Study

a Bible passage

Click a verse to see commentary

Select a resource above

13. The Lord's Anger Against Israel

¹ When Ephraim spoke, people trembled;
   he was exalted in Israel.
   But he became guilty of Baal worship and died.
² Now they sin more and more;
   they make idols for themselves from their silver,
cleverly fashioned images,
   all of them the work of craftsmen.
It is said of these people,
   “They offer human sacrifices!
   They kiss Or “Men who sacrifice / kiss calf-idols!”
³ Therefore they will be like the morning mist,
   like the early dew that disappears,
   like chaff swirling from a threshing floor,
   like smoke escaping through a window.

    ⁴ “But I have been the LORD your God
   ever since you came out of Egypt.
You shall acknowledge no God but me,
   no Savior except me.
⁵ I cared for you in the wilderness,
   in the land of burning heat.
⁶ When I fed them, they were satisfied;
   when they were satisfied, they became proud;
   then they forgot me.
⁷ So I will be like a lion to them,
   like a leopard I will lurk by the path.
⁸ Like a bear robbed of her cubs,
   I will attack them and rip them open;
like a lion I will devour them—
   a wild animal will tear them apart.

    ⁹ “You are destroyed, Israel,
   because you are against me, against your helper.
¹⁰ Where is your king, that he may save you?
   Where are your rulers in all your towns,
of whom you said,
   ‘Give me a king and princes’?
¹¹ So in my anger I gave you a king,
   and in my wrath I took him away.
¹² The guilt of Ephraim is stored up,
   his sins are kept on record.
¹³ Pains as of a woman in childbirth come to him,
   but he is a child without wisdom;
when the time arrives,
   he doesn’t have the sense to come out of the womb.

    ¹⁴ “I will deliver this people from the power of the grave;
   I will redeem them from death.
Where, O death, are your plagues?
   Where, O grave, is your destruction?

   “I will have no compassion,
    ¹⁵ even though he thrives among his brothers.
An east wind from the LORD will come,
   blowing in from the desert;
his spring will fail
   and his well dry up.
His storehouse will be plundered
   of all its treasures.
¹⁶ The people of Samaria must bear their guilt,
   because they have rebelled against their God.
They will fall by the sword;
   their little ones will be dashed to the ground,
   their pregnant women ripped open.” In Hebrew texts this verse (13:16) is numbered 14:1.

The Prophet employs here four similitudes to show the condition of Israel. How much soever they flourished for a time, and might be deemed happy, their state would yet be fading and evanescent. They shall be, he says, as the morning cloud: though they be loftily proud, the Lord will yet shake off from them whatever power they may have. Secondly, they shall be as the dew that rises up in the morning — having nothing substantial in them. Thirdly they shall be as the chaff which from the floor is driven by a whirlwind And, lastly they shall be, he says, as the smoke; for as the smoke produces thick darkness, and, after having gone out of the chimney, disperses and disappears, so these proud people, how much soever they may have praised themselves, would not continue in a permanent condition.

We hence conclude, that the Israelites were not so much like the dead, but that yet they had some power remaining in them: for God would have otherwise threatened to no purpose, that they should be made like a cloud, and the dew, and the chaff, and the smoke: but they had been already in a great measure consumed. And God denounces on them here utter destruction, that they might not think that they had already suffered the last punishment, and that they might not suppose that they could gather new strength: for proud men entertain vain confidence, through which they remove to a distance the judgement of God. Lest, then, they should delude themselves with such allurements, the Prophet here declares that their condition would be fading, such as would soon come to ruin. It follows —