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Impending Judgment on Israel and Judah

Hear this, O priests!

Give heed, O house of Israel!

Listen, O house of the king!

For the judgment pertains to you;

for you have been a snare at Mizpah,

and a net spread upon Tabor,

and a pit dug deep in Shittim;

but I will punish all of them.

I know Ephraim,

and Israel is not hidden from me;

for now, O Ephraim, you have played the whore;

Israel is defiled.

Their deeds do not permit them

to return to their God.

For the spirit of whoredom is within them,

and they do not know the L ord.

Israel’s pride testifies against him;

Ephraim stumbles in his guilt;

Judah also stumbles with them.

With their flocks and herds they shall go

to seek the L ord,

but they will not find him;

he has withdrawn from them.

They have dealt faithlessly with the L ord;

for they have borne illegitimate children.

Now the new moon shall devour them along with their fields.

Blow the horn in Gibeah,

the trumpet in Ramah.

Sound the alarm at Beth-aven;

look behind you, Benjamin!

Ephraim shall become a desolation

in the day of punishment;

among the tribes of Israel

I declare what is sure.

The princes of Judah have become

like those who remove the landmark;

on them I will pour out

my wrath like water.

Ephraim is oppressed, crushed in judgment,

because he was determined to go after vanity.

Therefore I am like maggots to Ephraim,

and like rottenness to the house of Judah.

When Ephraim saw his sickness,

and Judah his wound,

then Ephraim went to Assyria,

and sent to the great king.

But he is not able to cure you

or heal your wound.

For I will be like a lion to Ephraim,

and like a young lion to the house of Judah.

I myself will tear and go away;

I will carry off, and no one shall rescue.

I will return again to my place

until they acknowledge their guilt and seek my face.

In their distress they will beg my favor:

New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

The Prophet having condemned the Israelites on two accounts — for having departed from the true God — and for having obstinately refused every instruction, now adds, that God’s vengeance was nigh at hand. “Testify then shall the pride of Israel in his face”; that is, Israel shall find what it is thus to resist God and his Prophets. The Prophet no doubt applies the word, pride, to their contempt of instruction, because they were so swollen with vain confidence, as to think that wrong was done them whenever the Prophets reproved them. It must at the same time be observed, that they were thus refractory, because they were like persons inebriated with their own pleasures; for we know that while men enjoy prosperity, they are more insolent, according to that old proverb, “Satiety begets ferocity.”

Some think that the verb ענה, one, means here “to be humbled;” and this sense is not unsuitable: “The pride of Israel shall then be humbled before his face.” But another exposition has been most approved; I am therefore inclined to embrace it, and that is, that God needed no other witness to convict Israel than their own pride; and we know that when any one becomes hardened, he thinks that there is to be no judgment, and has no thought of rendering an account to God, for his pride takes away every fear. For this reason the Prophet says, “God will convict you, because ye have been hitherto so proud, that he could effect nothing by his warnings.”

But he adds, Israel and Ephraim shall fall in their iniquity He pursues the same subject, which is, that they in vain promised impunity to themselves, for the Lord had now resolved to punish them. He adds, Judah also shall fall with them The Prophet may seem to contradict himself; for when he before threatened the people of Israel, he spoke of the safety of Judah, — ‘Judah shall be saved by his God, not by the sword, nor by the bow.’ Since then the Prophet had before distinguished or made a difference between the ten tribes and the kingdom of Judah, how is it that he now puts them all together without any distinction? To this I answer, that the Prophet speaks here not of those Jews who continued in true and pure religion, but of those who had with the Israelites alienated themselves from the only true God, and joined in their superstitions. He then refers here to the degenerate and not to the faithful Jews; for to all who worshipped God aright, salvation had been already promised. But as many as had abandoned themselves to the common superstitions, he declares that a common punishment was nigh them all. The Jews then shall fall together, that is, “As many of the Jews as have followed impious forms of worship and other deprivations, shall not escape God’s judgment.” We now then perceive the true meaning of the Prophet. It now follows —