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6. Israel Unrepentant

¹ “Come, let us return to the LORD.
He has torn us to pieces
   but he will heal us;
he has injured us
   but he will bind up our wounds.
² After two days he will revive us;
   on the third day he will restore us,
   that we may live in his presence.
³ Let us acknowledge the LORD;
   let us press on to acknowledge him.
As surely as the sun rises,
   he will appear;
he will come to us like the winter rains,
   like the spring rains that water the earth.”

    ⁴ “What can I do with you, Ephraim?
   What can I do with you, Judah?
Your love is like the morning mist,
   like the early dew that disappears.
⁵ Therefore I cut you in pieces with my prophets,
   I killed you with the words of my mouth—
   then my judgments go forth like the sun. The meaning of the Hebrew for this line is uncertain.
⁶ For I desire mercy, not sacrifice,
   and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings.
⁷ As at Adam, Or Like Adam; or Like human beings they have broken the covenant;
   they were unfaithful to me there.
⁸ Gilead is a city of evildoers,
   stained with footprints of blood.
⁹ As marauders lie in ambush for a victim,
   so do bands of priests;
they murder on the road to Shechem,
   carrying out their wicked schemes.
¹⁰ I have seen a horrible thing in Israel:
   There Ephraim is given to prostitution,
   Israel is defiled.

¹¹ “Also for you, Judah,
a harvest is appointed.

“Whenever I would restore the fortunes of my people,

Here God declares that he is the fit judge to take cognizance of the vices of Israel; and this he does, that he might cut off the handle of vain excuses, which hypocrites often adduce when they are reproved. Who indeed can at this day persuade the Papists that all their worship is a filthy abomination, a mere profanation? We see how furiously they rise up as soon as any one by a whisper dares to touch their superstitions. Whence this? Because they wish their own will to stand for reason. Why? Good intention, they say, is the judge; as if this good intention were, forsooth, the queen, who ought to rule in heaven and earth, and God were now excluded from all his rights. This fury and this madness, even at this day, possess the Papists; and no wonder, for Satan dementates men, when he leads them to corrupt and degenerated forms of worship, and all hypocrites have been thus inebriated from the beginning. This then is the reason why the Prophet now says in the person of God, I have seen, or do see, infamy in the kingdom of Israel. God does here by one word lay prostrate whatever men may set up for themselves, and shows that there remains no more defense for what he declares he does not approve, however much men may value and applaud it. “What! you think this to be my worship; and in your imagination, this is most holy religion, this is the way of salvation, this is extraordinary sanctity; but I on the contrary declare, that it is profanation, that it is turpitude, that it is infamy. Go now,” he says, “pass elsewhere your fopperies, with me they are of no value.”

We now understand the meaning of the Prophet, when he says, In the house of Israel have I seen infamy: and by the house of Israel the Prophet means the whole kingdom of the ten tribes. How so? “Because there is the fornication of Ephraim”; that is, there idolatry reigns, which Jeroboam introduced, and which the other kings of Israel followed.

Thus we see that the Prophet spared neither the king, nor his counselors, nor the princes of the kingdom; and he did not spare before the priests. And this magnanimity becomes all God’s servants, so that they cast down every height that rises up against the word of the Lord; as it was said to Ezekiel,

Chide mountains and reprove hills,’ (Ezekiel 6:2, 36:1.)

An example of this the Prophet sets before us, when he compares priests to robbers, and then compares royal temples to a brothel. Jeroboam had built a temple in which he thought that God would be in the best manner worshipped; but this, says the Prophet, is a brothel, this is filthy fornication.