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Israel’s Apostasy

Set the trumpet to your lips!

One like a vulture is over the house of the L ord,

because they have broken my covenant,

and transgressed my law.

Israel cries to me,

“My God, we—Israel—know you!”

Israel has spurned the good;

the enemy shall pursue him.

They made kings, but not through me;

they set up princes, but without my knowledge.

With their silver and gold they made idols

for their own destruction.

Your calf is rejected, O Samaria.

My anger burns against them.

How long will they be incapable of innocence?

For it is from Israel,

an artisan made it;

it is not God.

The calf of Samaria

shall be broken to pieces.

For they sow the wind,

and they shall reap the whirlwind.

The standing grain has no heads,

it shall yield no meal;

if it were to yield,

foreigners would devour it.

Israel is swallowed up;

now they are among the nations

as a useless vessel.

For they have gone up to Assyria,

a wild ass wandering alone;

Ephraim has bargained for lovers.

Though they bargain with the nations,

I will now gather them up.

They shall soon writhe

under the burden of kings and princes.

When Ephraim multiplied altars to expiate sin,

they became to him altars for sinning.

Though I write for him the multitude of my instructions,

they are regarded as a strange thing.

Though they offer choice sacrifices,

though they eat flesh,

the L ord does not accept them.

Now he will remember their iniquity,

and punish their sins;

they shall return to Egypt.

Israel has forgotten his Maker,

and built palaces;

and Judah has multiplied fortified cities;

but I will send a fire upon his cities,

and it shall devour his strongholds.

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.

He uses the same word as before when he spake of the meal, and says, that not only the provision of Israel shall be devoured, but also the people themselves; and he upbraids the Israelites with their miseries, that they might at length acknowledge God to be adverse to them. For the Prophet’s object was this — to make them feel their evils, that they might at length humble themselves and learn suppliantly to pray for pardon. For it is a great wisdom, when we so far profit under God’s scourges, that our sins come before our eyes.

He therefore says, Israel is devoured and is like a cast off vessel, even among the Gentiles, when yet that people excelled the rest of the world, as the Lord had chosen them for himself. As they were a peculiar people, they were superior to other nations; and then they were set apart for this end, that they might have nothing in common with the Gentiles. But he says now that this people is dispersed, and everywhere despised and cast off. This could not have been, except God had taken away his protection. We hence see that the Prophet had this one thing in view — to make the Israelites feel that God was angry with them. It now follows