_A PEOPLE IN DECAY: II. POLITICALLY_
HOSEA vii. 8-x.
Moral decay means political decay. Sins like these are the gangrene
of nations. It is part of Hosea's greatness to have traced this,
a proof of that versatility which distinguishes him above other
prophets. The most spiritual of them all, he is at the same time the
most political. We owe him an analysis of repentance to which the New
Testament has little to add;[537] but he has also left us a criticism
of society and of politics in Israel, unrivalled except by Isaiah. We
owe him an intellectual conception of God,[538] which for the first
time in Israel exploded idolatry; yet he also is the first to define
Israel's position in the politics of Western Asia. With the simple
courage of conscience Amos had said to the people: You are bad,
therefore you must perish. But Hosea's is the insight to follow the
processes by which sin brings forth death--to trace, for instance,
the effects of impurity upon a nation's powers of reproduction, as
well as upon its intellectual vigour.
So intimate are these two faculties of Hosea, that in chapters
devoted chiefly to the sins of Israel we have already seen him
expose the political disasters that follow. But from the point we
have now reached--chap. vii. 8--the proportion of his prophesying is
reversed: he gives us less of the sin and more of the social decay
and political folly of his age.
I. THE CONFUSION OF THE NATION.
HOSEA vii. 8-viii. 3.
Hosea begins by summing up the public aspect of Israel in two
epigrams, short but of marvellous adequacy (vii. 8):--
_Ephraim--among the nations he mixeth himself:_
_Ephraim has become a cake not turned._
It is a great crisis for any nation to pass from the seclusion of
its youth and become a factor in the main history of the world. But
for Israel the crisis was trebly great. Their difference from all
other tribes about them had struck the Canaanites on their first
entry to the land:[539] their own earliest writers had emphasised
their seclusion as their strength;[540] and their first prophets
consistently deprecated every overture made by them either to Egypt
or to Assyria. We feel the force of the prophets' policy when we
remember what happened to the Philistines. These were a people as
strong and as distinctive as Israel, with whom at one time they
disputed possession of the whole land. But their position as traders
in the main line of traffic between Asia and Africa rendered the
Philistines peculiarly open to foreign influence. They were now
Egyptian vassals, now Assyrian victims; and after the invasion of
Alexander the Great their cities became centres of Hellenism, while
the Jews upon their secluded hills still stubbornly held unmixed
their race and their religion. This contrast, so remarkably developed
in later centuries, has justified the prophets of the eighth in
their anxiety that Israel should not annul the advantages of her
geographical seclusion by trade or treaties with the Gentiles. But it
was easier for Judæa to take heed to the warning than for Ephraim.
The latter lies as open and fertile as her sister-province is barren
and aloof. She has many gates into the world, and they open upon many
markets. Nobler opportunities there could not be for a nation in the
maturity of its genius and loyal to its vocation:--
_Rejoice, O Zebulun, in thine outgoings:_
_They shall call the nations to the mountain;_
_They shall suck of the abundance of the seas,_
_And of the treasure that is stored in the sands._[541]
But in the time of his outgoings Ephraim was not sure of himself
nor true to his God, the one secret and strength of the national
distinctiveness. So he met the world weak and unformed, and, instead
of impressing it, was by it dissipated and confused. The tides of a
lavish commerce scattered abroad the faculties of the people, and
swept back upon their life alien fashions and tempers, to subdue
which there was neither native strength nor definiteness of national
purpose. All this is what Hosea means by the first of his epigrams:
_Ephraim--among the nations he lets himself be poured out_, or
_mixed up_. The form of the verb does not elsewhere occur; but it
is reflexive, and the meaning of the root is certain. _Balal_ is to
_pour out_, or _mingle_, as of oil in the sacrificial flour. Yet
it is sometimes used of a mixing which is not sacred, but profane
and hopeless. It is applied to the first great confusion of mankind,
to which a popular etymology has traced the name Babel, as if for
Balbel. Derivatives of the stem bear the additional ideas of staining
and impurity. The alternative renderings which have been proposed,
_lets himself be soaked_ and _scatters himself_ abroad like wheat
among tares, are not so probable, yet hardly change the meaning.[542]
Ephraim wastes and confuses himself among the Gentiles. The nation's
character is so disguised that Hosea afterwards nicknames him
Canaan;[543] their religion so filled with foreign influences that he
calls the people the harlot of the Ba'alim.
If the first of Hosea's epigrams satirises Israel's foreign
relations, the second, with equal brevity and wit, hits off the
temper and constitution of society at home. For the metaphor of which
this epigram is composed Hosea has gone to the baker. Among all
classes in the East, especially under conditions requiring haste,
there is in demand a round flat scone, which is baked by being laid
on hot stones or attached to the wall of a heated oven. The whole art
of baking consists in turning the scone over at the proper moment. If
this be mismanaged, it does not need a baker to tell us that one side
may be burnt to a cinder, while the other remains raw. _Ephraim_,
says Hosea, _is an unturned cake._
By this he may mean one of several things, or all of them together,
for they are infectious of each other. There was, for instance, the
social condition of the people. What can better be described as an
unturned scone than a community one half of whose number are too
rich, and the other too poor? Or Hosea may refer to that unequal
distribution of religion through life with which in other parts of
his prophecy he reproaches Israel. They keep their religion, as
Amos more fully tells us, for their temples, and neglect to carry
its spirit into their daily business. Or he may refer to Israel's
politics, which were equally in want of thoroughness. They rushed
hotly at an enterprise, but having expended so much fire in the
beginning of it, they let the end drop cold and dead. Or he may wish
to satirise, like Amos, Israel's imperfect culture--the pretentious
and overdone arts, stuck excrescence-wise upon the unrefined bulk
of the nation, just as in many German principalities last century
society took on a few French fashions in rough and exaggerated forms,
while at heart still brutal and coarse. Hosea may mean any one of
these things, for the figure suits all, and all spring from the
same defect. Want of thoroughness and equable effort was Israel's
besetting sin, and it told on all sides of his life. How better
describe a half-fed people, a half-cultured society, a half-lived
religion, a half-hearted policy, than by a half-baked scone?
We who are so proud of our political bakers, we who scorn the rapid
revolutions of our neighbours and complacently dwell upon our equable
ovens, those slow and cautious centuries of political development
which lie behind us--have we anything better than our neighbours,
anything better than Israel, to show in our civilisation? Hosea's
epigram fits us to the letter. After all those ages of baking,
society is still with us _an unturned scone_: one end of the nation
with the strength burnt out of it by too much enjoyment of life, the
other with not enough of warmth to be quickened into anything like
adequate vitality. No man can deny that this is so; we are able to
live only by shutting our hearts to the fact. Or is religion equably
distributed through the lives of the religious portion of our nation?
Of late years religion has spread, and spread wonderfully, but of how
many Christians is it still true that they are but half-baked--living
a life one side of which is reeking with the smoke of sacrifice,
while the other is never warmed by one religious thought. We may
have too much religion if we confine it to one day or one department
of life: our worship overdone, with the sap and the freshness burnt
out of it, cindery, dusty, unattractive, fit only for crumbling; our
conduct cold, damp and heavy, like dough the fire has never reached.
Upon the theme of these two epigrams the other verses of this
chapter are variations. Has Ephraim mixed himself among the peoples?
_Strangers have devoured his strength, and he knoweth it not_,
senselessly congratulating himself upon the increase of his trade and
wealth, while he does not feel that these have sucked from him all
his distinctive virtue. _Yea, grey hairs are sprinkled upon him, and
he knoweth it not._ He makes his energy the measure of his life, as
Isaiah also marked,[544] but sees not that it all means waste and
decay. _The pride of Israel testifieth to his face, yet_--even when
the pride of the nation is touched to the quick by such humiliating
overtures as they make to both Assyria and Egypt[545]--_they do not
return to Jehovah their God, nor seek Him for all this_.
With virtue and single-hearted faith have disappeared intellect and
the capacity for affairs. _Ephraim is become like a silly dove--a dove
without heart_, to the Hebrews the organ of the wits of a man--_they
cry to Egypt, they go off to Assyria_. Poor pigeon of a people,
fluttering from one refuge to another! But _as they go I will throw
over them My net, like a bird of the air I will bring them down. I
will punish them as their congregation have heard_--this text as it
stands[546] can only mean "in the manner I have publicly proclaimed in
Israel." _Woe to them that they have strayed from Me! Damnation to them
that they have rebelled against Me! While I would have redeemed them,
they spoke lies about Me. And they have never cried unto Me with their
heart, but they keep howling on their beds for corn and new wine._ No
real repentance theirs, but some fear of drought and miscarriage of
the harvests, a sensual and servile sorrow in which they wallow. They
seek God with no heart, no true appreciation of what He is, but use
the senseless means by which the heathen invoke their gods: _they cut
themselves,_[547] _and_ so _apostatise from Me! And yet it was I who
disciplined them, I strengthened their arm, but with regard to Me they
kept thinking_ only _evil!_ So fickle and sensitive to fear, _they
turn_ indeed, _but not upwards_; no Godward conversion theirs. In their
repentance _they are like a bow which swerves_--off upon some impulse
of their ill-balanced natures. _Their princes must fall by the sword
because of the bitterness_--we should have expected "falseness"--_of
their tongue: this is their scorn in the land of Egypt!_ To the
allusion we have no key.
With so false a people nothing can be done. Their doom is inevitable. So
"Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war."
_To thy mouth with the trumpet! The Eagle is down upon the house of
Jehovah!_[548] Where the carcase is, there are the eagles gathered
together. _For_--to sum up the whole crisis--_they have transgressed
My covenant, and against My law have they rebelled. To Me they cry,
My God, we know Thee, we Israel!_ What does it matter? _Israel hath
spurned the good:_[549] _the Foe must pursue him._
It is the same climax of inevitable war to which Amos led up his
periods; and a new subject is now introduced.
2. ARTIFICIAL KINGS AND ARTIFICIAL GODS.
HOSEA viii. 4-13.
The curse of such a state of dissipation as that to which Israel had
fallen is that it produces no men. Had the people had in them "the
root of the matter," had there been the stalk and the fibre of a
national consciousness and purpose, it would have blossomed to a man.
In the similar time of her outgoings upon the world Prussia had her
Frederick the Great, and Israel, too, would have produced a leader, a
heaven-sent king, if the national spirit had not been squandered on
foreign trade and fashions. But after the death of Jeroboam every man
who rose to eminence in Israel, rose, not on the nation, but only on
the fevered and transient impulse of some faction; and through the
broken years one party monarch was lifted after another to the brief
tenancy of a blood-stained throne. They were not from God, these
monarchs; but man-made, and sooner or later man-murdered. With his
sharp insight Hosea likens these artificial kings to the artificial
gods, also the work of men's hands; and till near the close of his
book the idols of the sanctuary and the puppets of the throne form
the twin targets of his scorn.
_They have made kings, but not from Me; they have made princes, but
I knew not. With their silver and their gold they have manufactured
themselves idols, only that they_[550] _may be cut off_--king after
king, idol upon idol. _He loathes thy Calf, O Samaria_, the thing
of wood and gold which thou callest Jehovah. And God confirms this.
_Kindled is Mine anger against them! How long will they be incapable of
innocence?_--unable to clear themselves of guilt! The idol is still in
his mind. _For from Israel is it also_--as much as the puppet-kings;
_a workman made it, and no god is it. Yea, splinters shall the Calf of
Samaria become._[551] Splinters shall everything in Israel become.
_For they sow the wind, and the whirlwind shall they reap._ Indeed like
a storm Hosea's own language now sweeps along; and his metaphors are
torn into shreds upon it. _Stalk it hath none: the sprout brings forth
no grain: if it were to bring forth, strangers would swallow it._[552]
Nay, _Israel hath let herself be swallowed up! Already are they become
among the nations like a vessel there is no more use for._ Heathen
empires have sucked them dry. _They have gone up to Assyria like a
runaway wild-ass. Ephraim hath hired lovers._[553] It is again the
note of their mad dissipation among the foreigners. _But if they_ thus
_give themselves away among the nations, I must gather them in, and_
then _shall they have to cease a little from the anointing of a king
and princes_.[554] This wilful roaming of theirs among the foreigners
shall be followed by compulsory exile, and all their unholy artificial
politics shall cease. The discourse turns to the other target. _For
Ephraim hath multiplied altars--to sin; altars are his own--to sin.
Were I to write for him by myriads My laws,_[555] _as those of a
stranger would they be accounted. They slay burnt-offerings for Me and
eat flesh._[556] _Jehovah hath no delight in them. Now must He remember
their guilt and make visitation upon their sin. They--to Egypt--shall
return_....[557] Back to their ancient servitude must they go, as
formerly He said He would withdraw them to the wilderness.[558]
3. THE EFFECTS OF EXILE.
HOSEA ix. 1-9.
Hosea now turns to describe the effects of exile upon the social and
religious habits of the people. It must break up at once the joy
and the sacredness of their lives. Every pleasure will be removed,
every taste offended. Indeed, even now, with their conscience of
having deserted Jehovah, they cannot pretend to enjoy the feasts of
the Ba'alim in the same hearty way as the heathen with whom they
mix. But, whether or no, the time is near when nature-feasts and all
other religious ceremonies--all that makes life glad and regular and
solemn--shall be impossible.
_Rejoice not, O Israel, to_ the pitch of _rapture like the heathen,
for thou hast played the harlot from thy God; a harlot's hire hast
thou loved on all threshing-floors._[559] _Threshing-floor and
wine-vat shall ignore_[560] _them, and the new wine shall play them
false. They shall not abide in the land of Jehovah, but Ephraim shall
return to Egypt, and in Assyria they shall eat what is unclean. They
shall not pour libations to Jehovah, nor prepare_[561] _for Him
their sacrifices. Like the bread of sorrows shall their bread_[562]
_be; all that eat of it shall be defiled:_ yea, _their bread shall
be_ only _for their appetite; they shall not bring it_[563] _to the
temple of Jehovah._ He cannot be worshipped off His own land. They
will have to live like animals, divorced from religion, unable to
hold communion with their God. _What shall ye do for days_[564] _of
festival, or for a day of pilgrimage to Jehovah? For lo,_ they _shall
be gone forth from destruction_,[565] the shock and invasion of
their land, only _that Egypt may gather them in, Memphis give them
sepulture, nettles inherit their jewels of silver, thorns_ come up
_in their tents_. The threat of exile still wavers between Assyria
and Egypt. And in Egypt Memphis is chosen as the destined grave of
Israel; for even then her Pyramids and mausoleums were ancient and
renowned, her vaults and sepulchres were countless and spacious.
But what need is there to seek the future for Israel's doom, when
already this is being fulfilled by the corruption of her spiritual
leaders?
_The days of visitation have come, have come the days of requital.
Israel already experiences_[566] _them! A fool is the prophet, raving
mad the man of the spirit._ The old ecstasy of Saul's day has become
delirium and fanaticism.[567] Why? _For the mass of thy guilt and
the multiplied treachery! Ephraim acts the spy with my God._ There
is probably a play on the name, for with the meaning a _watchman_
for God it is elsewhere used as an honourable title of the prophets.
_The prophet is a fowler's snare upon all his ways. Treachery--they
have made it profound in the very house of their God._[568] _They
have done corruptly, as in the days of Gibeah. Their iniquity is
remembered; visitation is made on their sin._
* * * * *
These then were the symptoms of the profound political decay which
followed on Israel's immorality. The national spirit and unity of the
people had disappeared. Society--half of it was raw, half of it was
baked to a cinder. The nation, broken into factions, produced no man
to lead, no king with the stamp of God upon him. Anarchy prevailed;
monarchs were made and murdered. There was no prestige abroad,
nothing but contempt among the Gentiles for a people whom they had
exhausted. Judgment was inevitable by exile--nay, it had come already
in the corruption of the spiritual leaders of the nation.
Hosea now turns to probe a deeper corruption still.
4. "THE CORRUPTION THAT IS THROUGH LUST."
HOSEA ix. 10-17: cf. iv. 11-14.
Those who at the present time are enforcing among us the revival of a
Paganism--without the Pagan conscience--and exalting licentiousness
to the level of an art, forget how frequently the human race has
attempted their experiment, with far more sincerity than they
themselves can put into it, and how invariably the result has been
recorded by history to be weariness, decay and death. On this
occasion we have the story told to us by one who to the experience of
the statesman adds the vision of the poet.
The generation to which Hosea belonged practised a periodical
unchastity under the alleged sanctions of nature and religion. And,
although their prophet told them that--like our own apostates from
Christianity--they could never do so with the abandon of the Pagans,
for they carried within them the conscience and the memory of a higher
faith, it appears that even the fathers of Israel resorted openly
and without shame to the licentious rites of the sanctuaries. In an
earlier passage of his book Hosea insists that all this must impair
the people's intellect. _Harlotry takes away the brains._[569] He has
shown also how it confuses the family, and has exposed the old delusion
that men may be impure and keep their womankind chaste.[570] But now he
diagnoses another of the inevitable results of this sin. After tracing
the sin, and the theory of life which permitted it, to their historical
beginnings at the entry of the people into Canaan, he describes how
the long practice of it, no matter how pretentious its sanctions,
inevitably leads not only to exterminating strifes, but to the decay of
the vigour of the nation, to barrenness and a diminishing population.
_Like grapes in the wilderness I found Israel, like the first fruit
on a fig-tree in her first season I saw your fathers._ So had the
lusty nation appeared to God in its youth; in that dry wilderness all
the sap and promise of spring were in its eyes, because it was still
pure. But _they--they came to Ba'al-Peor_--the first of the shrines
of Canaan which they touched--_and dedicated themselves to the Shame,
and became as abominable as the object of their love_. _Ephraim_--the
_Fruitful_ name is emphasised--_their glory is flown away like a
bird. No more birth, no more motherhood, no more conception!_[571]
_Blasted is Ephraim, withered the root of them, fruit they produce
not: yea, even when they beget children I slay the darlings of their
womb. Yea, though they bring up their sons I bereave them_, till
they are _poor in men. Yea, woe upon themselves also, when I look
away from them! Ephraim_--again the _Fruitful_ name is dragged to
the front--_for prey, as I have seen, are his sons destined._[572]
_Ephraim_--he _must lead his sons to the slaughter_.
And the prophet interrupts with his chorus: _Give them, O LORD--what
wilt Thou give them? Give them a miscarrying womb and breasts that
are dry!_
_All their mischief is in Gilgal_--again the Divine voice strikes the
connection between the national worship and the national sin--_yea,
there do I hate them: for the evil of their doings from My house I will
drive them. I will love them no more: all their nobles are rebels._[573]
And again the prophet responds: _My God will cast them away, for they
have not hearkened to Him, and they shall be vagabonds among the
nations_.
Some of the warnings which Hosea enforces with regard to this sin
have been instinctively felt by mankind since the beginnings of
civilisation, and are found expressed among the proverbs of nearly
all the languages.[574] But I am unaware of any earlier moralist
in any literature who traced the effects of national licentiousness
in a diminishing population, or who exposed the persistent delusion
of libertine men that they themselves may resort to vice, yet keep
their womankind chaste. Hosea, so far as we know, was the first
to do this. History in many periods has confirmed the justice of
his observations, and by one strong voice after another enforced
his terrible warnings. The experience of ancient Persia and Egypt;
the languor of the Greek cities; the "deep weariness and sated
lust" which in Imperial Rome "made human life a hell"; the decay
which overtook Italy after the renascence of Paganism without the
Pagan virtues; the strife and anarchy that have rent every court
where, as in the case of Henri Quatre, the king set the example of
libertinage; the incompetence, the poltroonery, the treachery, that
have corrupted every camp where, as in French Metz in 1870, soldiers
and officers gave way so openly to vice; the checks suffered by
modern civilisation in face of barbarism because its pioneers mingled
in vice with the savage races they were subduing; the number of great
statesmen falling by their passion, and in their fall frustrating
the hopes of nations; the great families worn out by indulgence;
the homes broken up by infidelities; the tainting of the blood of a
new generation by the poisonous practices of the old,--have not all
these things been in every age, and do they not still happen near
enough to ourselves to give us a great fear of the sin which causes
them all? Alas! how slow men are to listen and to lay to heart! Is
it possible that we can gild by the names of frivolity and piquancy
habits the wages of which are death? Is it possible that we can enjoy
comedies which make such things their jest? We have among us many
who find their business in the theatre, or in some of the periodical
literature of our time, in writing and speaking and exhibiting as
closely as they dare to limits of public decency. When will they
learn that it is not upon the easy edge of mere conventions that
they are capering, but upon the brink of those eternal laws whose
further side is death and hell--that it is not the tolerance of their
fellow-men they are testing, but the patience of God Himself? As for
those loud few who claim licence in the name of art and literature,
let us not shrink from them as if they were strong or their high
words true. They are not strong, they are only reckless; their claims
are lies. All history, the poets and the prophets, whether Christian
or Pagan, are against them. They are traitors alike to art, to love,
and to every other high interest of mankind.
It may be said that a large part of the art of the day, which takes
great licence in dealing with these subjects, is exercised only
by the ambition to expose that ruin and decay which Hosea himself
affirms. This is true. Some of the ablest and most popular writers
of our time have pictured the facts, which Hosea describes, with
so vivid a realism that we cannot but judge them to be inspired to
confirm his ancient warnings, and to excite a disgust of vice in a
generation which otherwise treats vice so lightly. But if so, their
ministry is exceeding narrow, and it is by their side that we best
estimate the greatness of the ancient prophet. Their transcript of
human life may be true to the facts it selects, but we find in it
no trace of facts which are greater and more essential to humanity.
They have nothing to tell us of forgiveness and repentance, and yet
these are as real as the things they describe. Their pessimism is
unrelieved. They see the _corruption that is in the world through
lust_; they forget that there is an _escape_ from it.[575] It is
Hosea's greatness that, while he felt the vices of his day with all
needed thoroughness and realism, he yet never allowed them to be
inevitable or ultimate, but preached repentance and pardon, with the
possibility of holiness even for his depraved generation. It is the
littleness of the Art of our day that these great facts are forgotten
by her, though once she was their interpreter to men. When she
remembers them the greatness of her past will return.
5. ONCE MORE: PUPPET-KINGS AND PUPPET-GODS.
HOSEA x.
For another section, the tenth chapter, the prophet returns to the
twin targets of his scorn: the idols and the puppet-kings. But few
notes are needed. Observe the reiterated connection between the
fertility of the land and the idolatry of the people.
_A wanton vine is Israel; he lavishes his fruit:_[576] _the more his
fruit, the more he made his altars; the goodlier his land, the more
goodly he made his_ maççeboth, or _sacred pillars. False is the heart
of them: now must they atone for it. He shall break the neck of their
altars; He shall ruin their pillars. For already they are saying,
No king have we, for we have not feared Jehovah, and the king--what
could he do for us? Speaking_[577] _of words, swearing of false
oaths, making of bargains--till law_[578] _breaks out like weeds in
the furrows of the field._
_For the Calf of Beth-Aven the inhabitants_[579] _of Samaria shall
be anxious: yea, mourn for him shall his people, and his priestlings
shall writhe for him--for his glory that it is banished from him._ In
these days of heavy tribute shall the gold of the golden calf be safe?
_Yea, himself shall they pack_[580] _to Assyria; he shall be offered
as tribute to King Pick-Quarrel._[581] _Ephraim shall take disgrace,
and Israel be ashamed because of his counsel._[582] _Undone Samaria!
Her king like a chip_[583] _on the face of the waters!_ This may refer
to one of the revolutions in which the king was murdered. But it seems
more appropriate to the final catastrophe of 724-1: the fall of the
kingdom, and the king's banishment to Assyria. If the latter, the verse
has been inserted; but the following verse would lead us to take these
disasters as still future. _And the high places of idolatry shall be
destroyed, the sin of Israel; thorn and thistle shall come up on their
altars. And they shall say to the mountains, Cover us, and to the
hills, Fall on us._ It cannot be too often repeated: these handmade
gods, these chips of kings, shall be swept away together.
Once more the prophet returns to the ancient origins of Israel's
present sins, and once more to their shirking of the discipline
necessary for spiritual results, but only that he may lead up as
before to the inevitable doom. _From_[584] _the days of Gibeah thou
hast sinned, O Israel. There have they remained_--never progressed
beyond their position there--_and this without war overtaking them
in Gibeah against the dastards_.[585] _As soon as I please, I
can chastise them, and peoples shall be gathered against them in
chastisement for their double sin._ This can scarcely be, as some
suggest, the two calves at Bethel and Dan. More probably it is still
the idols and the man-made kings. Now he returns to the ambition of
the people for spiritual results without a spiritual discipline.
_And Ephraim is a broken-in heifer, that loveth to thresh._[586] _But
I have come on her fair neck. I will yoke Ephraim; Judah must plough;
Jacob must harrow for himself._ It is all very well for the unmuzzled
beast[587] to love the threshing, but harder and unrewarded labours of
ploughing and harrowing have to come before the floor be heaped with
sheaves. Israel must not expect religious festival without religious
discipline. _Sow for yourselves righteousness; then shall ye reap the
fruit of God's leal love._[588] _Break up your fallow ground, for it
is time to seek Jehovah, till He come and shower salvation_[589] _upon
you._[590] _Ye have ploughed wickedness; disaster have ye reaped:
ye have eaten the fruit of falsehood; for thou didst trust in thy
chariots,_[591] _in the multitude of thy warriors. For the tumult_ of
war _shall arise among thy tribes,_[592] _and all thy fenced cities
shall be ruined, as Salman beat to ruin Beth-Arbel_[593] _in the day of
war: the mother shall be broken on the children_--presumably the land
shall fall with the falling of her cities. _Thus shall I do to you, O
house of Israel,_[594] _because of the evil of your evil: soon shall
the king of Israel be undone--undone._
The political decay of Israel, then, so deeply figured in all these
chapters, must end in utter collapse. Let us sum up the gradual
features of this decay: the substance of the people scattered abroad;
the national spirit dissipated; the national prestige humbled; the
kings mere puppets; the prophets corrupted; the national vigour
sapped by impurity; the idolatry conscious of its impotence.
FOOTNOTES:
[537] See below, Chap. XXII.
[538] See Chap. XXI.
[539] Numb. xxiii. 9 _b_; Josh. ii. 8.
[540] Deut. xxxiii. 27.
[541] Deut. xxxiii. 18, 19.
[542] יִתְבֹּלֵל from בלל. In Phœn. בלל seems to have been used
as in Israel of the sacrificial mingling of oil and flour (cf.
Robertson Smith, _Religion of Semites_, I. 203); in Arabic _ball_
is to weaken a strong liquid with water, while _balbal_ is to be
confused, disordered. The Syriac _balal_ is to mix. Some have taken
Hosea's יתבלל as if from בליל (Isa. xxx. 24; Job vi. 5), usually
understood as a mixed crop of wheat and inferior vegetables for
fodder; but there is reason to believe בליל means rather fresh corn.
The derivation from בלה to grow old, does not seem probable.
[543] xii. 8.
[544] ix. 9 f.
[545] See above, p. 261, and below, p. 337.
[546] But the reading is very doubtful.
[547] For יתגררו read יתגדדו.
[548] Wellhausen's objection to the first clause, that one does not set
a trumpet to one's _gums_, which חֵךְ literally means, is beside the
mark. חֵךְ is more than once used of the mouth as a whole (Job viii.
7; Prov. v. 3). The second clause gives the reason of the trumpet, the
alarum trumpet, in the first. Read נשר כי (so also Wellhausen).
[549] Cf. Amos: _Seek Me_ = _Seek the good_; and Jesus: _Not every
one that saith unto Me, Lord, Lord; but he that doeth the will of My
Father in heaven_.
[550] So LXX., but Hebrew _it_.
[551] Davidson's _Syntax_, § 136, Rem. 1, and § 71, Rom. 4.
[552] So by the accents runs the verse, but, as Wellhausen has
pointed out, both its sense and its assonance are better expressed by
another arrangement: _Hath it grown up?_ then _it hath no shoot, nor
bringeth forth fruit_.
ên lo ṣemach,
b'li ya'aseh qemach.
Yet to this there is a grammatical obstacle.
[553] Wellhausen's reading _to Egypt with love gifts_ scarcely suits
the verb _go up_. Notice the play upon P(h)ere', _wild-ass_ and
Ephra'[îm].
[554] So LXX. reads. Heb.: _they shall involve themselves with
tribute to the king of princes_, presumably the Assyrian monarch.
[555] So LXX.
[556] Text obscure.
[557] LXX. addition here is plainly borrowed from ix. 3. For the
reasons for omitting ver. 14 see above, p. 223.
[558] ii. 16.
[559] On this verse see more particularly below, pp. 340 ff.
[560] So LXX.
[561] Read יערכו. Cf. with the whole passage iii. 4 f.
[562] לחמם for להם.
[563] יָבִיאוּ.
[564] Plural: so LXX.
[565] Others read _they are gone to Assyria_.
[566] Literally _knows_. See below, p. 321, _n._ 9.
[567] See above, p. 28.
[568] So, after the LXX., by taking העמיקו with this verse, 8,
instead of with ver. 9.
[569] iv. 12.
[570] iv. 13, 14.
[571] Here, between vv. 11 and 12, Wellhausen with justice proposes
to insert ver. 16.
[572] So Wellhausen, after LXX.; probably correct.
[573] So we may attempt to echo the play on the words.
[574] Cf., _e.g._, the _Proverbs of Ptah-Hotep_ the Egyptian, _circa_
2500 B.C. "There is no prudence in taking part in it, and thousands
of men destroy themselves in order to enjoy a moment, brief as a
dream, while they gain death so as to know it. It is a villainous
... that of a man who excites himself (?); if he goes on to carry it
out, his mind abandons him. For as for him who is without repugnance
for such an [act], there is no good sense at all in him."--From the
translation in _Records of the Past_, Second Series, Vol. III., p. 24.
[575] 2 Peter i.
[576] Doubtful. The Heb. text gives an inappropriate if not
impossible clause, even if ישׁוה be taken from a root שׁוח, to _set_
or _produce_ (Barth, _Etym. Stud._, 66). LXX.: ὁ καρπὸς εὐθηνῶν αὐτῆς
(A.Q. αὐτῆς εὐθηνῶν), "her [the vine's] fruit flourishing." Some
parallel is required to בקק of the first clause; and it is possible
that it may have been from a root שׁוּחַ or שִׁיח, corresponding to
Arabic sâḥ, "to wander" in the sense of scattering or being scattered.
[577] After LXX.
[578] Doubtful. Lawsuits?
[579] "Calf," "inhabitants"--so LXX.
[580] LXX. supplies.
[581] See above, p. 263.
[582] Very uncertain. Wellhausen reads _from his idol_, מעצבו.
[583] קצף: compare Arabic qṣf, "to break"; but there is also the
assonant Arabic qṣb, "reed." The Rabbis translate _foam_: cf. the
other meaning of קצף--outbreak of anger, which suggests _bubble_.
[584] Rosenmüller: _more than in_. These days are evidently not the
beginning of the kingship under Saul (so Wellhausen), for with that
Hosea has no quarrel, but either the idolatry of Micah (Judg. xvii. 3
ff.), or more probably the crime of Benjamin (Judg. xix. 22).
[585] Obscure; text corrupt, and in next verse uncertain.
[586] For the tense of the verse both participles are surely needed.
Wellhausen thinks two redundant.
[587] Deut. xxv. 4; 1 Cor. ix. 9; 1 Tim. v. 18.
[588] LXX.: _fruit of life_.
[589] צדק surely in the sense in which we find it in Isa. xl. ff.
LXX.: _the fruits of righteousness shall be yours_.
[590] We shall return to this passage in dealing with Repentance; see
p. 345.
[591] So LXX. Wellhausen suspects authenticity of the whole clause.
[592] Wellhausen proposes to read בעריך for בעמיך, but there is no
need.
[593] See above, p. 216, _n._ 5.
[594] So LXX.