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.
[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.