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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he has withdrawn from them.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.

God shows here that he is not pacified by the vain excuses which hypocrites allege, and by which they think that the judgment of God himself can be turned away. We see what great dullness there is in many, when God reproves them, and brings to light their vices; for they defend themselves with vain and frivolous excuses, and think that they thus put a restraint on God, so that he dares not urge them any more. In this way hypocrites elude every truth. But God here testifies, that men are greatly deceived when they thus judge, by their own perception, of that celestial tribunal to which they are summoned; I, he says, know Ephraim, and Israel is not hid from me There is to be understood an implied contrast, as though he said, that they were ignorant of themselves; for they covered their vices, as I have said, with frivolous excuses. God testifies that his eyes were not dazzled with such fine pretenses. “How much soever, then, Ephraim and Israel may excuse themselves, they shall not escape my judgment: vain and absurd are these shifts which they use; I indeed am not ignorant.”

Let us then learn not to belie, by our own notions, the judgment of God; and when he reproves us by his word, let us not delude ourselves by our own fancies; for they who harden themselves in such a state of security gain nothing. God sees more keenly than men. Let use then, beware of spreading a veil over our sins, for God’s eyes penetrate through all such excuses.

That he names Ephraim particularly, was not done, we know, without reason. From that tribe sprang the first Jeroboam: it was therefore by way of honor that the name of Ephraim was given to the ten tribes. But the Prophet names Ephraim here, who thought themselves superior to the other tribes, by way of reproach: I know them, and Israel is not hid from me He afterwards expresses what he knew of the people, which was, that Ephraim was wanton, and that Israel was polluted; as though he said “Contend as you please; but you will do so without profit: I have indeed my ears stunned by your lies; but after you have adduced everything, after you have sedulously pleaded your own cause, and have omitted nothing which may serve for an excuse, the fact still will be, that you are wantons and polluted.” In short, the Prophet confirms in this second clause what I have before stated, that men, when they flatter themselves, deceive themselves; for God in the meantime condemns them, and allows no disguise of this kind. Israel and Ephraim gloried, then, in their superstitions, as though they held God bound to them: “This is wantonness,” he says, “This is pollution.” The Prophet indeed does here cut off the handle from all those self-deceptions which men use as reasons, when they defend fictitious forms of worship; for God from on high proclaims, that all are polluted who turn aside from his word.