1 Ephraim’s glory, by reason of idolatry, vanisheth. 5 God’s anger for their unkindness. 9 A promise of God’s mercy. 15 A judgment for rebellion.
The Lord’s Relentless Judgment on Israel
Hos 13:1 When Ephraim spoke, people trembled; he was exalted in Israel. But he became guilty of Baal worship and died.
Trembled. Verses 1–8 of this chapter show why Ephraim (the northern kingdom of Israel) has “destroyed” himself (v. 9). The particulars of the nation’s sins are given, with the punishment incurred because of these transgressions.
This evidently refers to the worship of Baal (for which undoubtedly the calf worship had prepared the way), which had been introduced into Israel by Ahab at the instigation of Queen Jezebel (see 1 Kings 16:29–33).
Through the efforts of Elijah (1 Kings 18) and King Jehu (2 Kings 9; 10) this evil received a setback, but it was not eradicated, and frequently broke out again.
He died. Ephraim’s idolatry resulted in national degradation and political death. He lost his high and exalted position, and his honor was laid in the dust. He became spiritually dead, ready for the burial soon to come (see Eph. 2:1).
Deserting God and dallying with sin always brings one sure result, death (see Eze. 33:10, 11; Rom. 6:23).
In contrasting Ephraim’s prosperity and his destruction, the prophet shows that Ephraim owed his prosperity to the undeserved mercy of God, who blessed him for Joseph’s sake (see Gen. 49:22); his destruction he owed to his own sin.
Hos 13:2 Now they sin more and more; they make idols for themselves from their silver, cleverly fashioned images, all of them the work of craftsmen. It is said of these people, “They offer human sacrifices! They kiss calf-idols!”
Now.
These words meaningfully mark the transition from the time of the introduction of Baal worship (see on v. 1) to the conditions of Hosea’s day. It was a heinous thing to make and worship a graven image as a material representation of the true God, as did Jeroboam I (see 1 Kings 12:25–33), thus violating the second commandment and neglecting the solemn instruction that the worship of God must be spiritual, not material (see Ex. 20:4–6; John 4:24).
But it was doubly heinous to introduce other gods, such as the Phoenician Baal, in direct violation of the first commandment, which requires the exclusive worship of the Lord (see Ex. 20:3). And now, in Hosea’s day, all forms of idolatry had continued “more and more,” until the nation was saturated with these false religions.
Work of craftsmen.
These images and idols had no spiritual or physical power (see Isa. 44:9–20; Hab. 2:18, 19).
Kiss calve-idols.
It was the custom of idol worshipers to kiss the object of their worship (see 1 Kings 19:18). If the image could not be approached (as the moon), the kiss was sent to it by the worshiper’s kissing his own hand (see on Job 31:27).
Hos 13:3 Therefore they will be like the morning mist, like the early dew that disappears, like chaff swirling from a threshing floor, like smoke escaping through a window.
Morning mist.
Ephraim’s prosperity is to be short-lived (see Ps. 37:35, 36); his apostasy will bring upon him sure and swift punishment. These four figures, the morning cloud, the early dew, the chaff, and the smoke, very expressively denote the transient nature of Israel’s national existence.
The Bible abounds in figures representing the transitoriness of human life (see Isa. 40:6–8; James 4:14; etc.).
Hos 13:4 “But I have been the LORD your God ever since you came out of Egypt. You shall acknowledge no God but me, no Savior except me.
Verses 4, 5 show that the divine punishment upon Ephraim cannot reasonably be accounted too severe in view of God’s goodness to ungrateful Israel. From the time His people were in Egypt, the Lord gave them His favor, which they shamelessly forgot. The prophets were in the habit of referring to the history of God’s saving grace in dealing with His people, as the basis of an appeal to repentance for present sin and as an encouragement to seek divine approval and acceptance.
No saviour.
Hosea here refers to God as the only true God, all other gods being frauds (see Isa. 43:10–12; Isa. 45:20, 21). The deliverance of Israel from Egypt was mighty evidence of God’s power.
Hos 13:5 I cared for you in the wilderness, in the land of burning heat.
In the wilderness.
Since God knew His people and cared for them, they should have retained a knowledge of Him (see on ch. 4:6) by preserving His worship (see Deut. 32:9–14).
Hos 13:6 When I fed them, they were satisfied; when they were satisfied, they became proud; then they forgot me.
On God’s rich pasture of love and goodness His people waxed full. Ephraim is like a domestic work animal (see on ch. 10:11) which, in a too-luxuriant pasture, becomes headstrong and unmanageable.
Forgot me.
Instead of remembering God gratefully and shaping their lives in accordance with His abundant favor toward them, the people were filled with pride and forgot their Maker.
The more this world’s goods are sought and prized, the more is God, the great Giver of all good, forgotten. This was the aggravation of Israel’s sin that the prophet so often called to the nation’s attention (see chs. 2:5; 4:7; 10:1).
Hos 13:7 So I will be like a lion to them, like a leopard I will lurk by the path.
A figure that fittingly depicts the destruction that inescapably follows Israel’s sin. The ravenous beasts mentioned here, the lion with its ferocity and the leopard with its fleetness, symbolize the soon-coming invasion of the Assyrians that will end the northern kingdom (see 2 Kings 17:1–6).
The fatted sheep in their luxuriant pasture (Hosea 13:6) will soon become the prey of the devourers.
Hos 13:8 Like a bear robbed of her cubs, I will attack them and rip them open; like a lion I will devour them— a wild animal will tear them apart.
Few animals are fiercer than the she-bear is, when she is robbed of her cubs or when she is very hungry. The LXX for the opening clause reads, “I will meet them by the way of the Assyrians, as a she-bear excited.”
The three wild beasts mentioned, the lion, the leopard, and the bear, aptly display the power of God’s wrath and the fury of His anger. If the sinner escaped from the lion, the leopard overtook him; if he escaped from the leopard the savage, she-bear met him.
It seems that Hosea is endeavoring to bring to his people with cumulative force a realization of what the visitation of divine wrath means. The prophet here employs the same terrifying figures from the animal world that are often elsewhere used to symbolize the nations that Satan employs to oppose and devour God’s people (see Jer. 4:7; 50:17, 44; Eze 32:2; Dan. 7:4 7).
Israel had closed their heart against God. The divine punishment is pictured as the rending of this closed heart by a lion. The prophet presents a graphic and impressive parallel to the day of judgment, when all hearts will be laid open before God (see Heb. 4:13; 10:30, 31).
Hos 13:9 “You are destroyed, Israel, because you are against me, against your helper.
Israel destroyed themselves with the weapons of pride, idolatry, sensuality, and anarchy. Sin is ever suicidal (Prov. 8:36; Eze. 18:20; 33:10, 11; 5T 120).
Your helper.
Israel’s extremity may be to them, if they will, God’s opportunity (see Isa. 49:14–16; Heb. 13:5). The verse is at once a tragic end and a comforting beginning, an assurance that while Israel’s ruin was caused by their own course of action, there is open still to them an opportunity to return to the Lord.
While throughout the whole course of human history wrath and ruin are the just desert of sinful man, goodness and mercy are the dispensation of a righteous, loving God.
Hos 13:10 Where is your king, that he may save you? Where are your rulers in all your towns, of whom you said, ‘Give me a king and princes’?
Your king. The questions in this verse show clearly that the kings of Israel’s own choice (see on ch. 8:4) could not give help to the nation. The reason the Israelites gave for requesting a king was that he might judge them and go out before them to fight their battles (1 Sam 8:19, 20).
Their fear of what hostile nations might do to them presented a crisis which they felt only a king could adequately meet. In the crisis now before them— the threat of Assyrian invasion—the Lord asks, “Where is now the king that will lead them to the defense of all their cities and their fortresses, and give them victory? Where are the judges and the princes who will act as deliverers from danger?”
The answers are, of course, that such powerful helpers are not to be found. If we confine the import of the words “your king” to the northern kingdom, the reference here is to Israel’s choice of Jeroboam I, in order to rid themselves of the pressure of Rehoboam’s taxes (1 Kings 12:12–20).
However, the use of the term “judges” and the wording of the people’s request suggest that this passage refers to Israel’s mistake in demanding a king in the first place (see 1 Sam 8:5) rather than to the northern kingdom’s rejection of Rehoboam and its selection of Jeroboam.
Hos 13:11 So in my anger I gave you a king, and in my wrath I took him away.
This king is undoubtedly Saul (see 1 Sam 8:4–7; 9:22 to 10:1). Augustine is reported to have stated, “God many times in giving is angry, and in denying is merciful” (see Num. 11; Ps. 78:18, 27–31, 38, 39; 106:14, 15, 43–46).
It is a sobering thought that God may punish men by granting them their wish.
Hos 13:12 The guilt of Ephraim is stored up, his sins are kept on record.
As a man, according to custom, wraps up money in a bag and deposits it in some secret place in order that it might be preserved, so God had carefully kept Ephraim’s sins (see Deut. 32:34, 35; Job 14:17).
Now Ephraim’s day of reckoning has come. Paul employs the same illustration regarding the fate of the sinner (Rom 2:4–6). Instead of hiding our sins we should bring them out into the full light of repentance and confession if we would be pardoned (see Job 31:33).
Hos 13:13 Pains as of a woman in childbirth come to him, but he is a child without wisdom; when the time arrives, he doesn’t have the sense to come out of the womb.
The punishment of which, God warns, is compared to the violent, sudden, irresistible throes of a travailing woman (see 1 Thess. 5:3). Israel’s iniquity will be followed by severe sufferings and many sorrows.
However, these worldly sorrows may, under divine grace, result in the godly sorrows of repentance. Then, and not till then, will a new and happier period of existence be ushered in.
Hos 13:14 “I will deliver this people from the power of the grave; I will redeem them from death. Where, O death, are your plagues? Where, O grave, is your destruction? “I will have no compassion,
The following translation is based on these considerations: “Shall I deliver this people from the power of the grave? Shall I redeem them from Death? Where, O grave is your destruction? O Sheol, where is your destruction? Compassion is hid from my eyes.”
Viewed in this way the passage warns that because “the iniquity of Ephraim is bound up,” God will not rescue the people from death; that He is, in fact, calling upon death and she’ol to do their work; and that compassion will be absent from Him while He does what is for Him a “strange work” (Isa. 28:21).
Those who hold that this passage is a promise of the resurrection point out that the words may be a sudden outburst by the prophet in view of the glorious future prospect and therefore appears to be detached from the context.
They interpret the passage, “Repentance shall be hid from mine eyes,” as asserting that God’s merciful purposes for His people will not be changed. Paul’s triumphant outburst in 1 Cor. 15:55, “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?” is perhaps an allusion to Hosea 13:14. The apostle’s words are more like the LXX than like the Hebrew. The corresponding clauses in the LXX read, “Where is thy punishment, O death? Where is thy sting, O Hades?”
Hos 13:15 even though he thrives among his brothers. An east wind from the LORD will come, blowing in from the desert; his spring will fail and his well dry up. His storehouse will be plundered of all its treasures.
The mighty armies of Assyria are represented by this figure. He is like a devastating east wind and would ravage and spoil Israel.
Hos 13:16 The people of Samaria must bear their guilt, because they have rebelled against their God. They will fall by the sword; their little ones will be dashed to the ground, their pregnant women ripped open.