Hosea 13:4

Yet I am the LORD thy God from the land of Egypt, and thou shalt know no god but me: for there is no saviour beside me. YET I AM THE LORD THY GOD FROM THE LAND OF EGYPT - (; , "I, even I, am the Lord; and besides me there is no saviour"). NO SAVIOUR (temporal as well as spiritual) BESIDES ME - (, "There is no God else besides me; a just God and a Saviour; there is none besides me")....

The Prophet now repeats the sentence which we have noticed in the last chapter for the sake of amplifying the sin of the people. For had they never known sound doctrine, had they never been brought up in the law, there would have been some colour for alleviating their fault; because they might have excused themselves by saying, that as they had never known true religion, they had gone astray according to the common practice of men; but as they had from infancy been taught sound doctrine, as God had brought them up as it were in his own bosom, as they had learned from their first years what it was to worship God purely, when they thus retook themselves to the superstitions of the heathens, what could there be for an excuse for them? We then see the bearing of the complaint, when God says, that he had been _the God of Israel from the land of Egypt _ _I am then_, he says, _Jehovah your God_...

1-8 While Ephraim kept up a holy fear of God, and worshipped Him in that fear, so long he was very considerable. When Ephraim forsook God, and followed idolatry, he sunk. Let the men that sacrifice kiss the calves, in token of their adoration of them, affection for them, and obedience to them; but the Lord will not give his glory to another, and therefore all that worship images shall be confounded. No solid, lasting comfort, is to be expected any where but in God. God not only took care of the Israelites in the wilderness, he put them in possession of Canaan, a good land; but worldly prosperity, when it feeds men's pride, makes them forgetful of God. Therefore the Lord would meet them in just vengeance, as the most terrible beast that inhabited their forests. Abused goodness calls for greater severity....

Verse Hosea 13:4. _I_ AM _THE LORD THY GOD_] This was the first discovery I made of myself to you, and the _first commandment_ I gave; and I showed you that besides me there was no Saviour. There is a remarkable addition in the Septuagint here: "But I am Jehovah thy God, who stretched out the heavens and created the earth. And I showed them not to thee, that thou shouldest walk after them. And I brought thee up out of the land of Egypt," c. This might have been once in the Hebrew text....

YET - , (literally, and) I am the Lord thy God from the land of Egypt God was still the same God who had sheltered them with His providence, ever since He had delivered them from Egypt. He had the same power and will to help them. Therefore their duty was the same, and their destruction arose, not from any change in Him, but from themselves. “God is the God of the ungodly, by creation and general providence.” AND THOU SHALT - (i. e., oughtest to) know no God but Me, for (literally, and) there is not a Saviour but me “To be God and Lord and Saviour are incommunicable properties of God. Wherefore God often claimed these titles to Himself, from the time He revealed Himself to Israel. In the song of Moses, which they were commanded to rehearse, He says, “See now that I, I am He, and there is no God with Me: I kill, and I make alive; I wound, and I heal; neither is there any that can deliver...

EXPOSITION The first eight verses of this chapter form the premises from which the prophet, in the ninth verse, draws the conclusion that the conduct of Israel had been suicidal; that they had brought on themselves the calamities which they had experienced, and ultimately the ruin in which those calamities eventuated. The various particulars of their sin are enumerated, with the provocation caused or the punishment incurred by each. Thus the idolatry of Baal stripped them of the authority they once possessed, and issued in the dissolution of their state. After they had been to some small extent reclaimed from this national sin, and had somewhat retrieved their position, their perseverance in the calf-worship and the progress of their idolatrous practices provoked Jehovah so grievously as to threaten their sudden and entire destruction. Then their gross ingratitude to God for his great go...

YET I [AM] THE LORD THY GOD FROM THE LAND OF EGYPT,.... Which brought thee out from thence, as the Targum; and ever since, from that time to this, had shown a regard unto them, as the Lord their God, both in the wilderness, as later mentioned, and in the land of Canaan, where they had been continued, and followed with instances of goodness to that day, and yet find sinned in so gross a manner; which argued great ingratitude in them, and forgetfulness of the Lord, and his mercies: AND THOU SHALT KNOW NO GOD BUT ME; they ought to have known, acknowledged, and worshipped no other god, as was enjoined them in the law: or, "thou knowest not" b; they did not know any other, which they in their own consciences were obliged to confess, if appealed to; however, they should know no other; by sad experience they would find that there was no other that could be of any service to them; their images...

Hosea was full of complaints against the people of God; for, in his day, they had very sadly wandered from the Lord. They had even forgotten him. In Hosea's prophecy, we have the plaintive voice of a loving God chiding his backsliding children. Hosea 13:1. _When Ephraim spake trembling, he exalted himself in Israel; but when he offended in Baal, he died._ A modest, humble, trembling heart is often by far the sounder heart, but when we begin to sin, and to sin boastfully, and to wrap ourselves about with the robe of self-complacency, then is death very near to us: «When Ephraim spake trembling, he exalted himself in Israel; but when he offended in Baal, he died.» Hosea 13:2. And now they sin more and more, and have made them molten images of their silver, and idols according to

CHAPTER 13 EPHRAIM'S RUIN AND JUDGMENT _ 1. Ruin and judgment (Hosea 13:1) _ 2. It is thy destruction, O Israel! (Hosea 13:9) 3. Mercy to follow wrath (Hosea 13:12) 4. The desolation of the nearing judgment (Hosea 13:15) Hosea 13:1. In the beginning Ephraim was humble, and knowing his dependence, he spoke with trembling. Then he became puffed up, exalted himself in Israel, loving the preeminence, it led on to the schism from Judah and the house of David. The next step after this separation from Judah was idolatry, then

HOSEA 13:1 (= Heb. Hosea 13:1 to Hosea 14:1). FACILIS DESCENSUS AVERNO. Israel has persistently lapsed into the Baal-worship and idolatry, and therefore shall be swept away as the chaff (Hosea 13:1). Yahweh has brought him up from Egypt, protected him in the wilderness, and given him plenty, yet he has forgotten Him (Hosea 13:4), therefore He is against them as a bear bereaved of her whelps. Israel's ruin is self-imposed (Hosea 13:7) and his kings are powerless ...