The Mystery of Ephraim

Right at the start of verse 1, the message is directed at the “iniquity of Ephraim” and the “wickedness of Samaria.” Ephraim is referred collectively as leader of the northern ten tribes; and elsewhere Ephraim and Manasseh has been established as the United States and the United Kingdom. 

And eventually Ephraim will be caught in a snare: “My net also will I spread upon him, and he shall be taken in My [not China’s nor Russia’s] snare; and I will bring him to Babylon to the land of the Chaldeans; yet shall he not see it, though he shall die there,” Ezekiel 12:13.

Hosea 7

¹ “When I would have healed Israel, then the iniquity of Ephraim was uncovered, and the wickedness of Samaria. For they commit falsehood; and the thief cometh in, and the troop of robbers despoileth without. — when I would have healed Israel; this is hypothetical and prophetic; when the Lord attempted to remove their corruption, then the iniquity of Ephraim was discovered, it became known openly;

— troop of robbers despoileth without; by a gang of robbers in the streets, or on the highway: so the Targum says: “in the night they thieve in houses, and in the day they rob on the plain.”

² And they consider not in their hearts that I remember all their wickedness. Now their own doings have beset them about; they are before My face. — they are before my face; so the Targum says, “which are revealed before me;” manifesting “all their wickedness” in God’s sight, but this they did not know, and therefore they went on in their bold and daring manner as they did. 

³ They make the king glad with their wickedness, and the princes with their lies. — Prince Mike Pompeo freely admitted those lies about the CIA: We lied, We cheated, We stole

— but what about the kings?

⁴ They are all adulterers, as an oven heated by the baker, who ceaseth from raising after he hath kneaded the dough, until it be leavened. — they are all adulterers…. kings, princes, priests, and people, both in a spiritual and corporeal sense; they were all idolaters, given to idols try, eager of it, and constant in it, as the following metaphors show; and they were addicted to corporeal adultery; this was a prevailing vice among all ranks and degrees of men;

— the Targum says, “they all desire to lie with their neighbours’ wives;” Jeremiah 5:7.

⁵ In the day of our king, the princes have made him sick with bottles of wine; he stretched out his hand with scorners. — the princes have made him sick with bottles of wine: that is, the courtiers, the swarms of Washington DC, who attended at court on such a day to compliment their king upon his inauguration, or his birthday, to drink to his health in large glasses from big bottles of good wine; making him sick or drunk;

— after becoming drunk, he stretched out his hand with scorners; denying there was a God, or spoke very indecently and irreverently of him.

⁶ For they have made ready their heart like an oven, while they lie in wait; their baker sleepeth all the night; in the morning it burneth as a flaming fire. — for they have made ready their heart like an oven, whiles they lie in wait…. their king, prince and scorners before mentioned, being heated with wine and their lust enraged, were ready for any chance of adultery, lying in wait for young interns to appear to debauch them;

— or for rebellion and treason against their king, and even the murder of him, made drunk by them, whom they now despised, and waited for an opportunity to dispatch him.

⁷ They are all hot as an oven, and have devoured their judges; all their kings are fallen; there is none among them that calleth unto Me. — and have devoured their judges; that stood in the way of making impartial judgments, but instead, subject themselves to politics;

— and there is none among these kings or judges that calleth upon biblical principles.

⁸ “Ephraim, he hath mixed himself among the people; Ephraim is a cake not turned. — Ephraim is a cake not turned, like a pancake burned on the lower side, while the upper side is not yet done. The entire cake is then not fit for eating.

⁹ Strangers have devoured his strength, and he knoweth it not; yea, gray hairs are here and there upon him, yet he knoweth not. — signs of senility are upon him; yet he knoweth not, being blind to all evidences of the inevitable end.

¹⁰ And the pride of Israel testifieth to his face; and they do not return to the Lord their God, nor seek Him for all this.

¹¹ “Ephraim also is like a silly dove without heart; they call to Egypt, they go to Assyria. — silly dove; birds were captured with nets spread on the ground, in traps and snares; in this powerful metaphor, no creature is less able to defend itself than the dove, which flies from the bird of prey to the net of the fowler.

¹² When they shall go, I will spread My net upon them; I will bring them down as the fowls of the heaven; I will chastise them, as their congregation hath heard. — I will chastise them, as their congregation hath heard; what was written in the law, and in the prophets, if they did not observe the laws and statutes of the Lord their God, but neglected and broke them, see Leviticus 26:1,14-39.

¹³ Woe unto them, for they have fled from Me! Destruction unto them, because they have transgressed against Me! Though I have redeemed them, yet they have spoken lies against Me. — yet they have spoken lies against me; against his being and providence, or pretending repentance for their sins, when they were hypocrites, or setting up idols in opposition to him.

¹⁴ And they have not cried unto Me with their heart, when they howled upon their beds; they assemble themselves for corn and wine, and they rebel against Me. — when they howled upon their beds; lying sick or wounded there; or, as some, in their idol temples, those beds of adultery, where they pretended to worship God by them, and to pray to him through them; but such idolatrous prayers were no better than the howlings of clogs to him.

¹⁵ Though I have bound and strengthened their arms, yet do they contrive evil against Me.

¹⁶ They return, but not to the Most High; they are like a deceitful bow. Their princes shall fall by the sword for the rage of their tongue; this shall be their derision in the land of Egypt. — like a deceitful bow; religious observance has the appearance of a bow with the arrow on the string, apparently aimed at some object, but the string being slack, the aim is diverted.

Hosea 8

¹ “Set the trumpet to thy mouth! He shall come as an eagle against the house of the Lord, because they have transgressed My covenant, and trespassed against My law. — “Set the trumpet to thy mouth,” as the Targum, “O prophet, cry with thy throat as with a trumpet, saying;” called upon to blow his trumpet bidding them a warning concerning the approach of judgment.

² Israel shall cry unto Me, ‘My God, we know Thee!’ — “they shall cry unto me”; these transgressors of the covenant and the law, these hypocrites, shall pray to God in trouble, saying, “my God, we Israel”, or Israelites, “know thee”; and to this sense is the Targum,”in every time that distress comes upon them, they pray before me, and say, now we know that we have no God besides thee; redeem us, for we are thy people Israel.”

³ Israel hath cast off the thing that is good; the enemy shall pursue him.

⁴ They have set up kings, but not by Me; they have made princes, and I knew it not. Of their silver and their gold have they made them idols, that they may be cut off. — they have set up kings, but not by me…. Not by his authority, order, and command; not by asking advice of him, but of themselves: starting with the case of Jeroboam their first king, though the establishment of the Ten Tribes received Divine sanction initially.

⁵ “Thy calf, O Samaria, hath cast thee off; Mine anger is kindled against them. How long will it be ere they attain to innocency? — thy calf, O Samaria, hath cast thee off…. or, is the cause of thy being cast off by the Lord, and of being cast out of thine own land, and carried captive into another; the past tense is used for the future, as is common in prophetic writings.

⁶ For from Israel was it also: the workman made it, therefore it is not God; but the calf of Samaria shall be broken in pieces. — but the calf of Samaria shall be broken to pieces; or “for the calf of Samaria”, being another reason to prove it could not be God; this surely be when they should see it broke to pieces by the enemy, from whom it could not save itself.

⁷ For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind. It hath no stalk; the bud shall yield no meal. If so it shall yield, the strangers shall swallow it up. — for their idolatry, and continuance in it, the whirlwind of God’s wrath would be raised up against them, and another “Assyrian army” like a storm of wind would rush in and destroy them; so they that sow, shall reap;

— if so it shall yield, the strangers shall swallow it up; the Targum says, “if they got substance, the nations shall spoil them of it.”

⁸ “Israel is swallowed up; now shall they be among the nations as a vessel wherein is no pleasure. — when Shalmaneser took Samaria, he carried them as captives and placed them among the nations in the cities of the Medes, 2 Kings 17:6; where they lived poor, mean, and abject, and were treated with the utmost neglect and contempt; not better than a broken vessel.

⁹ For they are gone up to Assyria, a wild ass alone by himself; Ephraim hath hired lovers. — As head of Nato, the United States had incorporated many Central and Eastern European countries as “allies and confederates, patrons and defenders” right up to the Russian bounder into her alliance, and is trying to extend this alliance into the Asia-Pacific, but eventually she will be caught in a snare: “My net also will I spread upon him, and he shall be taken in My [not China’s nor Russia’s] snare; and I will bring him to Babylon to the land of the Chaldeans; yet shall he not see it, though he shall die there” Ezekiel 12:13; and shall dwell in captivity like a wild ass.

¹⁰ Yea, though they have hired among the nations, now will I gather them, and they shall sorrow a little for the burden of the king of princes. — as the Targum says, “but of the gathering of them together for their destruction.”

¹¹ “Because Ephraim hath made many altars to sin, altars shall be unto him to sin. — because Ephraim hath made many altars to sin, in practicing idolatry to such an exceptional degree, in the sight of God.

¹² I have written to him the great things of My law, but they were counted as a strange thing. — I have written to him the great things of My Law, literally, I presented to him a myriad of My Law; the many precepts by which the Israelites might fulfill His will; but they were counted as a strange thing; as though they did not concern them, dismissing them as ceremonial laws.

¹³ They sacrifice flesh for the sacrifices of Mine offerings, and eat it; but the Lord accepteth them not. Now will He remember their iniquity and visit their sins; they shall return to Egypt. — they shall return to Egypt, once more be delivered into captivity, where they lived miserably for 210 years in bondage; but another one coming, cut short to 190 years.

¹⁴ For Israel hath forgotten his Maker, and buildeth temples; and Judah hath multiplied fortified cities. But I will send a fire upon his cities, and it shall devour the palaces thereof.” — but I will send a fire upon his cities, and it shall devour the palaces thereof; that is, from “an enemy” that will set fire to their national icons, particularly New York, Paris, London, Jerusalem, their chief cities, and palaces of their king and nobles, and all the fine houses of their great men; as were done in the past by Shalmaneser the king of the Assyria; and 135 years later, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, Jeremiah 52:13.

~ by Joel Huan on October 9, 2021.

Posted in Minor Prophets