14), and directed the massacre described in ch. x. 11. For an act which God praises, and for which He gives a promise to the performer, cannot be in itself an act of blood-guiltiness. And the slaughter of Ahaziah and his brethren by Jehu, though not expressly commanded, is not actually blamed in the historical account, because the royal family of Judah had been drawn into the ungodliness of the house of Ahab, through its connection by marriage with that dynasty; and Ahaziah and his brethren, as the sons of Athaliah, a daughter of Ahab, belonged both in descent and disposition to the house of Ahab (2 Kings viii. 18, 26, 27), so that, according to divine appointment, they were to perish with it. Many expositors, therefore, understand by “the blood of Jezreel,” simply the many acts of unrighteousness and cruelty which the descendants of Jehu had committed in Jezreel, or “the grievous sins of all kinds committed in the palace, the city, and the nation generally, which were to be expiated by blood, and demanded as it were the punishment of bloodshed” (Marck). But we have no warrant for generalizing the idea of d‘mé in this way; more especially as the assumption upon which the explanation is founded, viz. that Jezreel was the royal residence of the kings of the house of Jehu, not only cannot be sustained, but is at variance with 2 Kings xv. 8, 13, where Samaria is unquestionably described as the royal residence in the times of Jeroboam 1. and his son Zechariah. The blood-guiltinesses (d’mz) at Jezreel can only be those which Jehu contracted at Jezreel, viz. the deeds of blood recorded in 2 Kings ix. and x., by which Jehu opened the way for himself to the throne, since there are no others mentioned. The apparent discrepancy, however, that whereas the extermination of the royal family of Ahab by Jehu is commended by God in the second book of Kings, and Jehu is promised the possession of

CHAP. I. 4. 4] the throne even to the fourth generation of his sons in consequence, in the passage before us the very same act is charged against him as an act of blood-guiltiness that has to be punished, may be solved very simply by distinguishing between the act in itself, and the motive by which Jehu was instigated. In itself, i.e. regarded as the fulfilment of the divine command, the extermination of the family of Ahab was an act by which Jehu could not render himself criminal. But even things desired or commanded by God may become crimes in the case of the performer of them, when he is not simply carrying out the Lord’s will as the servant of God, but suffers himself to be actuated by evil and selfish motives, that is to say, when he abuses the divine command, and makes it the mere cloak for the lusts of his own eyil heart. That Jehu was actuated by such motives as this, is evident enough from the verdict of the historian in 2 Kings x. 29, 31, that Jehu did indeed exterminate Baal out of Israel, but that he did not depart from the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, from the golden calves at Bethel and Dan, to walk in the law of Jehovah the God of Israel with all his heart. “ ‘The massacre, therefore,” as Calvin has very correctly affirmed, “ was a crime so far as Jehu was concerned, but with God it was righteous vengeance.” Even if Jehu did not make use of the divine command as a mere pretext for carrying out the plans of his own ambitious heart, the massacre itself became an act of blood-guiltiness that aaited for vengeance, from the fact that he did not take heed to walk in the law of God with all his heart, but continued the worship of the calves, that fundamental sin of all the kings of the ten tribes. Tor this reason, the possession of the throne was only promised to him with a restriction to sons of the fourth generation. On the other hand, it is no argument against this, that “the act referred to cannot be regarded as the chief crime of Jehu and his house,” or that “the bloody act, to which the house of Jehu owed its elevation, never appears elsewhere as the cause of the catastrophe which befell this house; but in the case of all the members of his family, the only sin to which prominence is given in the books of Kings, is that they did not depart from the sins of Jeroboam (2 Kings xiii. 2, 11, xiv. 24, xv. 9).” (Hengstenberg). For even though this sin in connection with religion may be the only one mentioned in the books of Kings, according to the plan of the author of those books, and though this may really have been the principal act of sin; it was through that sin that the bloody deeds of Jehu became such a crime as cried to heaven for vengeance, like the sin of Ahab, and such an one also as Hosea could describe as the bloodguiltiness of Jezreel, which the Lord would avenge upon the house of Jehu at Jezreel, since the object in this case was not to enumerate all the sins of Israel, and the fact that the apostasy of the ten tribes, which is condemned in the book of Kings as the sin of Jeroboam, is represented here under the image of whoredom, shows very clearly that the evil root alone is indicated, out of which all the sins sprang that rendered the kingdom ripe for destruction. Consequently, it is not merely the fall of the existing dynasty which is threatened here, but also the suppression of the kingdom of Israel. The “kingdom of the house of Israel” is obviously not the sovereignty of the house of Jehu in Israel, but the regal sovereignty in Israel. And to this the Lord mil put an ae bw, ¢.e. in a short time. The extermination of the house of Jehu Srred not long after the death of Jeroboam, when his son was murdered in connection with Shallum’s conspiracy (2 Kings xv. 8 sqq.). And the strength of the kingdom was also paralyzed when the house of Jehu fell, although fifty years elapsed before its complete destruction. For of the five kings who followed Zechariah, only one, viz. Menahem, died a natural death, and was succeeded by his son. The rest were all dethroned and murdered by conspirators, so that the overthrow of the house of Jehu may very well be called “the beginning of the end, the commencement of the process of decauaposition (Genetcntcta compare the remarks on 2 Kings xv. 10 sqq.).

Ver. 5. “ And it cometh to pass in that day, that I break in pteces the bow of Israel in the valley of Jezreel.’ The indication of time, “in that day,” refers not to the overthrow of the house of Jehu, but to the breaking up of the kingdom of Israel, by which it was followed. The bow of Israel, 2.c. its might (for the bow, as the principal weapon employed in war, is a synecdochical epithet, used to denote the whole of the military force upon which the continued existence of the kingdom depended (Jer. xlix. 35), and is also a symbol of strength generally; vid.

Gen. xlix. 24, 1 Sam. ii. 4), is to be broken to pieces in the valley of Jezreel. The paronomasia between Israel and Jezreel is here unmistakeable. And here again Jezreel is not introduced with any allusion to its appellative signification, 7.¢. so that the mention of the name itself is intended to indicate the dispersion or breaking up of the nation, but simply with reference to its natural character, as the great plain in which, from time immemorial, even down to the most recent period, all the great battles have been fought for the possession of the land (cf. v. Raumer, Pal. pp. 40, 41). The nation which the Lord had appointed to be the instrument of His judgment is not mentioned here. But the fulfilment shows that the Assyrians are intended, although the brief historical account given in the books of Kings does not notice the place in which the Assyrians gained the decisive victory over Israel; and the statement made by Jerome, to the effect that it was in the valley of Jezreel, is probably simply an inference drawn from this passage.

With the name of the first child, Jezreel, the prophet had, as it were with a single stroke, set before the king and the kingdom generally the destruction that awaited them. In order, however, to give further keenness to this threat, and cut off every hope of deliverance, he now announces two other births. Ver. 6. “ And she conceived again, and bare a daughter. And He (Jehovah) said to him, Call her name Unfavoured; for L will no more favour the house of Israel, that I should forgive them.” The second birth is a female one, not in order to symbolize a more degenerate race, or the greater need of help on the part of the nation, but to get a name answering to the idea, and to set forth, under the figure of sons and daughters, the totality of the nation, both men and women. Lo’ ruchdmah, lit. she is not favoured; for ruchdmah is hardly a participle with the » dropped, since x5 is never found in close connection with the participle (Ewald, § 520, ¢.), but rather the third pers. perf. fem. in the pausal form. The child receives this name to indicate that the Lord will not continue (*'Dis) to show compassion towards the rebellious nation, as He hitherto has done, even under Jeroboam 1. (2 Kings xiii. 23.) For the purpose of strengthening O78 N>, the clause ‘1M x2 "Dis added. This can hardly be understeod in any other way than in the sense of > jy xiv, viz. to take away sin or guilt, i.e. to forgive it (cf.

Gen. xviii. 24, 26, etc.). The explanation, “I will take away from them, sc. everything” (Hengstenberg), has no tenable support in ch. v. 14, because there the object to be supplied is contained in the context, and here this is not the case.

Ver. 7. “ And I will favour the house of Judah, and save them through Jehovah their God; and I will not save them through bow, and sword, and war, through horses and through horsemen.” By a reference to the opposite lot awaiting Judah, all false trust in the mercy of God is taken away from the Israelites. From the fact that deliverance is promised to the kingdom of Judah through Jehovah its God, Israel is to learn that Jehovah is no longer its own God, but that He has dissolved His covenant with the idolatrous race. The expression, “ through Jehovah their God,” instead of the pronoun “ through me” (as, for example, in Gen. xix. 24), is introduced with special emphasis, to show that Jehovah only extends His almighty help to those who acknowledge and worship Him as their God. And what follows, viz. “I will not save them by bow,” etc., also serves to sharpen the punishment with which the Israelites are threatened; for it not only implies that the Lord does not stand in need of weapons of war and military force, in order to help and save, but that these earthly resources, on which Israel relied (ch. x. 13), could afford no defence or deliverance from the enemies who would come upon it. IMilehdmah, “ war,” in connection with bow and sword, does not stand for weapons of war, but “ embraces everything belonging to war—the skill of the commanders, the bravery of heroes, the strength of the army itself, and so forth” (Hengstenberg). Horses and horsemen are specially mentioned, because they constituted the main strength of an army at that time. Lastly, whilst the threat against Israel, and the promise made to Judah, refer primarily, as ch. 1. 1-3 clearly show, to the time immediately approaching, when the judgment was to burst upon the kingdom of the ten tribes, that is to say, to that attack upon Israel and Judah on

1 “ The antithesis is to be preserved here between false gods and Jehovah, who was the God of the house of Judah. For it is just as if the prophet had said: Ye do indeed put forward the name of God; but ye worship the devil, and not God. For ye have no part in Jehovah, 7.e. in that God who is the Creator of heaven and earth. For He dwells in His temple; He has bound up His faith with David,” ete.—CaLvin.

the part of the imperial power of Assyria, to which Israel succumbed, whilst Judah was miraculously delivered (2 Kings xix.; Isa. xxxvil.); it has also a meaning which applies to all times, namely, that whoever forsakes the living God, will fall into destruction, and cannot reckon upon the mercy of God in the time of need.

Vers. 8, 9. “ And she weaned Unfavoured, and conceived, end bare a son. And He said, Call his name Not-my-people; for ye are not my people,and I will not be yours.” If weaning is mentioned not merely for the sake of varying the expression, but with a deliberate meaning, it certainly cannot indicate the continued patience of God with the rebellious nation, as Calvin supposes, but rather implies the uninterrupted succession of the calamities set forth by the names of the children. As soon as the Lord ceases to compassionate the rebellious tribes, the state of rejection ensues, so that they are no longer “ my people,” and Jehovah belongs to them no more. Jn the last clause, the words pass with emphasis into the second person, or direct address, “ I will not be to you,” ze. will no more belong to you (cf. Ps. exvili.6; Ex. xix. 5; Ezek. xvi. 8). We need not supply Elohim here, and we may not weaken nod ms 8 into “no more help you, or come to your aid.” For the fulfilment, see 2 Kings xvi. 18.

Vers. 10, 11 (Heb. Bib. ch. ii. 1-3). To the symbolical action, which depicts the judgment that falls blow after blow upon the ten tribes, issuing in the destruction of the kingdom, and the banishment of its inhabitants, there is now appended, quite abruptly, the saving announcement of the final restoration of those who turn to the Lord.'

1 The division adopted in the Hebrew text, where these verges are separated from the preceding ones, and joined to the next verse, is opposed to the general arrangement of the prophetic proclamations, which always begin with reprovinge the sins, then describe the punishment or judgment, and close with the announcement of salvation. The division adopted by the LXX. and Vule., and followed by Luther (and Eng. ver.: Tr.), in which these two verses form part of the first chapter, and the new chapter is made to commence with ver. 3 (of the Hebrew), on account of its similarity to ver. 4, is still more unsuitable, since this severs the close connection between the subject-matter of ver. 2 and that of ver. 3 in the most unnatural way.

of Israel will be as the sand of the sea, which is not measured and not counted; and tt will come to pass at the place where men say to them, Ye are not my people, tt will be said to them, Sons of the living God.” It might appear as though the promise made to the patriarchs, of the innumerable increase of Israel, were abolished by the rejection of the ten tribes of Israel predicted here. But this appearance, which might confirm the ungodly in their false security, is met by the proclamation of salvation, which we must connect by means of a “nevertheless” with the preceding announcement of punishment. The almost verbal agreement between this announcement of salvation and the patriarchal promises, more especially in Gen. xxil. 17 and xxxil. 13, does indeed naturally suggest the idea, that by the “ sons of Israel,’ whose ean increase is here predicted, we are to understand all the descendants of Jacob or of Israel as a whole. But if we notice the second clause, according to which those who are called “ not-my-people” will then be called “sons of the living God;” and still more, if we observe the distinction drawn between the sons of Israel and the sons of Judah in ver. 11, this idea is proved to be quite untenable, since the “ sons of Israel” can only be the ten tribes. We must assume, therefore, that the prophet had in his mind only one portion of the entire nation, namely, the one with which alone he was here concerned, and that he proclaims that, even with regard to this, the promise in question will one day be fulfilled. if what way, is stated in the second clause. At the plate where (Wis Dipra does not mean “instead of” or “in the place of,” as the Latin loco does; cf. Lev. iv. 24, 33; Jer. xxii. 12; Eak xxi. 35; Neh. iv. 14) men called them Lo-‘ammi, they shall be called sons of the living God. This place must be either Palestine, where their rejection was declared by means of this name, or the land of exile, where this name became an actual truth. The correctness of the latter view, which is the one given in the Chaldee, is proved by ver. 11, where their coming up out of the land of exile is spoken of, from which it is evident that the change is to take place in exile. Jehovah is called Hl chai, the living God, in opposition to the idols which idolatrous Israel had made for itself; and “sons of the living God” expresses the thought, that Israel would come again into the right relation to the true God, and reach the goal of its divine calling. For the whole nation was called and elevated into the position of sons of Jehovah, through its reception into the covenant with the Lord (compare Deut. xiv. 1, xxxii. 19, with Ex. iv. 22).

The restoration of Israel will be followed by its return to the Lord. Ver. 11. “ And the sons of Judah and the sons of Israel gather together, and appoint themselves one head, and come up out of the land; for great is the day of Jezreel.” The gathering together, i.e. the union of Judah and Israel, presupposes that Judah will find itself in the same situation as Israel; that is to say, that it will also be rejected by the Lord. The object of the union is to appoint themselves one head, and go up out of the land. The words of the two clauses recal to mind the departure of the twelve tribes of Israel out of Egypt. The expression, to appoint themselves a head, which resembles Num. xiv. 4, where the rebellious congregation is about to appoint itself a head to return to Egypt, points back to Moses; and the phrase, “ going up out of the land,” is borrowed from Ex. i. 10, which also serves to explain 87 with the definite article. The correctness of this view is placed beyond all doubt by ch. ii. 14, 15, where the restoration of rejected Israel is compared to leading it through the desert to Canaan; and a parallel is drawn between it and the leading up out of Egypt in the olden time. It is true that the banishment of the sons of Israel out of Canaan is not predicted disertis verbis in what precedes; but it followed as clearly as possible from the banishment into the land of their enemies, with which even Moses had threatened the people in the case of continued apostasy (Lev. xxvi. and Deut. xxviii.). Moses had, in fact, already described the banishment of rebellious Israel among the heathen in so many words, as carrying them back into Egypt (Deut. xxvii. 68), and had thereby intimated that Egypt was the type of the heathen world, in the midst of which Israel was to be scattered abroad. On the basis of these threatenings of the law, Hosea also threatens ungodly Ephraim with a return to Egypt in ch. viii. 13 and ch. ix. 8. And just as in these passages Egypt is a type of the heathen lands, into which Israel is to be driven away on account of its apostasy from the Lord; so, in the passage before us, Canaan, to which Israel is to be led up out of Egypt, is a type of the land of the Lord, and the guidance of them to Canaan a figurative representation of the reunion of

Israel with its God, and of its reinstatement in the full enjoyment of the blessings of salvation, which are shadowed forth in the fruits and productions of Canaan. (For further remarks, see vers. 14, 15.) Another point to be noticed is the use of the word ’echdd, one (single) head, i.e. one prince or king. The division of the nation into two kingdoms is to cease; and the house of Israel is to turn again to Jehovah, and to its king David (ch. iii. 5). The reason assigned for this promise, in the words “for great is (will be) the day of Jezreel,” causes no little difficulty; and this cannot be removed by giving a different meaning to the name Jezreel, on the ground of vers. 24, 25, from that which it has in ch.i. 4,5. The day of Jezreel can only be the day on which the might of Israel was broken in the valley of Jezreel, and the kingdom of the house of Israel was brought to an end (ch. i. 4). This day is called great, i.e. important, glorious, because of its effects and consequences in relation to Israel. The destruction of the might of the ten tribes, the cessation of their kingdom, and their expulsion into exile, form the turning-point, through which the conversion of the rebellious to the Lord, and their reunion with Judah, are vendered possible. The appellative meaning of ONT, to which there was no allusion at all in ch. i. 4, 5, is still kept in the hackeround to a great extent even here, and only so far slightly hinted at, that in the results which follow to the nation, from the judgment poured out upon Israel in Jezreel, the valley of Jezreel becomes a place in which God sows seed for the renovation of Israel.

To confirm the certainty of this most joyful turn of events, the promise closes with the summons in ch. ii. 1: “ Say ye to your brethren: My people; and to your sisters, Favoured.” The prophet “sees the favoured nation of the Lord (in spirit) before him, and calls upon its members to accost one another joyfully with the new name which had been given to them by God” (Hengstenberg). The promise attaches itself in form to the names of the children of the prophet. As their names of ill omen proclaimed the judgment of rejection, so is the salvation which awaits the nation in the future announced to it here by a simple alteration of the names into their opposite through the omission of the N?.

So far as the fulfilment of this prophecy is concerned, the fact that the patriarchal promise of the innumerable multiplication of Israel is to be realized through the pardon and restoration of Israel, as the nation of the living God, shows clearly enough that we are not to look for this in the return of the ten tribes from captivity to Palestine, their native land. Even apart from the fact, that the historical books of the Bible (Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther) simply mention the return of a portion of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin, along with the priests and Levites, under Zerubbabel and Ezra, and that the numbers of the ten tribes, who may have attached themselves to the Judeeans on their return, or who returned to Galilee afterwards as years rolled by, formed but a very small fraction of the number that had been carried away (compare the remarks on 2 Kings xvii. 24); the attachment of these few to Judah could not properly be called a union of the sons of Israel and of the sons of Judah, and still less was it a fulfilment of the words, “‘ They appoint themselves one head.” As the union of Israel with Judah is to be effected through their gathering together under one head, under Jehovah their God and under David their king, this fulfilment falls within the Messianic times, and hitherto has only been realized in very small beginnings, which furnish a pledge of their complete fulfilment in the last times, when the hardening of Israel will cease, and all Israel be converted to Christ (Rom. xi. 25, 26). It is by no means difficult to bring the application, which is made of our prophecy in 1 Pet. ii. 10 and Rom. ix. 25, 26, into harmony with this. When Peter quotes the words of this prophecy in his first epistle, which nearly all modern commentators justly suppose to have been written to Gentile Christians, and when Paul quotes the very same words (ch. ii. 1, with ch. i. 10) as proofs of the calling of the Gentiles to be the children of God in Christ; this is not merely an application to the Gentiles of what is affirmed of Israel, or simply the clothing of their thoughts in Old Testament words, as Huther and Wiesinger suppose, but an argument based upon the fundamental thought of this prophecy. Through its apostasy from God, Israel had become like the Gentiles, and had fallen from the covenant of grace with the Lord. Consequently, the re-adoption of the Israelites as children of God was a practical proof that God had also adopted the Gentile world as His children. “ Because VOL. I. D

God had promised to adopt the children of Israel again, He must adopt the Gentiles also. Otherwise this resolution would rest upon mere caprice, which cannot be thought of in God” (Hengstenberg). Moreover, although membership in the nation of the Old Testament covenant rested primarily upon lineal descent, it was by no means exclusively confined to this; but, from the very first, Gentiles also were received into the citizenship of Israel and the congregation of Jehovah through the rite of circumcision, and could even participate in the covenant mercies, namely, in the passover as a covenant meal (Ex. xii. 14). There was in this an indirect practical prophecy of the eventual reception of the whole of the Gentile world into the kingdom of God, when it should attain through Christ to faith in the living God. Even through their adoption into the congregation of Jehovah by means of circumcision, believing Gentiles were exalted into children of Abraham, and received a share in the promises made to the fathers. And accordingly the innumerable multiplication of the children of Israel, predicted in ver. 10, is not to be restricted to the actual multiplication of the descendants of the Israelites now banished into exile; but the fulfilment of the promise must also include the incorporation of believing Gentiles into the congregation of the Lord (Isa. xliv. 5). This incorporation commenced with the preaching of the gospel among the Gentiles by the apostles; it has continued through all the centuries in which the church has been spreading in the world; and it will receive its final accomplishment when the fulness of the Gentiles shall enter into the kingdom of God. And as the number of the children of Israel is thus continually increased, this multiplication will be complete when the descendants of the children of Israel, who are still hardened in their hearts, shall turn to Jesus Christ as their Messiah and Redeemer (Rom. xi. 25, 26).

CHASTISEMENT OF IDOLATROUS ISRAEL, AND ITS CONVERSION AND FINAL RESTORATION.—CHAP. I. 2-23 (HEB. BIB. II. 4-25).

What the prophet announced in ch. i. 2-11. 1, partly by a symbolical act, and partly also in a direct address, is carried out still further in the section before us. The close connection between the contents of the two sections is formally indicated by the simple fact, that just as the first section closed with a summons to appropriate the predicted salvation, so the section before us commences with a call to conversion. As Riickert aptly says, “ The significant pair give place to the thing signified; Israel itself appears as the adulterous woman.” The Lord Himself will set bounds to her adulterous conduct, i.e. to the idolatry of the Israelites. By withdrawing the blessings which they have hitherto enjoyed, and which they fancy that they have received from their idols, He will lead the idolatrous nation to reflection and conversion, and pour the fulness of the blessings of His grace in the most copious measure upon those who have been humbled and improved by the punishment. The threatening and the announcement of punishment extend from ver. 2 to ver. 13; the proclamation of salvation commences with ver. 14, and reaches to the close of ver. 23. The threatening of punishment is divided into two strophes, viz. vers. 2-7 and vers. 8-13. In the first, the condemnation of their sinful conduct is the most prominent; in the second, the punishment is more fully developed.

Ver. 2. “ Reason with your mother, reason! for she is not my wife, and I am not her husband: that she put away her whoredom from her countenance, and her adultery from between her breasts.’ Jehovah is the speaker, and the command to get rid of the whoredom is addressed to the Israelites, who are represented as the children of the adulterous wife. The distinction between mother and children forms part of the ficurative drapery of the thought; for, in fact, the mother had no existence apart from the children. The nation or kingdom, regarded as an ideal unity, is called the mother; whereas the several members of the nation are the children of this mother. The summons addressed to the children to contend or reason with this mother, that she may give up her adultery, presupposes that, although the nation regarded as a whole was sunken in idolatry, the individual members of it were not all equally slaves to it, so as to have lost their susceptibility for the divine warning, or the possibility of conversion. Not only had the Lord reserved to Himself seven thousand in Elijah’s time who had not bowed their knees to Baal, but at all times there were many individuals in the midst of the corrupt mass, who hearkened to the voice of the Lord and abhorred idolatry. The children had reason to plead, because the mother was no longer the wife of Jehovah, and Jehovah was no longer her husband, z.e. because she had dissolved her marriage with the Lord; and the inward, moral dissolution of the covenant of grace would be inevitably followed by the outward, actual dissolution, viz. by the rejection of the nation. It was therefore the duty of the better-minded of the nation to ward off the coming destruction, and do all they could to bring the adulterous wife to desist from her sins. The object of the pleading is introduced with 10m). The idolatry is described as whoredom and adultery. Whoredom becomes adultery when it is a wife who commits whoredom. Israel had entered into the covenant with Jehovah its God; and therefore its idolatry became a breach of the fidelity which it owed to its God, an act of apostasy from God, which was more culpable than the idolatry of the heathen. The whoredom is attributed to the face, the adultery to the breasts, because it is in these parts of the body that the want of chastity on the part of a woman is openly manifested, and in order to depict more plainly the boldness and shamelessness with which Israel practised idolatry.

The summons to repent is enforced by a reference to the punishment. Ver. 3. “ Lest I strip her naked, and put her as in the day of her birth, and set her like the desert, and make her like a barren land, and let her die with thirst.’ Yn the first hemistich the threat of punishment corresponds to the figurative representation of the adulteress; in the second it proceeds from the figure to the fact. In the marriage referred to, the husband had redeemed the wife out of the deepest misery, to unite himself with her. Compare Ezek. xvi. 4 sqq., where the nation is represented as a naked child covered with filth, which the Lord took to Himself, covering its nakedness with beautiful clothes and costly ornaments, and entering into covenant with it. These gifts, with which the Lord also presented and adorned His wife during the marriage, He would now take away from the apostate wife, and put her once more into a state of nakedness. The day of the wife’s birth is the time of Israel’s oppression and bondage in Egypt, when it was given up in helplessness to its oppressors. The deliverance out of this bondage was the time of the divine courtship; and the conclusion of the covenant with the nation that had been brought out of Egypt, the time of the marriage. The words, “‘T set (make) her like the desert,” are to be understood as referring not to the land of Israel, which was to be laid waste, but to the nation itself, which was to become like the desert, 7.e. to be brought into a state in which’ it would be destitute of the food that is indispensable to the maintenance of life. The dry land is a land without water, in which men perish from thirst. There is hardly any need to say that these words do not refer to the sojourn of Israel in the Arabian desert; for there the Lord fed His people with manna from heaven, and gave them water to drink out of the rock.

Ver. 4. “ And I will not have Lun upon her children, for they are children of whoredom.” ‘This verse is also near dent, so far as the meaning is concerned, upon the pen (lest) in ver. 3; but in form it Goasuntes an independent sentence. B'né 2°ninim (sons of whoredoms) refers back to yaldé 2*nunim in ch. i. 2. The children are the members of the nation, and are called “sons of whoredom,” not merely on account of their origin as begotten in whoredom, but also because they inherit the nature and conduct of their mother. The fact that the children are specially mentioned after and along with the mother, when in reality mother and children are one, serves to give greater keenness to the threat, and guards against that carnal security, in which individuals imagine that, inasmuch as they are free from the sin and guilt of the nation as a whole, they will also be exempted from the threatened punishment.

Ver. 5. “ For their mother hath committed whoredom; she that bare them hath practised shame: for she said, I will go after my lovers, who give (me) my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, my oil and my drink.” By ki (for) and the suffixes attached to ’immdm (their mother) and hordthdm (that bare them), the first clauses are indeed introduced as though simply explanatory and confirmatory of the last clause of ver. 4; but if wé look at the train of thought generally, it is obvious that ver. 5 is not merely intended to explain the expression sons of whoredom, but to explain and vindicate the main thought, viz. that the children of whoredom, 4.e. the idolatrous Israelites, will find no mercy. Now, as the mother and children are identical, if we trace back the figurative drapery to its actual basis, the punishment with which the children are threatened applies to the mother also; and the description of the mother’s whoredom serves also to explain the reason for the punishment with which the mother is threatened in ver. 3. And this also accounts for the fact that, in the threat which follows in ver. 6, “I hedge up thy way,” the mother herself is again directly addressed. The hiphil habhish, which is traceable to ydbhésh, so far as the form is concerned, but derives its meaning from wya, is not used here in its ordinary sense of being put to shame, but in the transitive sense of practising shame, analogous to the transitive meaning “to shame,” which we find in 2 Sam. xix. 5. To explain this thought, the coquetting with idols is more minutely described in the second hemistich. The delusive idea expressed by the wife (7728, in the perfect, indicates speaking or thinking which sfretches from the past into the present), viz. that the idols give her food (bread and water), clothing (wool and flax), and the delicacies of life (oil and drink, 7.e. wine and must and strong drink), that is to say, “everything that conduces to luxury and superfluity,” which we also find expressed in Jer. xliv. 17, 18, arose from the sight of the heathen nations round about, who were rich and mighty, and attributed this to their gods. It is impossible, however, that such a thought can ever occur, except in cases where the heart is already estranged from the living God. For so long as a man continues in undisturbed vital fellowship with God, “he sees with the eye of faith the hand in the clouds, from which he receives all, by which he is guided, and on which everything, even that which has apparently the most independence and strength, entirely depends” (Hengstenberg).

Ver. 6. “ Therefore (because the woman says this), behold, thus will I hedge up thy way with thorns, and wall up a wall, and she shall not jind her paths.” The hedging up of the way, strengthened by the similar figure of the building of a wall to cut off *the way, denotes her transportation into a situation in which she could no longer continue her adultery with the idols. The reference is to distress and tribulation (compare ch. v. 15 with Deut. iv. 30, Job ili. 23, xix. 8, Lam. iii. 7), especially the distress and anguish of exile, in which, although Israel was in the midst of idolatrous nations, and therefore had even more outward opportunity to practise idolatry, it learned the worthlessness of all trust in idols, and their utter inability to help, and was thus impelled to reflect and turn to the Lord, who smites and heals (ch. vi. 1).

This thought is carried out still further in ver. 7: “ And she will pursue her lovers, and not overtake them; and seek them, and not find them: and will say, I will go and return to my first husband, for it was better with me then than now.” Distress at first increases their zeal in idolatry, but it soon brings them to see that the idols afford no help. The failure to reach or find the lovers, who are sought with zeal (riddeph, ptel in an intensive sense, to pursue eagerly), denotes the failure to secure what is sought from them, viz. the anticipated deliverance from the calamity, which the living God has sent as a punishment. ‘This sad experience awakens the desire to return to the faithful covenant God, and the acknowledgment that prosperity and all good things are to be found in vital fellowship with Him.

The thought that God will fill the idolatrous nation with disgust at its coquetry with strange gods, by taking away all its possessions, and thus putting to shame its delusive fancy that the possessions which it enjoyed really came from the idols, is still further expanded in the second strophe, commencing with the eighth verse. Ver. 8. “And she knows not that I have given her the corn, and the must, and the oil, and have multiplied silver to her, and gold, which they have used for Baal.” Corn, must, and oil are specified with the definite article as being the fruits of the land, which Israel received from year to year. These possessions were the foundation of the nation’s wealth, through which gold and silver were multiplied. Ignorance of the fact that Jehovah was the giver of these blessings, was a sin. That Jehovah had given the land to His people, was impressed upon the minds of the people for all time, together with the recollection of the mighty acts of the Lord, by the manner in which Tsrael had been put in possession of Canaan; and not only had Moses again and again reminded the Israelites most solemnly that it was He who gave rain to the land, and multiplied and blessed its fruitfulness and its fruits (compare, for example, Deut. vii. 13, xi. 14, 15), but this was also perpetually called to their remembrance by the law concerning the offering of the first-fruits at the feasts. The words ‘dsw labba‘al are to be taken as a relative clause without ’asher, though not in the sense of “which they have made into Baal,” 2.e. out of which they have made Baal-images (Chald., Rabb., Hitzig, Ewald, and others); for even though? nvy occurs in this sense in Isa. xliv. 17, the article, which is wanting in Isaiah, and also in Gen. xii. 2 and Ex. xxxii. 10, precludes such an explanation here, apart from the fact that habba‘al cannot stand by itself for a statue of Baal. Here? nvy has rather the general meaning “apply to anything,” just as in 2 Chron. xxiv. 7, where it occurs in a perfectly similar train of thought. This use of the word may be obtained from the meaning “ to prepare for anything,” whereas the meaning “to offer,” which Gesenius adopts (“which they have offered to Baal”), is untenable, since WY simply denotes the preparation of the sacrifice for the altar, which is out of the question in the case of silver and gold. They had applied their gold and silver to Baal, however, not merely by using them for the preparation of idols, but by employing them in the maintenance and extension of the worship of Baal, or even by regarding them as gifts of Baal, and thus confirming themselves in the zealous worship of that god. By habba‘al we are not simply to understand the Canaanitish or Pheenician Baal in the stricter sense of the word, whose worship Jehu had exterminated from Israel, though not entirely, as is evident from the allusion to an Asherah in Samaria in the reign of Jehoahaz (2 Kings xiii. 6); but Baal is a general expression for all idols, including the golden calves, which are called other gods in 1 Kings xiv. 9, and compared to actual idols.

Ver. 9. “ Therefore will I take back my corn at tts time, and my must at tts season, and tear away my wool and my flax for the covering of her nakedness.” Because Israel had not regarded the blessings it received as gifts of its God, and used them for His glory, the Lord would take them away from it. ala Ws are to be connected, so that WN has the force of an adverb, not however in the sense of simple repetition, as it usually does, but with the idea of return, as in Jer. xii. 15, viz. to take again == to take back. “My corn,” etc., is the corn, the must, which I have given. “At its time,” 2.e. at the time when men expect corn, new wine, etc., viz. at the time of harvest, when men feel quite sure of receiving or possessing it. If God suddenly takes away the gifts then, not only is the loss more painfully felt, but regarded as a punishment far more than when they have been prepared beforehand for a bad harvest by the failure of the crop. Through the manner in which God takes the fruits of the land away from the people, He designs to show them that He, and not Baal, is the giver and the taker also. The words “to cover her nakedness” are not dependent upon rpsT, but belong to *AWDi 28, and are simply a more concise mode of saying, “Such serve, or are meant, to cover her nakedness.” They serve to sharpen the threat, by intimating that if God withdraw His gifts, the nation will be left in utter penury and ignominious nakedness (‘ervdéh, pudendum).

Ver. 10. “And now will I uncover her shame before her lovers, and no one shall tear her out of my hand.” The da. rey. 7223, lit. a withered state, from bay, to be withered or faded, probably denotes, as Hengstenberg says, corpus mulia stupra passum, and is rendered freely in the LXX. by dxaGapcia. “ Before the eyes of the lovers,” i.e. not so that they shall be obliged to look at it, without being able to avoid it, but so that the woman shall become even to them an object of abhorrence, from which they will turn away (comp. Nahum ii. 5; Jer. xiii. 26). In this concrete form the general truth is expressed, that “ whoever forsakes God for the world, will be put to shame by God before the world itself; and that all the more, the nearer it stood to Him before” (Hengstenberg). By the addition of the words “no one,” etc., all hope is cut off that the threatened punishment can be averted (cf. ch. v. 14).

This punishment is more minutely defined in vers. 11-13, in which the figurative drapery is thrown into the background by the actual fact. Ver. 11. “ And I make all her joy keep holiday (i.e. cease), her feast, and her new moon, and her sabbath, and all her festive time.” The feast days and festive times were days of joy, in which Israel was to rejoice before the Lord its God. To bring into prominence this character of the feasts, mbivn~D, “all her joy,” is placed first, and the different festivals are mentioned afterwards. Chdg stands for the three principal festivals of the year, the Passover, Pentecost, and the feast of Tabernacles, which had the character of chdg, 1.e. of feasts of joy par excellence, as being days of commemoration of the great acts of mercy which the Lord performed on behalf of His people. Then came the day of the new moon every month, and the Sabbath every week. Tfinally, these feasts are all summed up in Min}; for 7yitd, DWH is the general expression for all festive seasons and festive days (Lev. xxiii. 2, 4). As a parallel, so far as the facts are concerned, comp. Amos vill. 10, Jer. vii. 84, and Lam. i. 4, v. 15.

The Lord will put an end to the festive rejoicing, by taking away the fruits of the land, which rejoice man’s heart. Ver. 12. “And I lay waste her vine and her fig-tree, of which she said, They are lovers’ wages to me, which my lovers gave mé; and I make them a forest, and the beasts of the field devour them.” Vine and fig-tree, the choicest productions of the land of Canaan, are mentioned as the representatives of the rich means of sustenance with which the Lord had blessed His people (cf. 1 Kings v. 5; Joel ii. 22, etc.). The devastation of both of these denotes the withdrawal of the possessions and enjoyments of life (cf. Jer. v.17; Joel i. 7, 12), because Israel regarded them as a present from its idols. 1208, softened down from }3n8 (ch. ix. 1), like MW, in Job xli. 18, from (WY (1 Kings xxii. 34; cf. Ewald, § 163, h), signifies the wages of prostitution (Deut. xxiii. 19). The derivation is disputed and uncertain, since the verb 734 cannot be shown to have been used either in Hebrew or the other Semitic dialects in the sense of dedit, dona porrevit (Ges.), and the word cannot be traced to 2A, to extend; whilst, on the other hand, the verb 439, 73n7 (ch. viii. 9, 10) is most probably a denominative of 7298. Consequently, Hengstenberg supposes it to be a bad word formed out of the question put by the prostitute, mn ny, and the answer given by the man, "Ip As (Gen. xxxviil. 16, 18), and used in the language of the brothel in connection with an evil deed. The vineyards and fig-orchards, so carefully hedged about and cultivated, are to be turned into a forest, i.e. to be deprived of their hedges and cultivation, so that the wild beasts may be able to devour them. The suffixes attached to DNDY and DNPss refer to MINM 424 (the vine and fig-tree), and not merely to the fruit. Comp. Isa. vii. 23 sqq.’and Mice. iii. 12, where a similar figure is used to denote the complete devastation of the land.

In this way will the Lord take away from the people their festivals of joy. Ver. 18. “ And I visit upon her the days of the Baals, to which she burned incense, and adorned herself with her ring and her jewels, and went after her lovers; and she hath forgotten me, is the word of Jehovah.” The days of the Baals are the sacred days and festive seasons mentioned in ver. 13, which Israel ought to have sanctified and kept to the Lord its God, but which it celebrated in honour of the Baals, through its fall into idolatry. There is no ground for thinking of special feast-days dedicated to Baal, in addition to the feasts of Jehovah prescribed by the law. Just as Israel had changed Jehovah into Baal, so had it also turned the feast-days of Jehovah into festive days of the Baals, and on those days had burned incense, 1.e. offered sacrifice to the Baals (cf. ch. iv. 13; 2 Kings xvii. 11). In ver. 8 we find only byan mentioned, but here proya in the plural, because Baal was worshipped under different modifications, from which b’dlim came to be used in the general sense of the various idols of the Canaanites (cf. Judg. ii. 11; 1 Kings xviii. 18, etc.). In the second hemistich this spiritual coquetry with the idols is depicted under the figure of the outward coquetry of a woman, who resorts to all kinds of outward ornaments in order to excite the admiration of her lovers (as in Jer. iv. 30 and Ezek. xxiii. 40 sqq.). There is no ground for thinking of the wearing of nose-rings and ornaments in honour of the idols. The antithesis to this adorning of themselves is “forgetting Jehovah,” in which the sin is brought out in its true shape. On m7* ON, see Delitzsch on Isa. i. 24.

In ver. 14 the promise is introduced quite as abruptly as in ver. 1, that the Lord will lead back the rebellions nation step by step to conversion and reunion with Himself, the righteous God. In two strophes we have first the promise of their conversion (vers. 14-17), and secondly, the assurance of the renewal of the covenant mercies (vers. 18-23). Vers. 14, 15. “ Therefore, behold, I allure her, and lead her into the desert, and speak: to her heart. And I give her her vineyards from thence, and the valley of Achor (of tribulation) for the door of hope; and she answers thither, as in the days of her youth, and as in the day when she came up out of the land of Egypt.” 122, therefore (not utique, profecto, but, nevertheless, which lakhén never means), is co-ordinate with the ladkhén in vers. 6 and 9, and is connected primarily with the last clause of ver. 13. “ Because the wife has forgotten God, He calls Himself to her remembrance again, first of all by punishment (vers. 6 and 9); then, when this has answered its purpose, and after she has said, I will go and return (ver. 7), by the manifestations of His love” (Hengstenberg). That the first clause of ver. 14 does not refer to the flight of the people out of Canaan into the desert, for the purpose of escaping from their foes, as Hitzig supposes, is sufficiently obvious to need no special proof. The alluring of the nation into the desert to lead it thence to Canaan, presupposes that rejection from the inheritance given to it by the Lord (viz. Canaan), which Israel had brought upon itself through its apostasy. This rejection is represented as an expulsion from Canaan to Egypt, the land of bondage, out of which Jehovah had redeemed it in the olden time. 5, in the piel to persuade, to decoy by words; here sensu bono, to allure by friendly words.. The desert into which the Lord will lead His people cannot be any other than the desert of Arabia, through which the road from Egypt to Canaan passes. Leading into this desert is not a punishment, but a redemption out of bondage. The people are not to remain in the desert, but to be enticed and led through it to Canaan, the land of vineyards. The description is typical throughout. What took place in the olden time is to be repeated, in all that is essential, in the time to come. Egypt, the Arabian desert, and Canaan are types. EKeypt is a type of the land of captivity, in which Israel had been oppressed in its fathers by the heathen power of the world. The Arabian desert, as the intervening stage between Hoypt and Canaan, is introduced here, in accordance with the importance which attached to the march of Israel through this desert under the guidance of Moses, as a period or state of probation and trial, as described in Deut. viii. 2-6, in which the Lord humbled His people, training it on the one hand by want and privation to the knowledge of its need of help, and on the other hand by miraculous deliverance in the time of need (e.g. the manna, the stream of water, and the preservation of their clothing) to trust to His omnipotence, that He might awaken within it a heartfelt love to the fulfilment of His commandments and a faithful attachment to Himself. Canaan, the land promised to the fathers as an everlasting possession, with its costly productions, is a type of the inheritance bestowed by the Lord upon His church, and of blessedness in the enjoyment of the gifts of the Lord which refresh both body and soul. 29 Sy a, to speak to the heart, as applied to loving, comforting words (Gen. xxxiv. 3, 1. 21, etc.), is not to be restricted to the comforting addresses of the prophets, but denotes a comforting by action, by manifestations of love, by which her grief is mitigated, and the broken heart is healed. The same love is shown in the renewed gifts of the possessions of which the unfaithful nation had been deprived. In this way we obtain a close link of connection for ver. 15. By nyo... mn, “IT give from thence,” ze. from the desert onwards, the thought is expressed, that on entering the promised land Israel would be put into immediate possession and enjoyment of its rich blessings. Manger has correctly explained DW as meaning “as soon as it shall have left this desert,” or better still, “as soon as it shall have reached the border.” “Its vineyards” are the vineyards which it formerly possessed, and which rightfully belonged to the faithful wife, though they had been withdrawn from the unfaithful (ver. 12). The valley of Achor, which was situated to the north of Gilgal and Jericho (see at Josh. vii. 26), is mentioned by the prophet, not because of its situation on the border of Palestine, nor on account of its fruitfulness, of which nothing is known, but with an evident allusion to the occurrence described in Josh. vii., from which it obtained its name of ‘Akhdr, Troubling. This is obvious from the declaration that this valley shall become a _ door of hope. Through the sin of Achan, who took some of the spoil of Jericho which had been devoted by the ban to the Lord, Israel had fallen under the ban, so that the Lord withdrew His help, and the army that marched against Ai was defeated. But in answer to the prayer of Joshua and the elders, God showed to Joshua not only the cause of the calamity which had befallen the whole nation, but the means of escaping from the ban and recovering the lost favour of God. Through the name Achor this valley became a memorial, how the Lord restores His favour to the church after the expiation of the guilt by the punishment of the transgressor. And this divine mode of procedure will be repeated in all its essential characteristics. The Lord will make the valley of troubling a door of hope, z.e. He will so expiate the sins of His church, and cover them with His grace, that the covenant of fellowship with Him will no more be rent asunder by them; or He will so display His grace to the sinners, that compassion will manifest itself even in wrath, and through judgment and mercy the pardoned sinners will be more and more firmly and inwardly united to Him. And the church will respond to this movement on the part of the love of God, which reveals itself in justice and mercy. It will answer to the place, whence the Lord comes to meet it with the fulness of His saving blessings. ™2Y does not mean “to sing,” but “to answer;” and M3, pointing back to DU, must not be regarded as equivalent to B¥%. As the comforting address of the Lord is a sermo realis, so the answer of the church is a practical response of grateful acknowledgment and acceptance of the manifestations of divine love, just as was the case in the days of the nation’s youth, 7.c. in the time when it was led up from Egypt to Canaan. Israel then answered the Lord, after its redemption from Egypt, by the song of praise and thanksgiving at the Red Sea (Ex. xv.), and by its willingness to conclude the covenant with the Lord at Sinai, and to keep His commandments (Ix. xxiv.).

Ver. 16. “ And it comes to pass in that day, is the saying of Jchovah, thou wilt call, My husband; and thou wilt no more call io me, My Baal.” The church will then enter once more into the right relation to its God. This thought is expressed thus, that the wife will no more call her husband Baal, but husband. Ba‘al is not to be taken as an appellative in the sense of master, as distinguished from ’7sh,-man, 7.e. husband, for ba‘al does not mean master or lord, but owner, possessor; and whenever it is applied to a husband in an appellative sense, it is used quite promiscuously with “ish (e.g. 2 Sam. xi. 26, Gen. xx. 3). Moreover, the context in this instance, especially the B“dlim in ver. 19, decidedly requires that Baal should be taken as a proper name. Calling or naming is a designation of the nature or the true relation of a person or thing. The church calls God her husband, when she stands in the right relation to Him; when she acknowledges, reveres, and loves Him, as He has revealed Himself, z.e. as the only true God. On the other hand, she calls Him Baal, when she places the true God on the level of the Baals, either by worshipping other gods along with Jehovah, or by obliterating the essential distinction between Jehovah and the Baals, confounding together the worship of God and idolatrous worship, the Jehovah-religion and heathenism.

Ver. 17. “ And I put away the names of the Baals out of her mouth, and they are no more remembered by their name.” As soon as the nation ceases to call Jehovah Baal, the custom of taking the names of the Baals into its mouth ceases of itself. And when this also is mentioned here as the work of God, the thought is thereby expressed, that the abolition of polytheism and mixed religion is a work of that divine grace which renews the heart, and fills with such abhorrence of the coarser or more refined forms of idolatry, that men no longer dare to take the names of the idols into their lips. This divine promise rests upon the command in Ex. xxiii. 13, “Ye shall make no mention of the names of other gods,” and is repeated almost word for word in Zech. xii. 2.

With the complete abolition of idolatry and false religion, the church of the Lord will attain to the enjoyment of undisturbed peace. Ver. 18. “ And I make a covenant for them in that day with the beasts of the field, and the fowls of heaven, and the moving creatures of the earth: and I break in pieces bow, and sword, and battle out of the land, and cause them to dwell securely.” God makes a covenant with the beasts, when He imposes the obligation upon them to hurt men no more. “ For them:” lahem is a dat. comm., for the good of the favoured ones. The three classes of beasts that are dangerous to men, are mentioned here, as in Gen. ix. 2. “ Beasts of the field,” as distincuished from the same domestic animals (b%hémdh), are beasts that live in freedom in the fields, either wild beasts, or game that devours or injures the fruits of the field. By the “ fowls of heaven,” we are to understand chiefly the birds of prey. Renes does not mean reptiles, but that which is active, the smaller animals of the land which move about with velocity. The breaking in pieces of the weapons of war and of battle out of the land, is a pregnant expression for the extinction not only of the instruments of war, but also of war itself, and their extermination from the land. J“ilchdmah, war, is connected with shabhar per zeugma. ‘This promise rests upon Lev. xxvi. 8 sqq., and is still further expanded in Ezek. xxxiv. 25 sqq. (Compare the parallels in Isa. i. 4, x1, xxxv. 9, and Zech. ix. 10.)

Ver. 19. “ And I betroth thee to myself for ever; and L betroth thee to myself in righteousness, and judgment, and tn grace and pity. Ver. 20. And I betroth thee to myself in fatthfulness; and thou acknowledgest Jehovah.” §? Wis, to betroth to one’s self, to woo, is only applied to the wooing f a, maiden, not to the restoration of a wife who has been divorced, and is generally distinguished from the taking of a wife (Deut. xx. 7). 7AWIS therefore points, as Calvin observes, to an entirely new marriage. “It was indeed great grace for the unfaithful wife to be taken back again. She might in justice have been put away for ever. The only valid ground for divorce was there, since she had lived for years in adultery. But the grace of God goes further still. The past is not only forgiven, but it is also forgotten ” (Hengstenberg). The Lord will now make a new covenant of marriage with His church, such as is made with a spotless virgin. This new and altogether unexpected grace He now directly announces to her: “I hetrath thee to foe 3” and repeats this promise three times in ever fresh terms, expressive of the indissoluble character of the new relation. This is involved in noivd, “for ever,” whereas the former covenant had been broken nd Aenea by the wife’s own guilt. In the clauses which follow, we have a description of the attributes which God would thereby unfold in order to render the covenant indissoluble. These are, (1) righteousness and judgment; (2) grace and compassion; (3) faithfulness. Tsedeg—=ts*ddgah and mishpdt are frequently connected. Tsedeq, “ being right,” denotes subjective righteousness as an attribute of God or man; and mishpdat, objective right, whether in its judicial execution as judgment, or in its existence in actual fact. God betroths His church to Himself in righteousness and judgment, not by doing her justice, and faithfully fulfilling the obligations which He undertook at the conclusion of the covenant (Hengstenberg), but by purifying her, through the medium of just judgment, from all the Phones and eee that adhere to her still (Isa. i. 27), that He may wipe out everything that can injure the covenant on the part of the church But with the existing sinfulness of human nature, justice and judgment will not suffice to secure the lasting continuance of the covenant; and therefore God also promises to show mercy and compassion. But as even the love and compassion of God have their limits, the Lord still further adds, “in faithfulness or constancy,” and thereby gives the promise that He will no more withdraw His mercy from her. 2283 is also to be understood of the faithfulness of God, as in Ps. Ixxxix. 25, not of that of man (Hengstenberg). This is required by the parallelism of the sentences. In the faithfulness of God the church has a certain pledge, that the covenant founded upon righteousness and judgment, mercy and compassion, will stand for ever. The consequence of this union is, that the church knows Jehovah. This knowledge is “real.” “He who knows God in this way, cannot fail to love Him, and be faithful to Him” (Hengstenberg); for out of this covenant there flows unconquerable salvation.

Vers, 21, 22. “ And té comes to pass in that day, I will hear, is the word of Jehovah; I will hear heaven, and it hears the earth. And the earth will hear the corn, and the new wine, and the oil; and te will hear Tezreel ae ey: ey Gea will hear ut is to te taken absalatele; compare the ok in Isa. viii, os and cause all the blessings of heaven and earth to flow down to Ilis favoured people. By a prosopopeia, the prophet represents the heaven as praying to God, to allow it to give to the earth that which is requisite to ensure its fertility; whereupon the heaven fulfils the desires of the earth, and the earth yields its produce to the nation.’ In this way the thought is embodied, that all things in heaven and on earth depend on God; “so that without His bidding not a drop of rain falls from heaven, and the earth produces no germ, and consequently all nature would at length be barren, unless He gave it fertility by His blessing” (Calvin). The promise rests upon Deut. xxviil. 12, and forms the antithesis to the threat in Ley. xxvi. 19 and Deut. xxviii. 23, 24, that God will make the heavens as brass, and the earth as iron, to those who despise His name. In the last clause the prophecy returns to its starting-point with the words, “ Hear Jezreel.” The blessing which flows down from heaven to earth flows to Jezreel, the nation which “ God sows.” The name Jezreel, which symbolizes the judgment about to burst upon the kingdom of Israel, according to the historical signification

1 Ag Umbreit observes, ‘‘ It is as though we heard the exalted harmonies of the connected powers of creation, sending forth their notes as they are sustained and moved by the eternal key-note of the creative and moulding Spirit.”

of the name in ch. i. 4, 11, is used here in the primary sense of the word, to denote the nation as pardoned and reunited to its God.

This is evident from the explanation given in ver. 23: “ And I sow her for myself in the land, and favour Unfavoured, and say to Not-my-people, Thou art my people; and it says to me, My God.” YM does not mean “'to strew,” or scatter (not even in Zech. x. 9; cf. Koehler on the passage), but simply “ to sow.” The feminine suffix to ny refers, ad sensum, to the wife whom God has betrothed to Himself for ever, 7.c. to the favoured church of Israel, which is now to become a true Jezreel, as a rich sowing on the part of God. With this turn in the guidance of Israel, the ominous names of the other children of the prophet’s marriage will also be changed into their opposite, to show that mercy and the restoration of vital fellowship with the Lord will now take the place of judgment, and of the rejection of the idolatrous nation. With regard to the fulfilment of the promise, the remarks made upon this point at ch. i. 11 and ii. 1 (pp. 49, 50), are applicable here, since this section is simply a further expansion of the preceding one.

“The significant pair are introduced again, but with a fresh application.” In a second symbolical marriage, the prophet sets forth the faithful, but for that very reason chastising and reforming, love of the Lord to rebellious and adulterous Israel. By the command of God he takes a wife, who lives in continued adultery, notwithstanding his faithful love, and places her in a position in which she is obliged to renounce her lovers, that he may thus lead her to return. Vers. 1-3 contain the symbolical action; vers. 4, 5 the explanation, with an announcement of the reformation which this proceeding is intended to effect.

Ver. 1. “And Jehovah said to me, Go again, and love a woman beloved of her companion, and committing adultery, as Jehovah loveth the children of fsrael, and they turn to other gods, and love raisin-cakes.” 'The purely symbolical character of this divine command is evident from the nature of the command itself, but more especially from the peculiar epithet applied to the wife. ‘iy is not to be connected with 128%, in opposition to the accents, but belongs to 7, and is placed first for the sake of emphasis. Loving the woman, as the carrying out of the divine command in ver. 2 clearly shows, is in fact equivalent to taking a wife; and ’dhabh is chosen instead of légach, simply for the purpose of indicating at the very outset the nature of the union enjoined upon the prophet. The woman is characterized as beloved of her companion (friend), and committing adultery. yn denotes a friend or companion, with whom one cherishes intercourse and fellowship, never a fellow-creature generally, but simply the fellow-creature with whom one lives in the closest intimacy (Ex. xx. 17, 18, xxii. 25, etc.). The 39 (companion) of a woman, who loves her, can only be her husband or paramour. The word is undoubtedly used in Jer. iii. 1, 20, and Song of Sol. v. 16, with reference to a husband, but never of a fornicator or adulterous paramour. And the second epithet employed here, viz. “ committing adultery,” which forms an unmistakeable antithesis to y1 Nanx, requires that it should be understood in this instance as signifying a husband; for a woman only becomes an adulteress when she is unfaithful to her loving husband, and goes with other men, but not when she gives up her beloved paramour to live with her husband only. If the epithets referred to the love shown by a paramour, by which the woman had annulled the marriage, this would necessarily have been expressed by the perfect or pluperfect. By the participles N27 and N5x3, the love of the companion and the adultery of the wife are peed to be continued and contemporaneous with the love which the prophet is to manifest towards the woman. This overthrows the assertion made by Kurtz, that we have before us a woman who was already married at the time when the prophet was commanded to love her, as at variance with the grammatical construction, and changing the participle into the pluperfect. For, during the time that the prophet loved the wife he had taken, the 12 who displayed his love to her could only be her husband, ie. the prophet himself, towards whom she stood in the closest intimacy, founded upon love, 4.e. in the relation of marriage. The correctness of this view, that the ¥ is the prophet as husband, is put beyond all possibility of doubt by the explanation of the divine command which follows. As Jehovah loves the sons of Israel, although or whilst they turn to other gods, ze. break their marriage with Jehovah; so is the prophet to love the woman who commits adultery, or will commit adultery, notwithstanding his love, since the adultery could only take place when the prophet had shown to the woman the love commanded, 7.e. had connected himself with her by marriage. The peculiar epithet applied to the woman can only be explained from the fact intended to be set forth by the symbolical act itself, and, as we have already shown at p. 31, is irreconcilable with the assumption that the command of Ged refers to a marriage to be really and outwardly consummated. The words ' N2983 recal Deut. vil. 8, and ‘0 D5 Om) Deut. xxxi. 18. The last clause, “and loving grape-cakes,” does not apply to the idols, who would be thereby represented either as lovers of grape-cakes, or as those to whom grape-cakes were offered (Hitzig), but is a continuation of 0°25, indicating the reason why Israel turned to other gods. Grape or raisin cakes (on ‘shishadh, see at 2 Sam. vi. 19) are delicacies, figuratively representing that idolatrous worship which appeals to the senses, and gratifies the carnal impulses and desires. Compare Job xx. 12, where sin is figuratively described as food which is sweet as new honey in the mouth, but turns into the gall of asps in the belly. Loving grape-cakes is equivalent to indulging in sensuality. Because Israel loves this, it turns to other gods. “The solemn and strict religion of Jehovah is plain but wholesome food; whereas idolatry is relaxing food, which is only sought after by epicures and men of depraved tastes” (Henestenberg).:

Ver. 2. “ And 1 acquired her for myself for fifteen pieces of silver, and a homer of barley, and a lethech of barley.” 138, with dagesh lene or dirimens (Ewald, § 28, b), from hkdrah, to dig, to procure by digging, then generally to acquire (see at Deut. ii. 6), or obtain by trading (Job vi. 27, xl. 30). Fifteen heseph ave fifteen shekels of silver; the word shekel being frequently omitted in statements as to amount (compare Ges. § 120, 4, Anm. 2). According to Ezek. xlv. 11, the homer contained ten baths or ephahs, and a lethech (jpixopos, LXX.) was a half homer. Consequently the prophet gave fifteen shekels of silver and fifteen ephahs of barley; and it is a very natural supposition, especially if we refer to 2 Kings vii. 1, xvi, 18, that at that time an ephah of barley was worth a shekel, in which case the whole price would just amount to the sum for which, according to Ex. xxi. 32, it was possible to purchase a slave, and was paid half in money and half in barley. The reason for the latter it is impossible to determine with certainty. The price generally, for which the prophet obtained the wife, was probably intended to indicate the servile condition out of which Jehovah purchased Israel to be His people; and the circumstance that the prophet gave no more for the wife than the amount at which a slave could be obtained, according to Ex. xxi. 32 and Zech. xi. 12, and that this amount was not even paid in money, but half of it in. barley—a kind of food so generally despised throughout antiquity (vile hordeum; see at Num. v. 15)—was intended to depict still more strikingly the deeply depressed condition of the woman. The price paid, moreover, is not to be regarded as purchase money, for which the wife was obtained from her parents; for it cannot be shown that the custom of purchasing a bride from her parents had any existence among the Israelites (see my Bibl. Archiologie, ii. § 109, 1). It was rather the marriage present (mdhar), which. a bridegroom gave, not to the parents, but to the bride herself, as soon as her consent had been obtained. If, therefore, the woman was satisfied with fifteen shekels and fifteen ephahs of barley, she must have been in a state of very deep distress.

Ver. 3. “And I said to her, Many days wilt thou sit for me: and not act the harlot, and not belong toa man; and thus will [ also towards thee.” Instead of granting the full conjugal fellowship of a wife to the woman whom he had acquired for himself, the prophet puts her into a state of detention, in which she was debarred from intercourse with any man. Sitting is equivalent to remaining quiet, and 2 indicates that this is for the husband’s sake, and that he imposes it upon her out of affection to her, to reform her and train her up as a faithful wife. WIND mn, to be or become a man’s, signifies conjugal or sexual connection with him. Commentators differ in opinion as to whether the prophet himself is included or not. In all probability he is not included, as his conduct towards the woman is simply indicated in the last clause. The distinction between 73! and vAN? mm, is that the former signifies intercourse with different paramours, the latter conjugal intercourse; here adulterous intercourse with a’single man. The last words, “and I also to thee” (towards thee), cannot have any other meaning, than that the prophet would act in the same way towards the wife as the wife towards every other man, i.e. would have no conjugal intercourse with her. The other explanations that have been given of these words, in which v’yam is rendered “and yet,” or “and then,” are arbitrary. The parallel is not drawn between the prophet and the wife, but between the prophet and the other man; in other words, he does not promise that during the period of the wife’s detention he will not conclude a marriage with any other woman, but declares that he will have no more conjugal intercourse with her than any other man. This thought is required by the explanation of the figure in ver. 4. For, according to the former interpretation, the idea expressed would be this, that the Lord waited with ‘patience and long-suffering for the reformation of His former nation, and would not plunge it into despair by adopting another nation in its place. But there is no hint whatever at any such thought as this in vers. 4, 5; and all that is expressed is, that He will not only cut off all intercourse on the part of His people with idols, but will also suspend, for a very long time, His own relation to Israel.

Ver. 4. “For the sons of Israel will sit for many days without a king, and without a prince, and without slain-offering, and without monument, and without ephod and teraphim.” The explanation of the figure is introduced with °3, because it contains the ground of the symbolical action. The objects, which are to be taken away from the Israelites, form three pairs, although only the last two are formally connected together by the omission of 8 before D°DN, so as to form one pair, whilst the rest are simply arranged one after another by the repetition of }s before every one. As king and prince go together, so also do slain-offering and memorial. King and prince are the upholders of civil’ government; whilst slain-offering and memorial represent the nation’s worship and religion. 7289, monument, is connected with idolatrous worship. The “monuments” were consecrated to Baal (Ex. xxiii. 24), and the erection of them was for that reason prohibited even in the law (Ley. xxvi. 1; Deut. xvi. 22: see at 1 Kings xiv. 23); but they were widely spread in the kingdom of Israel (2 Kings i. 2, x.

26-28, xvii. 10), and they were also erected in Judah under idolatrous kings (1 Kings xiv. 23; 2 Kings xvili. 4, xxiii. 14; 2 Chron. xiv. 2, xxxi. 1). The ephod and teraphim did indeed form part of the apparatus of worship, but they are also specially mentioned as media employed in searching into the future. The ephod, the shoulder-dress of the high priest, to which the Urim and Thummim were attached, was the medium through which Jehovah communicated His revelations to the people, and was used for the purpose of asking the will of God (1 Sam. xsi. 9, xxx. 7); and for the same purpose it was imitated in an idolatrous manner (Judg. xvii. 5, xviii. 5). The teraphim were Penates, which were worshipped as the givers of earthly prosperity, and also as oracular deities who revealed future events (see my Bibl. Archdol. § $0). The prophet mentions objects connected with both the worship of Jehovah and that of idols, because they were both mixed together in Israel, and for the purpose of showing to the people that the Lord would take away both the Jehovah-worship and also the worship of idols, along with the independent civil government. With the removal of the monarchy (see at ch. i. 4), or the dissolution of the kingdom, not only was the Jehovah-worship abolished, but an end was also put to the idolatry of the nation, since the people discovered the worthlessness of the idols from the fact that, when the judgment burst upon them, tley could grant no deliverance; and notwithstanding the circumstance that, when carried into exile, they were transported into the midst of idolaters, the distress and misery into which they were then plunged filled them with abhorrence of idolatry (see at ch. Shaka)

This threat was fulfilled in the history of the ten tribes, when they were carried away with the Assyrian captivity, in which they continue for the most part to the present day without a monarchy, without Jehovah-worship, and without a priesthood. For it is evident that by Israel the ten tribes are intended, not only from the close connection between tiis prophecy and ch. i., where Israel is expressly distinguished from Judah (ch. i. 7), but also from the prospect held out in ver. 5, that the sons of Israel will return to David their king, which clearly points to the falling away of the ten tribes from the house of David. At the same time, as the carrying away of

Judah also is presupposed in ch. i. 7, 11, and therefore what is said of Israel is transferred dmplicite to Judah, we must not restrict the threat contained in this verse to the Israel of the ten tribes alone, but must also understand it as referring to the Babylonian and Roman exile of the Jews, just as in the time of king Asa (2 Chron. xv. 2-4). The prophet Azariah predicted this to the kingdom of Judah in a manner which furnishes an unmistakeable support to Hosea’s prophecy.

Ver. 5. “ Afterward will the sons of Israel turn and seek Jehovah their God, and David their king, and will go trembling to Jehovah and to His goodness at the end of the days.’ This section, like the previous one, closes with the announcement of the eventual conversion of Israel, which was not indicated in the symbolical action which precedes it, but is added to complete the interpretation of the symbol. Seeking Jehovah their God is connected with seeking David their king. For just as the falling away of the ten tribes from the royal house of David was merely the sequel and effect of their inward apostasy from Jehovah, and was openly declared in the setting up of the golden calves; the true return to the Lord cannot take place without a return to David their king, since God has promised the kingdom to David and his seed for ever (2 Sam. vii. 13, 16), and therefore David is the only true king of Israel (their king). This King David, however, is no other than the Messiah. For although David received the promise of the everlasting continuance of his government, not with reference to his own person, but for his seed, zc. his family; and on the ground of this promise, the whole of the royal house of David is frequently embraced under the expression “ King David,” so that we might imagine that David is introduced here, not as an individual, but as signifying the Davidic family; yet we must not understand it on this account as referring to such historical representatives of the Davidic government as Zerubbabel, and other earthly representatives of the house of David, since the return of the Israelites to “ their King David” was not to take place till ’achavith hayydmim (the end of the days). For “ the end of the days” does not denote the future generally, but always the closing future of the kingdom of God, commencing with the coming of the Messiah (see at Gen. xlix. 1; Isa. ii. 2). Pichad’el Y*hovah, to shake or tremble to Jehovah, is a preg-

CHAP. IV.—VI. 3. 03 nant expression for “to turn to Jehovah with trembling;” ae. either trembling at the holiness of God, in the consciousness of their own sinfulness and unworthiness, or else with anguish and distress, in the consciousness of their utter helplessness. It is used here in the latter sense, as the two parallels, ch. v. 15, “in their affliction they will seek me,” and ch. xi. 11, “ they shall tremble as a bird,” ete., clearly show. This is also required by the following expression, iRW-ON), which is to be understood, according to ch. ii. 7, as denoting the goodness of God manifested in His gifts. Affliction will drive them to seek the Lord, and His goodness which is inseparable from Himself (Hengstenberg). Compare Jer. xxxi. 12, where “ the goodness of the Lord” is explained as corn, new wine, oil, lambs, and oxen, these being the gifts that come from the goodness of the Lord (Zech. ix. 17; Ps. xxvii. 13, xxxi. 20). He who has the Lord for his God will want no good thing.

Ii. THE UNGODLINESS OF ISRAEL. ITS PUNISHMENT, AND FINAL DELIVERANCE.—Cxuap. 1v.-XIv.

The spiritual adultery of Israel, with its consequences, which the prophet has exposed in the first part, and chiefly in a symbolical mode, is more elaborately detailed here, not only with regard to its true nature, viz. the religious apostasy and moral depravity which prevailed throughout the ten tribes, but also in its inevitable consequences, viz. the destruction of the kingdom and rejection of the people; and this is done with a repeated side-clance at Judah. To this there is appended a solemn appeal to return to the Lord, and a promise that the Lord will have compassion upon the penitent, and renew His covenant of grace with them.

The first section, in which the prophet demonstrates the necessity for judgment, by exposing the sins and follies of

Israel, is divided into two parts by the similar openings, “ Hear the word of the Lord” in ch. iv. 1, and “ Hear ye this” in ch. v. 1. The distinction between the two halves is, that in ch. iv. the reproof of their sins passes from Israel as a whole, to the sins of the priests in particular; whilst in ch. v. it passes from the ruin of the priesthood to the depravity of the whole nation, and announces the judgment of devastation upon Ephraim, and then closes in ch. vi. 1-3 with a command to return to the Lord. ‘The contents of the two chapters, however, are so arranged, that it is difficult to divide them into strophes.

The Sins of Israel and the Visitation of God—Chap. iv.

Vers. 1-5 form the first strophe, and contain, so to speak, the theme and the sum and substance of the whole of the following threatening of punishment and judgment. Ver. 1. “ Hear the word of Jehovah, ye sons of Israel! for Jehovah has a controversy with the inhabitants of the land; for there ts no truth, and no love, and no knowledge of God in the land.” Israel of the ten tribes is here addressed, as ver. 15 clearly shows. The Lord has a controversy with it, has to accuse and judge it (cf. Mic. vi. 2), because truth, love, and the knowledge of God have vanished from the land. ’Hmeth and chesed are frequently associated, not merely as divine attributes, but also as human virtues. They are used here in the latter sense, as in Prov. iii. 8. “There is no ’émeth, i.e. no truthfulness, either in speech or action, no one trusting another any more” (cf. Jer. ix. 8, 4). Chesed is not human love generally, but love to inferiors, and to those who need help or compassionate love. Truth and love are mutually conditions, the one of the other. “ Truth cannot be sustained without mercy; and mercy without truth makes men negligent; so that the one ought to be mingled with the other” (Jerome). They both have their roots in the knowledge of God, of which they are the fruit (Jer. xxii. 16; Isa. xi. 9); for the knowledge of God is not merely “ an acquaintance with His nature and will” (Hitzig), but knowledge of the love, faithfulness, and compassion of God, resting upon the experience of the heart. Such knowledge not only produces fear of God, but also love and truthfulness towards

Ver. 2. “ Swearing, and lying, and murdering, and stealing, and committing adultery; they break in, and blood reaches to blood.” ‘The enumeration of the: prevailing sins and crimes commences with injin. absoll., to set forth the acts referred to as such with the greater emphasis. Alah, to swear, in combination with kichésh, signifies false swearing ag 4 nion in ch. x. 4; compare the silane passage in Jer. vii. 9); ‘but we! must not on that account take kichésh as subordinate to ’dldéh, or connect them together, so as to form one idea. Swearing refers to the breach of the second commandment, stealing to that of the eighth; and the infinitives which follow enumerate the sins against the fifth, the seventh, and the sixth commandments. With pdrdtsa the address passes into the finite tense (Luther follows the LX X. and Vulg., and connects it with what precedes; but thisis a mistake). The perfects, pdrdtsa and ndéga‘u, are not preterites, but express a completed act, reaching from the past into the present. Pérats to tear, to break, signifies in this instance a violent breaking in upon others, for the purpose of robbery and murder, “ grassari as D'SD, t.e. as murderers and robbers” (Hitzig), whereby one bloody deed immediately followed another (Ezek. xviii. 10). Ddémim: blood shed with violence, a bloody deed, a capital crime.

These crimes bring the land to ruin. Ver. 3. “ Therefore the land mourns, and every dweller therein, of beasts of the field and birds of the heaven, wastes away; and even the jishes of the sea perish.” These words affirm not only that the inanimate creation suffers in consequence of the sins and crimes of men, but that the moral depravity of men causes the physical destruction of all other creatures. As God has given to man the dominion over all beasts, and over all the earth, that he may use it for the glory of God; so does He punish the wickedness of men by pestilences, or by the devastation of the earth. The mourning of the earth and the wasting away of the animals are the Stee result of the want of rain and the great drought that ensues, such as was the case in the time of Ahab throughout the kingdom of the ten tribes (1 Kings xvii. 18), and judging ee Amos i. 2, viii. 8, may have occurred repeatedly with the continued ee of the people. The verbs are not futures, in which case the punishment would be only threatened, but aorists, expressing what has already happened, and will continue still. 72 avira (every dweller therein): these are not the men, but the animals, as the further definition ‘2. 372 shows. 2 is used in the enumeration of the individuals, as in Gen. vii. 21, ix. 10. The fishes are mentioned last, and introduced with the emphasizing 52), to show that the drought would prevail to such an extent, that even Jakes and other waters would be dried up. 587), to be collected, to be taken away, to disappear or perish, as in Isa. xvi. 10, Ix. 20, Jer. xlviii. 33. Notwithstanding the outburst of the divine judgments, the people prove themselves to be incorrigible in their sins. Ver. 4. © Only let no man reason, and let no man punish; yet thy people are like priest-strivers.” 8 is to be explained from the tacit antithesis, that with such depravity there would be much to punish; but this would be useless. The first clause contains a desperate nequitie argumentum. The notion that the second "ish is to be taken as an object, is decidedly to be rejected, since it cannot be defended either from the expression vrND WN in Isa. ili. 5, or by referring to Amos ii. 15, and does not yield any meaning at all in harmony with the second half of the verse. For there is no need to prove that it does not mean, “ Every one who has a priest blames the priest instead of himself when any misfortune happens to him,” as Hitzig supposes, since BY signifies the nation, and not an individual. ‘731 is attached adversatively, giving the reason for the previous thought in the sense of “ since thy people,” or simply “ thy people are surely hike those who dispute with the priest.’ The unusual expression, priest-disputers, equivalent to quarrellers with the priest, an analogous expression to boundary-movers in ch. v. 10, may be explained, as Luther, and Grotius, and others suppose, from the law laid down in Deut. xvii. 12, 18, according to which every law-suit was to be ultimately decided by the priest and judge as the supreme tribunal, and in which, whoever presumes to resist the verdict of this tribunal, is threatened with the punishment of death. The meaning is, that the nation resembled those who are described in the law as rebels against the priest (Hengstenberg, Dissertations on Pentateuch, vol. i. p. 112, translation). The suffix “thy nation” does not refer to the prophet, but to the sons of Israel, the sum total of whom constituted their nation, which is directly addressed in the fol- Jowing verse.

Ver. 5. “ And so wilt thou stumble by day, and the prophet with thee will also stumble by night, and I will destroy thy mother.” Kdshal is not used here with reference to the sin, as Simson supposes, but for the punishment, and signifies to fall, in the sense of to perish, as in ch. xiv. 2, Isa. xxxi. 3, ete. B93 is not to-day, or in the day when the punishment shall fall, but “by day,” interdiu, on acccount of the antithesis mo, as in Neh. iv. 16. 8°23, used without an article in the most indefinite generality, refers to false prophets—not of Baal, however, but of Jehovah as worshipped under the image of a calf-—who practised prophesying as a trade, and judging from 1 Kings xxii. 6, were very numerous in the kingdom of Israel. The declaration that the people should fall by day and the prophets by night, does not warrant our interpreting the day and night aeson cally, the former as the time when the way of rightu is ie and the latter as the time when the way is hidden or obscured; but according to the parallelism of the clauses, it is to be understood as signifying that the people and the prophets would fall at all times, by night and by day. “ There would be no time free from the slaughter, either of individuals in the nation at large, or of false prophets” (Rosenmiiller). In the second half of the verse, the destruction of the whole nation and kingdom is announced (’ém is the whole nation, as in ch. il. 2, Heb. 4.).

This thought is carried out still further in the second strophe, vers. 6-10. Ver. 6. “ My nation is destroyed jor lack of knowledge; for thou, the knowledge hast thow rejected, and so do I reject thee from being a priest to ine. Thou didst forget the law of thy God; thy sons will I also forget.” The speaker is Jehovah: my nation, that is to say, the nation of Jehovah. This nation perishes for lack of the knowledge of God and Ilis salvation. Haddad ath (the knowledge) with the definite article points back to da‘ath Elohim (knowledge of God) in ver. 1. This knowledge Israel might have drawn from the law, in which God had revealed His counsel and will (Deut. xxx. 15), but it would not. It rejected the knowledge and forgot the law of its God, and would be rejected and forgotten by God in consequence. In ’attdh (thou) it is not the priests who are addressed— the custodians of the law and promoters of divine knowledge in the nation—but the whole nation of the ten tribes which adhered to the image-worship set up by Jeroboam, with its illegal priesthood (1 Kings xii. 26-33), in spite of all the divine threats and judgments, through which one dynasty after another was destroyed, and would not desist from this sin of Jeroboam. The Lord would therefore reject it from being priest, z.e. would deprive it of the privilege of being a priestly nation (Ex. xix. 6), would strip it of its priestly rank, and make it like the heathen. According to Olshausen (Heb. Gram. p. 179), the anomalous form JNDNON is only a copyist’s error for JONON; but Ss (§ 247, e) regards it as an Aramzean pausal form. “'Thy sons,” the Ea een of the national community, regarded as a mother, are the individual members of the nation.

Ver. 7. “ The more they increased, the more they sinned against me; their glory will I nate into shame.” 0393, “ according to their becoming great,” does not refer to the increase of the population only “(chi ix. 11), but also to its growing into a powerful nation, to the increase of its wealth and prosperity, in consequence of which the population multiplied. The progressive increase of the greatness of the nation was only attended by increasing sin. As the nation attributed to its own idols the blessings upon which its prosperity was founded, and by which it was promoted (cf. ch. iil. 7), and looked upon them as the fruit and reward of its worship, it was strengthened in this delusion by increasing prosperity, and more and more estranged from the living God. The Lord would therefore turn the glory of Ephraim, i.e. its greatness or wealth, into shame. 57j23 is probably chosen on account of its assonance with B33, For the fact itself, compare ch. ii. 3, 9-11.

Ver. 8. “ The sin of my people they eat, and after their transgression do they lift up their soul.” The reproof advances from the sin of the whole nation to the sin of the priesthood. For it is evident that this is intended, not only from the contents of the present verse, but still more from the commencement of the next. Chatta’th “ammi (the sin of my people) is the sinoffering of the people, the flesh of which the priests were commanded to eat, to wipe away the sin of the people (see Lev. vi. 26, and the remarks upon this law at Ley. x. 17). The fulfilment of this command, however, became a sin on the part of the priests, from the fact that they directed their soul, ¢.e. their longing desire, to the transgression of the people; in other words, that they wished the sins of the people to be increased, in order that they might receive a good supply of sacrificial meat to eat. The prophet evidently uses the word chati@’ th, which signifies both sin and sin-offering, in a double sense, and intends to designate the eating of the flesh of the sin-offering as eating or swallowing the sin of the people. bas wai iva, to lift up or direct the soul after anything, 2.e. to cherish a lon ging for it, as in Deut. xxiv. 15, ete. The Geedics suffix attached to nepheke (his soul) is to be taken distributively: “(they) every one his soul.”?

Ver. 9. “ Therefore it will happen as to the people so to the priest; and I will visit his ways upon him, and I repay to him his doing.” Since the priests had abused their office for the purpose of filling their own bellies, they would perish along with the nation. The suffixes in the last clauses refer to tle priest, although the retribution threatened would fall upon tlie people also, since it would happen to the priest as to the people. This explains the fact that in ver. 10 the first clause still applies to the priest; whereas in the second clause the prophecy once more embraces the entire nation.

Ver. 10. “ They will eat, and not be satisfied; they commit whoredom, and do not increase: for they have left off taking heed to Jehovah.’ The first clause, which still refers to the priests on account of the evident retrospect in YIN) to NON? j in ver. 8, is taken from the threat in Lev. xxvi. 16. The following word hizna, to practise whoredom (with the meaning of ‘he kal intensified as in ver. 18, not to seduce to whoredom), refers to the whole nation, and is to be taken in its literal sense, as the antithesis 1875 xd requires. Pérats, to spread out, to imcrease in number, as in Hx. i. 12 and Gen. xxviii, 14. In the last clause ninwo belongs to Jehovah: they have given up keeping Jehovah, i.e. giving heed to Him (cf. Zech. xi. 11). This applies to the priests as well as to the people. Therefore God withdraws His blessing from both, so that those who eat are not satisfied, and those who commit whoredom do not increase.

The pilcsioei to whoredom leads to the description of the

1 It is evident from this verse, that the sacrificial worship was maintained in the kingdom of Israel according to the ritual of the Mosaic law, and that the Israclitish priests were still in possession of the rights ejnhared by the Pentateuch upon Levitical priests.

idolatrous conduct of the people in the third strophe, vers. 11-14, which is introduced with a general sentence. Ver. 11. “ Whoring and wine and new wine take away the heart (the understanding”). Z’nith is licentiousness in the literal sense of the word, which is always connected with debauchery. What is true of this, namely, that it weakens the mental power, shows itself in the folly of idolatry into which the nation has fallen. Ver. 12. “ My nation asks its wood, and its stick prophesies to it: for a spirit of whoredom has seduced, and they go away whoring from under their God.” i3Y3 ONY is formed after TiM2 2NY, to ask for a divine revelation of the idols made of wood (Jer. x. 3; Hab. ii. 19), namely, the teraphim (cf. ch. iii. 4, and Ezek. xxi. 26). This reproof is strengthened by the antithesis my nation, 2.¢. the nation of Jehovah, the living God, and its wood, the wood made into idols by the people. The next clause, “and its stick is showing it,” sc. future events (higgid as in Isa. xli. 22, 23, etc.), is supposed by Cyril of Alexandria to refer to the practice of rhabdomancy, which he calls an invention of the Chaldeans, and describes as consisting in this, that two rods were held upright, and then allowed to fall while forms of incantation were being uttered; and the oracle was inferred from the way in which they fell, whether forwards or backwards, to the right or to the left. The course pursued was probably similar to that connected with the use of the wishing rods.’ The people do this because a spirit of whoredom has besotted them.