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4. Charge Against Israel

¹ Hear the word of the LORD, you Israelites,
   because the LORD has a charge to bring
   against you who live in the land:
“There is no faithfulness, no love,
   no acknowledgment of God in the land.
² There is only cursing, That is, to pronounce a curse on lying and murder,
   stealing and adultery;
they break all bounds,
   and bloodshed follows bloodshed.
³ Because of this the land dries up,
   and all who live in it waste away;
the beasts of the field, the birds in the sky
   and the fish in the sea are swept away.

    ⁴ “But let no one bring a charge,
   let no one accuse another,
for your people are like those
   who bring charges against a priest.
⁵ You stumble day and night,
   and the prophets stumble with you.
So I will destroy your mother—
    ⁶ my people are destroyed from lack of knowledge.

   “Because you have rejected knowledge,
   I also reject you as my priests;
because you have ignored the law of your God,
   I also will ignore your children.
⁷ The more priests there were,
   the more they sinned against me;
   they exchanged their glorious God Syriac (see also an ancient Hebrew scribal tradition); Masoretic Text me; / I will exchange their glory for something disgraceful.
⁸ They feed on the sins of my people
   and relish their wickedness.
⁹ And it will be: Like people, like priests.
   I will punish both of them for their ways
   and repay them for their deeds.

    ¹⁰ “They will eat but not have enough;
   they will engage in prostitution but not flourish,
because they have deserted the LORD
   to give themselves ¹¹ to prostitution;
old wine and new wine
   take away their understanding.
¹² My people consult a wooden idol,
   and a diviner’s rod speaks to them.
A spirit of prostitution leads them astray;
   they are unfaithful to their God.
¹³ They sacrifice on the mountaintops
   and burn offerings on the hills,
under oak, poplar and terebinth,
   where the shade is pleasant.
Therefore your daughters turn to prostitution
   and your daughters-in-law to adultery.

    ¹⁴ “I will not punish your daughters
   when they turn to prostitution,
nor your daughters-in-law
   when they commit adultery,
because the men themselves consort with harlots
   and sacrifice with shrine prostitutes—
   a people without understanding will come to ruin!

¹⁵ “Though you, Israel, commit adultery,
do not let Judah become guilty.

   “Do not go to Gilgal;
   do not go up to Beth Aven. Beth Aven means house of wickedness (a derogatory name for Bethel, which means house of God).
   And do not swear, ‘As surely as the LORD lives!’
¹⁶ The Israelites are stubborn,
   like a stubborn heifer.
How then can the LORD pasture them
   like lambs in a meadow?
¹⁷ Ephraim is joined to idols;
   leave him alone!
¹⁸ Even when their drinks are gone,
   they continue their prostitution;
   their rulers dearly love shameful ways.
¹⁹ A whirlwind will sweep them away,
   and their sacrifices will bring them shame.

The verb לקח lakech, means to take away; and this sense is also admissible that wine and wantonness take possession of the heart; but I take its simpler meaning, to take away. But it is not a general truth as most imagine, who regard it a proverbial saying, that wantonness and wine deprive men of their right mind and understanding: on the contrary, it is to be restricted, I doubt not, to the Israelites; as though the Prophet had said, that they were without a right mind, and like brute animals, because drunkenness and fornication had infatuated or fascinated them. But we may take both in a metaphorical sense; as fornication may be superstition, and so also drunkenness: yet it seems more suitable to the context to consider, that the Prophet here reproaches the Israelites for having petulantly cast aside every instruction through being too much given to their pleasures and too much cloyed. Since then the Israelites had been enriched with great plenty, God had given way to abominable indulgences, the Prophet says, that they were without sense: and this is commonly the case with such men. I will not therefore treat here more at large of drunkenness and fornication.

It is indeed true, that when any one becomes addicted to wantonness, he loses both modesty and a right mind, and also that wine is as it were poisonous, for it is, as one has said, a mixed poison: and the earth, when it sees its own blood drank up intemperately, takes its revenge on men. These things are true; but let us see what the Prophet meant.

Now, as I have said, he simply directs his discourse to the Israelites, and says, that they were sottish and senseless, because the Lord had dealt too liberally with them. For, as I have said, the kingdom of Israel was then very opulent, and full of all kinds of luxury. The Prophet then touches now distinctly on this very thing: “How comes it that ye are now so senseless, that there is not a particle of right understanding among you? Even because ye are given to excesses, because there is among you too large an abundance of all good things: hence it is, that all indulge their own lusts; and these take away your heart.” In short, God means here that the Israelites abused his blessings, and that excesses blinded them. This is the meaning. Let us now go on —