Hosea 13:1

When Ephraim spake trembling, &c. The Hebrew is difficult, and the soundness of the text is perhaps questionable. At any rate, the rendering will depend on one's impression of the requirements of the context. To the present writer, no translation appears preferable to that of King James's Bible, and he has a pleasure in finding himself in accord with this version, which must of necessity rarely be the case in obscure passages. The single objection to the rendering is that expressed by Mr Huxtable in the Speaker's Commentary, viz. that it -would give to the tribe of Ephraim a character out of harmony alike with Hosea's description of it in Hosea 5:5 and with the history." But the passage referred to requires to be explained differently, and as to the history of the tribe, we are not here concerned with the facts as viewed critically, but as they presented themselves to a preacher in search of edification. Hosea has once already pointed the people of Israel to the golden age of the past, when Israel as a whole was comparable to -grapes in the wilderness" and -the firstripe in the fig tree" (Hosea 9:10, see note); he conceives of Jehovah as kindly overlooking the human frailty of his child in consideration of Israel's latent possibilities. -When Ephraim spake trembling", &c., may therefore be expanded thus, -When the Ephraimites in trembling accents responded to the divine call (comp. Hosea 2:15), they rose to the exalted position which its prophetic ancestor foreshadowed (Genesis 49:22-26)." The reference is partly to the leadership of the Ephraimite Joshua, partly to the prosperity which attended the tribe of Ephraim even when it no longer supplied a general, a judge, or a king to the entire nation. The other chief renderings are, -When Ephraim spake, [there was] terror", &c., i.e., men listened to Ephraim with fear and trembling; and, -When Ephraim spake of revolt (?), [and] lifted itself up [as a rebel] in Israel", continuing in the next clause, -it became guilty through Baal, and died." In the latter case, the reference is to the revolt of the Ten Tribes, and the public sanction then given to a retrograde religion. The advantage of this view is that it enables us to give precisely the same meaning to Ephraim in both parts of Hosea 13:1; but as the text stands, the writer feels unable to accept it, as the sense of -revolt" cannot be justified. It is very possible that the text is corrupt.

but when he offended in Baal, he died Rather, if the Authorized Version's view of the meaning be retained, but he became guilty through the Baal, and died. That is, in course of time, the Ten Tribes severed themselves definitely from the progressive teaching of the higher spiritual prophecy, and by so doing sealed their doom as a nation. The Baal-worship spoken of is not the form of religion against which Elijah thundered; that was introduced from Phœnicia, whereas a simpler but still idolatrous worship was offered by the northern Israelites to Jehovah under the name of -Baal" (see on Hosea 2:13; Hosea 2:16). Finding a multitude of Canaanitish sacred places dedicated each to its own -Baal" or patron-deity, they forthwith identified this Baal with their own Jehovah, and so fell under the same condemnation as their heathen predecessors. They failed to go forward with Amos and Hosea, and so they could not but fall behind to a degenerate and lower type of religion.

died Ephraim was -dead while he lived" (1 Timothy 5:6, comp. Proverbs 9:18, and Dante, InfernoXXXIII. 139 157). So Genesis 2:17, -in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die." Till Adam ate of the forbidden fruit, there was the hope that, though not created immortal, he might yet be exempted from decay and death. So, till Ephraim deliberately corrupted his religion, there was always the possibility that God might recognize him as a permanent factor in the religious history of the world. Comp. on Hosea 5:12.