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Impending Judgment on Israel and Judah

Hear this, O priests!

Give heed, O house of Israel!

Listen, O house of the king!

For the judgment pertains to you;

for you have been a snare at Mizpah,

and a net spread upon Tabor,

and a pit dug deep in Shittim;

but I will punish all of them.

I know Ephraim,

and Israel is not hidden from me;

for now, O Ephraim, you have played the whore;

Israel is defiled.

Their deeds do not permit them

to return to their God.

For the spirit of whoredom is within them,

and they do not know the L ord.

Israel’s pride testifies against him;

Ephraim stumbles in his guilt;

Judah also stumbles with them.

With their flocks and herds they shall go

to seek the L ord,

but they will not find him;

he has withdrawn from them.

They have dealt faithlessly with the L ord;

for they have borne illegitimate children.

Now the new moon shall devour them along with their fields.

Blow the horn in Gibeah,

the trumpet in Ramah.

Sound the alarm at Beth-aven;

look behind you, Benjamin!

Ephraim shall become a desolation

in the day of punishment;

among the tribes of Israel

I declare what is sure.

The princes of Judah have become

like those who remove the landmark;

on them I will pour out

my wrath like water.

Ephraim is oppressed, crushed in judgment,

because he was determined to go after vanity.

Therefore I am like maggots to Ephraim,

and like rottenness to the house of Judah.

When Ephraim saw his sickness,

and Judah his wound,

then Ephraim went to Assyria,

and sent to the great king.

But he is not able to cure you

or heal your wound.

For I will be like a lion to Ephraim,

and like a young lion to the house of Judah.

I myself will tear and go away;

I will carry off, and no one shall rescue.

I will return again to my place

until they acknowledge their guilt and seek my face.

In their distress they will beg my favor:

New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Here the Prophet transfers the blame of all the evils which then reigned in the tribe of Judah to their princes. He says, that the people had fallen away and departed from God through their fault, and he uses a most fit similitude. We know that there is nothing certain in the possessions of men, except the boundaries of fields be fixed; for no one can otherwise keep his own. But by the metaphor of boundaries in fields, the Prophet refers to the whole political order. The meaning is, that all things were now in a state of disorder and confusion among the Jews; because their leaders who ought to have ruled the people and kept them in obedience, had destroyed the whole order of things. We now then understand what the Prophet had really in view.

But it must be observed that the tribe of Judah had been hitherto kept separate, as it were by limits, as God’s heritage; for Israel had become alienated. The possession of God had been diminished by the defection of Jeroboam; and he retained only one tribe and a half in his service. The Prophet says now, that the Jews had mixed with the Israelites, and had thus become themselves alienated from the Lord; for the princes themselves had taken away the boundaries, that is, they had, through indolence and other vices, destroyed all reverence for God, all care for religion, and also every concern for what was just and right: he therefore severely threatens them, “I will pour out”, he says, “my wrath upon them like waters”.

By this metaphor, he means that God would deal much more severely with them than with the common people: “I,” he says, “will with full force pour forth upon them my fury, as if it were the deluge of antiquity.” The meaning is, “I will overwhelm them in my vengeance, because they have done more evil by their bad examples, than if they had been private individuals.” We hence see that the corruption of the people is imputed to the princes, and therefore God’s more dreadful vengeance is denounced on them.

But we must bear in mind what I have before said, that the Prophet gives here metaphorically the name of boundaries to the lawful worship of God, and to whatever he had enjoined on the people, that they might be his certain possession, as fields among men are usually separated by bounds that every one may keep his own. It follows. —