Study

a Bible passage

Click a verse to see commentary

Select a resource above

7. Israel Unrepentant

¹ whenever I would heal Israel,
the sins of Ephraim are exposed
   and the crimes of Samaria revealed.
They practice deceit,
   thieves break into houses,
   bandits rob in the streets;
² but they do not realize
   that I remember all their evil deeds.
Their sins engulf them;
   they are always before me.

    ³ “They delight the king with their wickedness,
   the princes with their lies.
⁴ They are all adulterers,
   burning like an oven
whose fire the baker need not stir
   from the kneading of the dough till it rises.
⁵ On the day of the festival of our king
   the princes become inflamed with wine,
   and he joins hands with the mockers.
⁶ Their hearts are like an oven;
   they approach him with intrigue.
Their passion smolders all night;
   in the morning it blazes like a flaming fire.
⁷ All of them are hot as an oven;
   they devour their rulers.
All their kings fall,
   and none of them calls on me.

    ⁸ “Ephraim mixes with the nations;
   Ephraim is a flat loaf not turned over.
⁹ Foreigners sap his strength,
   but he does not realize it.
His hair is sprinkled with gray,
   but he does not notice.
¹⁰ Israel’s arrogance testifies against him,
   but despite all this
he does not return to the LORD his God
   or search for him.

    ¹¹ “Ephraim is like a dove,
   easily deceived and senseless—
now calling to Egypt,
   now turning to Assyria.
¹² When they go, I will throw my net over them;
   I will pull them down like the birds in the sky.
When I hear them flocking together,
   I will catch them.
¹³ Woe to them,
   because they have strayed from me!
Destruction to them,
   because they have rebelled against me!
I long to redeem them
   but they speak about me falsely.
¹⁴ They do not cry out to me from their hearts
   but wail on their beds.
They slash themselves, Some Hebrew manuscripts and Septuagint; most Hebrew manuscripts They gather together appealing to their gods
   for grain and new wine,
   but they turn away from me.
¹⁵ I trained them and strengthened their arms,
   but they plot evil against me.
¹⁶ They do not turn to the Most High;
   they are like a faulty bow.
Their leaders will fall by the sword
   because of their insolent words.
For this they will be ridiculed
   in the land of Egypt.

God again reproaches the Israelites for having in a base manner abused his goodness and forbearance. Some consider the verb יסר, isar, as meaning, “to chastise,” because God had disciplined the Israelites; and, as I have said yesterday, it is often taken in this sense. But as it signifies sometimes “to bind,” it seems a fitter metaphor for this place. I have bound and strengthened their arms; as though God had said, that he had caused their arms not to be enervated. For we know that the strength of the arm depends on the structure of the nerves. Except the bones were bound together by the nerves, a dissolution would immediately follow. Hence God says, I have bound and strengthened their arms; which two things combine for the same end, and the notion of chastising seems not to me to be in any way suitable to the context. The meaning is, that the Israelites had hitherto continued, because God had sustained them by his power. As when one binds up and strengthens a weak or a loosened arm, so God here reminds Israel that he had preserved them in their position. And the Prophet, I have no doubt, alludes here to the many calamities by which the strength of Israel might have been broken, had not a timely remedy been applied by the Lord.

God then compares himself here to a physician or a surgeon, when he says that he had bound the arm of Israel and strengthened it, when it might have been otherwise broken: for they had been often as it were enervated, but the Lord restored them. We now understand the meaning of the Prophet to be, that God had not only by his power sustained the Israelites, but had also performed the office of a surgeon or a physician, when he saw their arms broken, when they were wasted by slaughters in wars, and by other adversities.

Now the Israelites were so far from being grateful to God and mindful of him, that they were even devising evil against him. For after having obtained victories, after having been restored and even replenished with fulness of all blessings, they the more boldly conspired against him; for under this pretence were superstitions established, and then followed the indulgence of all vices; for pride, and cruelty, and ambition, and frauds, prevailed more and more. Since then the Israelites had thus perverted the blessings of God, was not the hope of pardon and salvation justly cut off from them? Now we are reminded in this place, that whenever God heals our evils, and raises us up in adversity and succors us, we ought devoutly to acknowledge his favor, and not to meditate evil against him, when he so kindly extends his hand to us. Let us now proceed —