HOSEA xiii.-xiv. 1.
The crisis draws on. On the one hand Israel's sin, accumulating, bulks ripe for judgment. On the other the times grow more fatal, or the prophet more than ever feels them so. He will gather once again the old truths on the old lines--the great past when Jehovah was God alone, the descent to the idols and the mushroom monarchs of to-day, the people, who once had been strong, sapped by luxury, forgetful, stupid, not to be roused. The discourse has every mark of being Hosea's latest. There is clearness and definiteness beyond anything since chap. iv. There are ease and lightness of treatment, a playful sarcasm, as if the themes were now familiar both to the prophet and his audience. But, chiefly, there is the passion--so suitable to last words--of how different it all might have been, if to this crisis Israel had come with store of strength instead of guilt. How these years, with their opening into the great history of the world, might have meant a birth for the nation, which instead was lying upon them like a miscarried child in the mouth of the womb! It was a fatality God Himself could not help in. Only death and hell remained. Let them, then, have their way! Samaria must expiate her guilt in the worst horrors of war.
Instead of with one definite historical event, this last effort of Hosea opens more naturally with a summary of all Ephraim's previous history. The tribe had been the first in Israel till they took to idols.
_Whenever Ephraim spake there was trembling._[632] _Prince_[633] _was he in Israel; but he fell into guilt through the Ba'al, and so--died. Even now they continue to sin and make them a smelting of their silver, idols after their own model,_[634] _smith's work all of it. To them_--to such things--_they speak! Sacrificing men kiss calves!_ In such unreason have they sunk. They cannot endure. _Therefore shall they be like the morning cloud and like the dew that early vanisheth, like chaff which whirleth up from the floor and like smoke from the window. And I was thy God_[635] _from the land of Egypt; and god besides Me thou knowest not, nor saviour has there been any but Myself. I shepherded_[636] _thee in the wilderness, in the land of droughts_--long before they came among the gods of fertile Canaan. But once they came hither, _the more pasture they had, the more they ate themselves full, and the more they ate themselves full, the more was their heart uplifted, so they forgat Me. So that I must be_[637] _to them like a lion, like a leopard on the way I must leap._[638] _I will fall on them like a bear robbed of its young, and will tear the caul of their hearts, and will devour them like a lion--wild beasts shall rend them._[639]
When _He hath destroyed thee, O Israel--who then may help thee?_[640] _Where is thy king now? that he may save thee, or all thy princes? that they may rule thee;_[641] _those of whom thou hast said, Give me a king and princes._ Aye, _I give thee a king in Mine anger, and I take him away in My wrath!_ Fit summary of the short and bloody reigns of these last years.
_Gathered is Ephraim's guilt, stored up is his sin._ The nation is pregnant--but with guilt! _Birth pangs seize him, but_--the figure changes, with Hosea's own swiftness, from mother to child--_he is an impracticable son;_[642] _for_ this _is no time to stand in the mouth of the womb_. The years that might have been the nation's birth are by their own folly to prove their death. Israel lies in the way of its own redemption--how truly this has been forced home upon them in one chapter after another! Shall God then step in and work a deliverance on the brink of death? _From the hand of Sheol shall I deliver them? from death shall I redeem them?_ Nay, let death and Sheol have their way. _Where are thy plagues, O death? where thy destruction, Sheol?_ Here with them. _Compassion is hid from Mine eyes._