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¹ when I would heal Israel,

the corruption of Ephraim is revealed,

and the wicked deeds of Samaria;

for they deal falsely,

the thief breaks in,

and the bandits raid outside.

But they do not consider

that I remember all their wickedness.

Now their deeds surround them,

they are before my face.

By their wickedness they make the king glad,

and the officials by their treachery.

They are all adulterers;

they are like a heated oven,

whose baker does not need to stir the fire,

from the kneading of the dough until it is leavened.

On the day of our king the officials

became sick with the heat of wine;

he stretched out his hand with mockers.

For they are kindled like an oven, their heart burns within them;

all night their anger smolders;

in the morning it blazes like a flaming fire.

All of them are hot as an oven,

and they devour their rulers.

All their kings have fallen;

none of them calls upon me.

Ephraim mixes himself with the peoples;

Ephraim is a cake not turned.

Foreigners devour his strength,

but he does not know it;

gray hairs are sprinkled upon him,

but he does not know it.

Israel’s pride testifies against him;

yet they do not return to the L ord their God,

or seek him, for all this.

Futile Reliance on the Nations

Ephraim has become like a dove,

silly and without sense;

they call upon Egypt, they go to Assyria.

As they go, I will cast my net over them;

I will bring them down like birds of the air;

I will discipline them according to the report made to their assembly.

Woe to them, for they have strayed from me!

Destruction to them, for they have rebelled against me!

I would redeem them,

but they speak lies against me.

They do not cry to me from the heart,

but they wail upon their beds;

they gash themselves for grain and wine;

they rebel against me.

It was I who trained and strengthened their arms,

yet they plot evil against me.

They turn to that which does not profit;

they have become like a defective bow;

their officials shall fall by the sword

because of the rage of their tongue.

So much for their babbling in the land of Egypt.

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 again reproaches the Israelites for having in a base manner abused his goodness and forbearance. Some consider the verb יסר, isar, as meaning, “to chastise,” because God had disciplined the Israelites; and, as I have said yesterday, it is often taken in this sense. But as it signifies sometimes “to bind,” it seems a fitter metaphor for this place. I have bound and strengthened their arms; as though God had said, that he had caused their arms not to be enervated. For we know that the strength of the arm depends on the structure of the nerves. Except the bones were bound together by the nerves, a dissolution would immediately follow. Hence God says, I have bound and strengthened their arms; which two things combine for the same end, and the notion of chastising seems not to me to be in any way suitable to the context. The meaning is, that the Israelites had hitherto continued, because God had sustained them by his power. As when one binds up and strengthens a weak or a loosened arm, so God here reminds Israel that he had preserved them in their position. And the Prophet, I have no doubt, alludes here to the many calamities by which the strength of Israel might have been broken, had not a timely remedy been applied by the Lord.

God then compares himself here to a physician or a surgeon, when he says that he had bound the arm of Israel and strengthened it, when it might have been otherwise broken: for they had been often as it were enervated, but the Lord restored them. We now understand the meaning of the Prophet to be, that God had not only by his power sustained the Israelites, but had also performed the office of a surgeon or a physician, when he saw their arms broken, when they were wasted by slaughters in wars, and by other adversities.

Now the Israelites were so far from being grateful to God and mindful of him, that they were even devising evil against him. For after having obtained victories, after having been restored and even replenished with fulness of all blessings, they the more boldly conspired against him; for under this pretence were superstitions established, and then followed the indulgence of all vices; for pride, and cruelty, and ambition, and frauds, prevailed more and more. Since then the Israelites had thus perverted the blessings of God, was not the hope of pardon and salvation justly cut off from them? Now we are reminded in this place, that whenever God heals our evils, and raises us up in adversity and succors us, we ought devoutly to acknowledge his favor, and not to meditate evil against him, when he so kindly extends his hand to us. Let us now proceed —