not gone: See thy way in the valley, know what thou hast done, O swift
she-camel, running hither and thither_ (literally _intertwining_ or
_crossing her ways_) (ver. 23). The prophet anticipates a possible
attempt at self-justification; just as in ver. 35 he complains of
Israel's self-righteousness. Both here and there he is dealing with
his own contemporaries in Judah; whereas the idolatry described in
ver. 20 _sqq._ is chiefly that of the ruined kingdom of Ephraim (ch.
iii. 24; 2 Kings xvii. 10). It appears that the worship of Baal proper
only existed in Judah for a brief period in the reign of Ahaziah's
usurping queen Athaliah, side by side with the worship of Iahvah
(2 Chron. xxiii. 17); while on the high-places and at the local
sanctuaries the God of Israel was honoured (2 Kings xviii. 22). So far
as the prophet's complaints refer to old times, Judah could certainly
boast of a relatively higher purity than the northern kingdom; and the
manifold heathenism of Manasseh's reign had been abolished a whole
year before this address was delivered (2 Chron. xxxiv. 3 _sqq._).
"The valley" spoken of as the scene of Judah's misdoings is that
of Ben-Hinnom, south of Jerusalem, where, as the prophet elsewhere
relates (vii. 31, xxxii. 35; 2 Kings xxiii. 10), the people sacrificed
children by fire to the god Molech, whom he expressly designates as a
_Baal_ (xix. 5, xxxii. 35), using the term in its wider significance,
which includes all the aspects of the Canaanite sun-god. And because
Judah betook herself now to Iahvah, and now to Molech, varying, as
it were, her capricious course from right to left and from left to
right, and halting evermore between two opinions (1 Kings xviii. 21),
the prophet calls her "a swift young she-camel,"--swift, that is,
for evil--"intertwining, or crossing her ways." The hot zeal with
which the people wantonly plunged into a sensual idolatry is aptly
set forth in the figure of the next verse. A _wild ass, used to the
wilderness_ (Job xxiv. 5), _in the craving of her soul she snuffeth
up_ (xiv. 6) _the wind_ (_not_ "lässt sie kaum Athem genug finden,
indem sie denselben vorweg vergeudet," as Hitzig; but, as a wild beast
scenting prey, cf. xiv. 6, or food afar off, she scents companions
at a distance); _her greedy lust, who can turn it back? None that
seek her need weary themselves; in her month they find her._ While
passion rages, animal instinct is too strong to be diverted from its
purpose; it is idle to argue with blind appetite; it goes straight to
its mark, like an arrow from a bow. Only when it has had its way, and
the reaction of nature follows, does the influence of reason become
possible. Such was Israel's passion for the false gods. They had no
need to seek her (Hos. ii. 7; Ezek. xvi. 34); in the hour of her
infatuation, she fell an easy victim to their passive allurements.
(The "month" is the season when the sexual instinct is strong.)
Warnings fell on deaf ears. _Keep back thy foot from bareness, and thy
throat from thirst!_ This cry of the prophets availed nothing: _Thou
saidst, It is vain!_ (_sc._ that thou urgest me.) _No, for I love the
strangers and after them will I go!_ The meaning of the admonition is
not very clear. Some (_e.g._ Rosenmüller) have understood a reference
to the shameless doings, and the insatiable cravings of lust. Others
(as Gesenius) explain the words thus: "Do not pursue thy lovers in
such hot haste, as to wear thy feet bare in the wild race!" Others,
again, take the prohibition literally, and connect the barefootedness
and the thirst with the orgies of Baal-worship (Hitz.), in which the
priests leaped or rather limped with bare feet (what proof?) on the
blazing âltar, as an act of religious mortification, shrieking the
while till their throats were parched and dry (Ps. lxix. 4, נְּרֹונִי
נִחַר), in frenzied appeal to their lifeless god (cf. Ex. iii. 5; 2
Sam. xv. 30; 1 Kings xviii. 26). In this case, the command is, Cease
this self-torturing and bootless worship! But the former sense seems
to agree better with the context.
_Like the shame of a thief, when he is detected, so are the house of
Israel ashamed--they, their kings, their princes, and their priests,
and their prophets; in that they say_ (are ever saying) _to the wood_
(iii. 9 in Heb. masc.), _Thou art my father!_ (iii. 4) _and to the
stone_ (in Heb. fem.), _Thou didst bring me forth! For they_ (xxxii.
33) _have turned towards Me the back and not the face; but in the
time of their trouble they say_ (begin to say), _O rise and save us!
But where are thy gods that thou madest for thyself? Let them arise,
if they can save thee in the time of thy trouble; for numerous as
thy cities are thy gods become, O Judah!_ (vv. 26-28). "The Shame"
(הבשת) is the well-known title of opprobrium which the prophets apply
to Baal. Even in the histories, which largely depend on prophetic
sources, we find such substitutions as Ishbosheth for Eshbaal, the
"Man of Shame" for "Baal's Man." Accordingly, the point of ver. 26
_sqq._ is, that as Israel has served the Shame, the idol-gods, instead
of Iahvah, shame has been and will be her reward: in the hour of
bitter need, when she implores help from the One true God, she is put
to shame by being referred back to her senseless idols. The "Israel"
intended is the entire nation, as in ver. 3, and not merely the
fallen kingdom of Ephraim. In ver. 28 the prophet specially addresses
Judah, the surviving representative of the whole people. In the book
of Judges (x. 10-14) the same idea of the attitude of Iahvah towards
His faithless people finds historical illustration. Oppressed by the
Ammonites they "cried unto the Lord, saying, We have sinned against
Thee, in that we have both forsaken our own God, and have served the
Baals;" but Iahvah, after reminding them of past deliverances followed
by fresh apostasies, replies: "Go, and cry unto the gods which ye have
chosen; let _them_ save you in the time of your distress!" Here also
we hear the echoes of a prophetic voice. The object of such ironical
utterances was by no means to deride the self-caused miseries in
which Israel was involved; but, as is evident from the sequel of the
narrative in Judges, to deepen penitence and contrition, by making
the people realize the full flagrancy of their sin, and the suicidal
folly of their desertions of the God whom, in times of national
distress, they recognised as the only possible Saviour. In the same
way and with the same end in view, the prophetic psalmist of Deut.
xxxii. represents the God of Israel as asking (ver. 37) "Where are
their gods; the Rock in which they sought refuge? That used to eat
the flesh of their sacrifices, that drank the wine of their libation?
Let them arise and help you; let them be over you a shelter!" The
purpose is to bring home to them a conviction of the utter vanity of
idol-worship; for the poet continues: "See _now_ that I even I am
He"--the one God--"and there is no God beside Me" (with Me, sharing My
sole attributes); "'Tis I that kill and save alive; I have crushed,
and _I_ heal." The folly of Israel is made conspicuous, first by
the expression "Saying to the wood, Thou art my father, and to the
stone, Thou didst bring me forth;" and secondly, by the statement,
"Numerous as thy cities are thy gods become, O Judah!" In the former,
we have a most interesting glimpse of the point of view of the heathen
worshipper of the seventh century B.C., from which it appears that
by a _god_ he meant the original, _i.e._, the real author of his own
existence. Much has been written in recent years to prove that man's
elementary notions of deity are of an altogether lower kind than those
which find expression in the worship of a Father in heaven; but when
we see that such an idea could subsist even in connexion with the most
impure nature-worships, as in Canaan, and when we observe that it was
a familiar conception in the religion of Egypt several thousand years
previously, we may well doubt whether this idea of an Unseen Father of
our race is not as old as humanity itself.
The sarcastic reference to the number of Judah's idols may remind us
of what is recorded of classic Athens, in whose streets it was said to
be easier to find a god than a man. The irony of the prophet's remark
depends on the consideration that there is, or ought to be, safety
in numbers. The impotence of the false gods could hardly be put in a
stronger light in words as few as the prophet has used. In chap. xi.
13 he repeats the statement in an amplified form: "For numerous as thy
cities have thy gods become, O Judah; and numerous as the streets of
Jerusalem have ye made altars for The Shame, altars for sacrificing to
the Baal." From this passage, apparently, the LXX. derived the words
which it adds here: "And according to the number of the streets of
Jerusalem did they sacrifice to the (image of) Baal" (ἔθυον τῇ Βάαλ).
_Why contend ye with Me? All of you have rebelled against Me, saith
Iahvah._ (LXX. ἠσεβήσατε, καὶ πάντες ὑμεῖς ἠνομήσατε εἰς ἐμέ. "Ebenfalls
authentisch" says Hitzig). _In vain have I smitten your sons; correction
they_ (i.e., the people; but LXX. ἐδέξασθε may be correct), _received
not! your own_ _sword hath eaten up your prophets, like a destroying
lion. Generation that ye are! See the word of Iahvah! Is it a wilderness
that I have been to Israel, or a land of deepest gloom? Why have My
people said, We are free; we will come no more unto Thee? Doth a virgin
forget her ornaments, a bride her bands_ (or _garlands_, Rashi)? _yet
My people hath forgotten Me days without number_ (vv. 29-32). The
question, "Why contend, or dispute ye (תריבו), or, as the LXX. has it,
talk ye (תדברו) towards or about Me (אלי)?" implies that the people
murmured at the reproaches and menaces of the prophet (ver. 26 _sqq._).
He answers them by denying their right to complain. Their rebellion
has been universal; no chastisement has reformed them; Iahvah has done
nothing which can be alleged in excuse of their unfaithfulness; their
sin is, therefore, a portentous anomaly, for which it is impossible
to find a parallel in ordinary human conduct. In vain had "their
sons," the young men of military age, fallen in battle (Amos iv. 10);
the nation had stubbornly refused to see in such disasters a sign of
Iahvah's displeasure, a token of Divine chastisement; or rather, while
recognising the wrath of heaven, they had obstinately persisted in
believing in false explanations of its motive, and refused to admit that
the purpose of it was their religious and moral amendment. And not only
had the nation refused warning, and despised instruction, and defeated
the purposes of the Divine discipline. They had slain their spiritual
monitors, the prophets, with the sword; the prophets who had founded
upon the national disasters their rebukes of national sin, and their
earnest calls to penitence and reform (1 Kings xix. 10; Neh. ix. 26;
St. Matt. xxiii. 37). And so when at last the long deferred judgment
arrived, it found a political system ready to go to pieces through the
feebleness and corruption of the ruling classes; a religious system, of
which the spirit had long since evaporated, and which simply survived in
the interests of a venal priesthood, and its intimate allies, who made a
trade of prophecy; and a kingdom and people ripe for destruction.
At the thought of this crowning outrage, the prophet cannot restrain
his indignation. "Generation that ye are!" he exclaims, "behold the
word of the Lord. Is it a wilderness that I have been to Israel, or a
land of deepest gloom?" Have I been a thankless, barren soil, returning
nothing for your culture? The question is more pointed in Hebrew than in
English; for the same term (עבד `abad) means both to till the ground,
and to serve and worship God. We have thus an emphatic repetition of the
remonstrance with which the address opens: Iahweh has not been unmindful
of Israel's service; Israel has been persistently ungrateful for
Iahvah's gracious love. The cry "We are free!" (רדנו) implies that they
had broken away from a painful yoke and a burdensome service (cf. ver.
20); the yoke being that of the Moral Law, and the service that perfect
freedom which consists in subjection to Divine Reason. Thus sin always
triumphs in casting away man's noblest prerogative; in trampling under
foot that loyalty to the higher ideal which is the bridal adornment and
the peculiar glory of the soul.
_Why hurriest thou to seek thy love?_ (Lit. _why dost thou make good
thy way?_ somewhat as we say, "to make good way with a thing") (ver.
33). The key to the meaning here is supplied by ver. 36: _Why art thou
in such haste to change thy way? In_ (Of) _Egypt also thou shalt be
disappointed, as thou wert in Assyria._ The "way" is that which leads
to Egypt; and the "love" is that apostasy from Iahvah which invariably
accompanies an alliance with foreign peoples (ver. 18). If you go to
Assyria, you "drink the waters of the Euphrates," _i.e._, you are
exposed to all the malign influences of the heathen land. Elsewhere,
also (iv. 30), Jeremiah speaks of the foreign peoples, whose connexion
Israel so anxiously courted, as her "lovers"; and the metaphor is a
common one in the prophets.
The words which follow are obscure. _Therefore the evil things also
hast thou taught thy ways._ What "evil things"? Elsewhere the term
denotes _misfortunes_, _calamities_ (Lam. iii. 38); and so probably
here (cf. iii. 5). The sense seems to be: Thou hast done evil, and in
so doing hast taught Evil to dog thy steps! The term _evil_ obviously
suggests the two meanings of sin and the punishment of sin; as we
say, "Be sure your _sin_ will find you out!" Ver. 34 explains what
was the special sin that followed and clung to Israel: _Also, in thy
skirts_--the borders of thy garments--_are they_ (the evil things)
_found_, viz., _the life-blood of innocent helpless ones; not that
thou didst find them house-breaking_, and so hadst excuse for slaying
them (Exod. xxii. 2); _but for all these_ warnings or, because of all
these apostasies and dallyings with the heathen, which they denounced
(cf. iii. 7), _thou slewest them_. The murder of the prophets (ver.
30) was the unatoned guilt which clung to the skirts of Israel.
_And thou saidst, Certainly I am absolved! Surely His wrath is
turned away from me! Behold I wilt reason with thee, because thou
sayest, I sinned not!_ (ver. 35). This is what the people said when
they murdered the prophets. They, and doubtless their false guides,
regarded the national disasters as so much atonement for their
sins. They believed that Iahvah's wrath had exhausted itself in the
infliction of what they had already endured, and that they were now
absolved from their offences. The prophets looked at the matter
differently. To them, national disasters were warnings of worse to
follow, unless the people would take them in that sense, and turn from
their evil ways. The people preferred to think that their account
with Iahvah had been balanced and settled by their misfortunes in war
(ver. 30). Hence they slew those who never wearied of affirming the
contrary, and threatening further woe, as false prophets (Deut. xviii.
20). The saying, "I sinned not!" refers to these cruel acts; they
declared themselves guiltless in the matter of slaying the prophets,
as if their blood was on their own heads. The only practical issue of
the national troubles was that instead of reforming, they sought to
enter into fresh alliances with the heathen, thus, from the point of
view of the prophets, adding sin to sin. _Why art thou in such haste
to change thy way?_ (_i.e._ thy course of action, thy foreign policy).
_Through Egypt also shalt thou be shamed, as thou hast been shamed
through Assyria. Out of this affair also_ (or, _from him_, as the
country is perhaps personified as a lover of Judah;) _shalt thou go
forth with thine hands upon thine head_ (in token of distress, 2 Sam.
xiii. 19: Tamar); _for Iahvah hath rejected the objects of thy trust,
so that thou canst not be successful regarding them_ (vv. 36, 37).
The Egyptian alliance, like the former one with Assyria, was destined
to bring nothing but shame and confusion to the Jewish people. The
prophet urges past experience of similar undertakings, in the hope of
deterring the politicians of the day from their foolish enterprise.
But all that they had learnt from the failure and loss entailed by
their intrigues with one foreign power was, that it was expedient to
try another. So they made haste to "change their way," to alter the
direction of their policy from Assyria to Egypt. King Hezekiah had
renounced his vassalage to Assyria, in reliance, as it would seem, on
the support of Taharka, king of Egypt and Ethiopia (2 Kings xviii. 7;
cf. Isa. xxx. 1-5); and now again the nation was coquetting with the
same power. As has been stated, an Egyptian force lay at this time on
the confines of Judah, and the prophet may be referring to friendly
advances of the Jewish princes towards its leaders.
In the Hebrew, ch. iii. opens with the word "saying" (לֵאמֹר). No real
parallel to this can be found elsewhere, and the Sept. and Syriac
omit the term. Whether we follow these ancient authorities, and do
the same, or whether we prefer to suppose that the prophet originally
wrote, as usually, "And the Word of Iahvah came unto me, saying,"
will not make much difference. One thing is clear; the division of
the chapters is in this instance erroneous, for the short section,
iii. 1-5, obviously belongs to and completes the argument of ch.
ii. The statement of ver. 37, that Israel will not prosper in the
negotiations with Egypt, is justified in iii. 1 by the consideration
that prosperity is an outcome of the Divine favour, which Israel
has forfeited. The rejection of Israel's "confidences" implies the
rejection of the people themselves (vii. 29). _If a man divorce
his wife and she go away from him_ (מֵאִתֹּו _de chez luı_), _and
become another man's, doth he_ (her former husband) _return unto
her again? Would not that land be utterly polluted?_ It is the case
contemplated in the Book of the Law (Deut. xxiv. 1-4), the supposition
being that the second husband may divorce the woman, or that the bond
between them may be dissolved by his death. In either contingency,
the law forbade reunion with the former husband, as "abomination
before Iahvah;" and David's treatment of his ten wives, who had been
publicly wedded by his rebel son Absalom, proves the antiquity of
the usage in this respect (2 Sam. xx. 3). The relation of Israel to
Iahvah is the relation to her former husband of the divorced wife who
has married another. If anything it is worse. _And thou, thou hast
played the harlot with many paramours; and shalt thou return unto
Me? saith Iahvah._ The very idea of it is rejected with indignation.
The Author of the law will not so flagrantly break the law. (With
the Heb. form of the question, cf. the Latin use of the infin. "Mene
incepto desistere victam?") The details of the unfaithfulness of
Israel--the proofs that she belongs to others and not to Iahvah--are
glaringly obvious; contradiction is impossible. _Lift up thine eyes
upon the bare fells, and see!_ cries the prophet; _where hast thou
not been forced? By the roadsides thou satest for them like a Bedawi
in the wilderness, and thou pollutedst the land with thy whoredom
and with thine evil_ (Hos. vi. 13). On every hill-top the evidence
of Judah's sinful dalliance with idols was visible; in her eagerness
to consort with the false gods, the objects of her infatuation, she
was like a courtesan looking out for paramours by the wayside (Gen.
xxxviii. 14), or an Arab lying in wait for the unwary traveller in
the desert. (There may be a reference to the artificial _bamoth_ or
"high places" erected at the top of the streets, on which the wretched
women, consecrated to the shameful rites of the Canaanite goddess
Ashtoreth, were wont to sit plying their trade of temptation: 2 Kings
xxiii. 8; Ezek. xvi. 25). We must never forget that, repulsive and
farfetched as these comparisons of an apostate people to a sinful
woman may seem to us, the ideas and customs of the time made them
perfectly apposite. The worship of the gods of Canaan involved the
practice of the foulest impurities; and by her revolt from Iahvah,
her lord and husband, according to the common Semitic conception
of the relation between a people and their god, Israel became a
harlot in fact as well as in figure. The land was polluted with her
"whoredoms," _i.e._, her worship of the false gods, and her practice
of their vile rites; and with her "evil," as instanced above (ii. 30,
35) in the murder of those who protested against these things (Num.
xxxv. 33; Ps. cvi. 38). As a punishment for these grave offences,
_the showers were withholden, and the spring rains fell not_; but the
merciful purpose of this Divine chastisement was not fulfilled; the
people were not stirred to penitence, but rather hardened in their
sins: _but thou hadst a harlot's forehead; thou refusedst to be made
ashamed_! And now the day of grace is past, and repentance comes too
late. _Hast thou not but now called unto Me, My Father! Friend of
my youth wert Thou? Will He retain His wrath for ever? or keep it
without end?_ (vv. 3, 5). The reference appears to be to the external
reforms accomplished by the young king Josiah in his twelfth year--the
year previous to the utterance of this prophecy; when, as we read in
2 Chron. xxxiv. 3, "He began to purge Judah and Jerusalem from the
high places, and the Asherim, and the carven images, and the molten
images." To all appearance, it was a return of the nation to its old
allegiance; the return of the rebellious child to its father, of the
erring wife to the husband of her youth. By those two sacred names
which in her inexcusable fickleness and ingratitude she had lavished
upon stocks and stones, Israel now seemed to be invoking the relenting
compassion of her alienated God (ii. 27, ii. 2). But apart from the
doubt attaching to the reality of reformations to order, carried
out in obedience to a royal decree; apart from the question whether
outward changes so easily and rapidly accomplished, in accordance
with the will of an absolute monarch, were accompanied by any tokens
of a genuine national repentance; the sin of Israel had gone too
far, and been persisted in too long, for its terrible consequences
to be averted. _Behold_--it is the closing sentence of the address;
a sentence fraught with despair, and the certainty of coming
ruin;--_Behold, thou hast planned and accomplished the evil_ (ii. 33);
_and thou hast prevailed!_ The approaches of the people are met by the
assurance that their own plans and doings, rather than Iahvah's wrath,
are the direct cause of past and prospective adversity; ill doing is
the mother of ill fortune. Israel inferred from her troubles that God
was angry with her; and she is informed by His prophet that, had she
been bent on bringing those troubles about, she could not have chosen
any other line of conduct than that which she had actually pursued.
The term "evils" again suggests both the false and impure worships,
and their calamitous moral consequences. Against the will of Iahvah,
His people _had wrought for its own ruin_, and had prevailed.