Hosea 5:10

The princes of Judah were like them that remove the bound: therefore I will pour out my wrath upon them like water.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(10) The princes of Judah, such as Ahaz, whose pusillanimity brought untold evil on both Israel and Judah (2Kings 16:10-18).

Like them that remove the bound (landmark).—A practice prohibited in Deuteronomy 19:14, and included in the curses of Mount Ebal (Deuteronomy 27:17), an indication that this very legislation existed before the time of the prophet. They break down the barrier between right and wrong, between truth and falsehood, between Jehovah and Baalim.

Benson Commentary

Hosea 5:10. The princes of Judah, &c. — The prophet in this chapter passes frequently from the one kingdom to the other, that he might set forth the crimes, and foretel the punishments of both, unless they averted them by their repentance. Instead of the princes, Bishop Horsley reads, the rulers of Judah, observing, “I prefer the word rulers to princes, because, in the modern acceptation of the word princes, royalty, or at least, royal blood, is included in the notion of it. But these שׂרי, saree, [princes,] of the Old Testament, were not persons of royal extraction, or connected by blood or marriage with the royal family; but the chief priests and elders, who composed the secular as well as the ecclesiastical magistracy of the country.” Like them that remove the bound — They have violated the most sacred laws of God: upon which, not only the ordinances of his worship, but likewise the rights and properties of men depend, and are become guilty of the same injustice and confusion with those that remove the ancient bounds and landmarks, Ezekiel 46:18. Therefore I will pour out my wrath upon them like water — That is, with great violence, like an impetuous torrent, or the hasty unexpected overflowing of a river, which overwhelms every thing near. Great calamities are often compared to the overflowing of water.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

5:8-15 The destruction of impenitent sinners is not mere talk, to frighten them, it is a sentence which will not be recalled. And it is a mercy that we have timely warning given us, that we may flee from the wrath to come. Compliance with the commandments of men, who thwart the commandments of God, ripens a people for ruin. The judgments of God are sometimes to a sinful people as a moth, and as rottenness, or as a worm; as these consume the clothes and the wood, so shall the judgments of God consume them. Silently, they shall think themselves safe and thriving, but when they look into their state, shall find themselves wasting and decaying. Slowly, for the Lord gives them space to repent. Many a nation; as well as many a person, dies of a consumption. Gradually, God comes upon sinners with lesser judgments, to prevent greater, if they will be wise, and take warning. When Israel and Judah found themselves in danger, they sought the protection of the Assyrians, but this only helped to make their wound the worse. They would be forced to apply to God. He will bring them home to himself, by afflictions. When men begin to complain more of their sins than of their afflictions, then there begins to be some hope of them; and when under the conviction of sin, and the corrections of the rod, we must seek the knowledge of God. Those who are led by severe trials to seek God earnestly and sincerely, will find him a present help and an effectual refuge; for with him is plenteous redemption for all who call upon him. There is solid peace, and there only, where God is.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

The princes of Judah were like them that remove the bound - All avaricious encroachment on the paternal inheritance of others, was strictly forbidden by God in the law, under the penalty of His curse. "Cursed is he that removeth his neighbor's landmark" Deuteronomy 27:17. "The princes of Judah," i. e., those who were the king's counselors and chief in the civil polity, had committed sin, like to this. Since the prophet had just pronounced the desolation of Israel, perhaps that sin was, that instead of taking warning from the threatened destruction, and turning to God, they thought only how the removal of Ephraim would benefit them, by the enlargement of their borders. They might hope also to increase their private estates out of the desolate lands of Ephraim, their brother. The unregenerate heart, instead of being awed by God's judgment on others, looks out to see, what advantages it may gain from them. Times of calamity are also times of greediness. Israel had been a continual sore to Judah. The princes of Judah rejoiced in the prospect of their removal, instead of mourning their sin and fearing for themselves. More widely yet, the words may mean, that the "princes of Judah" "burst all bounds, set to them by the law of God, to which nothing was to be added, from which nothing was to be diminished," transferring to idols or devils, to sun, moon and stars, or to the beings supposed to preside over them, the love, honor, and worship, due to God Alone.

I will pour out My wrath like water - So long as those bounds were not broken through, the justice of God, although manifoldly provoked, was yet stayed. When Judah should break them, they would, as it were, make a way for the chastisement of God, which should burst in like a flood upon them, over-spreading the whole land, yet bringing, not renewed life, but death. Like a flood, it overwhelmed the land; but it was a flood, not of water, but of the wrath of God. They had burst the bounds which divided them from Israel, and had let in upon themselves its chastisements.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

10. remove the bound—(De 19:14; 27:17; Job 24:2; Pr 22:28; 23:10). Proverbial for the rash setting aside of the ancestral laws by which men are kept to their duty. Ahaz and his courtiers ("the princes of Judah"), setting aside the ancient ordinances of God, removed the borders of the bases and the layer and the sea and introduced an idolatrous altar from Damascus (2Ki 16:10-18); also he burnt his children in the valley of Hinnom, after the abominations of the heathen (2Ch 28:3).

Matthew Poole's Commentary

The princes; the great men about the king and court, the rulers and governors, who by the law of God and man should have been the maintainers of equity and justice among the people.

Of Judah; of the kingdom of Judah, or the two tribes.

Were; have been, and now are in the days of Ahaz, for to this man’s time the prophet now pointeth.

Like them that remove the bound; the ancient bounds which limited every one, prevented controversies and oppressions of encroaching, covetous men. The prophet, I doubt not, aims at reproving the sin of these great ones in changing the laws of religion, as well as altering the bounds of civil rights, whether by encroaching upon foreigners, and enlarging the kingdom of Judah by entrenching on the neighbouring kingdoms, or, which is more certain, by injustice and violence seizing what was another’s.

Therefore I will pour out my wrath upon them: this was sin and forbidden, Deu 19:14; this practice is cursed, Deu 27:17, and God now will punish it.

Like water; like an overflowing flood.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

The princes of Judah were like them that remove the bound,.... Or landmark, which to do was contrary to the law, Deuteronomy 19:14; and has always been reckoned a heinous sin among all nations, and is only done by such who have no regard to right and wrong, and by them secretly; and such were the kings, princes, and nobles of Judah; they secretly committed the grossest iniquities, yea, were abandoned to their vile lusts, and could not be contained within any bounds. The "caph" here used is, according to Kimchi and Ben Melech, not a note of similitude, but of certainty; and then the sense is, that the princes of Judah did remove the bound; either, in a literal sense, by force and violence seized on the possessions and inheritances of their neighbours which lay next to theirs; or, in a figurative sense, they broke through all bounds and limits, and transgressed the laws of God and men, being not to be restrained by either:

therefore I will pour out my wrath upon them like water; in great abundance, and with such force and vehemence, as not to be stopped, but utterly destroy; like a flood of water, which overflows the banks, or breaks them down, and carries all before it; or like the flood of water that came upon the earth, and carried off the world of the ungodly; in like manner should the wrath of God be poured down from heaven upon these princes without measure, exceeding all bounds, in just retaliation for their removing the bounds of their neighbours, or transgressing the laws of God: this was fulfilled either in the times of Ahaz, when Rezin king of Syria, and Pekah king of Israel, as well as Tiglathpileser king of Assyria, greatly afflicted Judah, 2 Chronicles 28:1; or at the time of the Babylonish captivity.

Geneva Study Bible

The princes of Judah were like them that {k} remove the bound: therefore I will pour out my wrath upon them like water.

(k) They have turned upside down all political order and all manner of religion.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

10. were like them that remove the bound] Rather, are become like them that remove the landmark. The landmarks were under the protection of religion (Proverbs 22:28; Proverbs 23:10; Deuteronomy 19:14), and to remove them laid the offender under a curse, according to Deuteronomy 27:17. Hosea cites the offence as the greatest conceivable example of revolutionary caprice. Judah, it would seem, was not more fortunate now in its upper classes than Israel (comp. Hosea 6:10-11 Sept., and Isaiah’s ‘these also’, viz. the chief men of Jerusalem, Isaiah 28:7).

like water] Jehovah’s wrath is like fire in its destructiveness, and like a swollen stream in its abundant volume.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 10. - The princes of Judah were like them that remove the bound. The individual who had the temerity to remove his neighbor's landmark was not only guilty of a great sin, but obnoxious to a grievous curse. Thus Deuteronomy 19:14, "Thou shall not remove thy neighbor's landmark, which they of old time have set in thine inheritance;" and again Deuteronomy 27:17, "Cursed be he that removeth his neighbor's landmark. And all the people shall say, Amen." The removal of the landmark characterizes the conduct of men entirely regardless of the rights of others - utterly reckless. The Jewish nobles, the king's ministers and high officers of state, are compared to those who remove the landmark, disregarding alike what was due to their fellow-men and to their God. The Jewish commentators differ in their exposition between tact and figure - some of them taking the removal of the boundary as a matter of fact, the caph being for confirmation; thus D. Kimchi; while I. Kimchi explains it of the rejection of the appeal for justice against removers of landmarks; others understanding it figuratively, and the whole as expressing general lawlessness, thus Rashi: "Like a man who removes his neighbor's landmark, just so they hasten to hold fast the ways of Israel their neighbors... according to the literal sense, They grasped at the fields; but this, in my opinion, is harsh, for then the prophet must have written merely מסיגי, and not נמסיגי." Similarly Aben Ezra: "They exercise violence towards those who are in their power, whilst they are like those who secretly remove the landmark." The people of Judah had also sinned, and, like Israel in sin, they resemble them in suffering. There-tore I will pour out my wrath upon them like water. The word "wrath" here is from a root which signifies "to overflow;" it is thus the overflowing of Divine indignation; while the outpouring thereof denotes the full flood of wrath that will overwhelm those lawless leaders of a misguided and misgoverned people. The execution of the threatening was reserved for the Assyrians. who, under Tiglath-pileser and Sennacherib, invaded and laid waste the land. And yet those judgments, though so severe and plentiful, were not to end in total and lasting devastation as in the case of Israel. The following vers. 11-15 teach the inevitable nature of the judgments that were coming upon both Israel and Judah, and from which no earthly power could deliver them. The only relief possible depended on their seeking God in the day of their distress. Hosea 5:10

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

"Ephraim will become a desert in the day of punishment: over the tribes of Israel have I proclaimed that which lasts. Hosea 5:10. The princes of Judah have become like boundary-movers; upon them I pour out my wrath like water." The kingdom of Israel will entirely succumb to the punishment. It will become a desert - will be laid waste not only for a time, but permanently. The punishment with which it is threatened will be נאמנה. This word is to be interpreted as in Deuteronomy 28:59, where it is applied to lasting plagues, with which God will chastise the obstinate apostasy of His people. By the perfect הודעתּי, what is here proclaimed is represented as a completed event, which will not be altered. Beshibhtē, not in or among the tribes, but according to ענה ב, in Deuteronomy 28:5, against or over the tribes (Hitzig). Judah also will not escape the punishment of its sins. The unusual expression massı̄gē gebhūl is formed after, and to be explained from Deuteronomy 19:14, "Thou shalt not remove thy neighbour's landmark;" or Deuteronomy 27:17, "Cursed be he that removeth his neighbour's landmark." The princes of Judah have become boundary-removers, not by hostile invasions of the kingdom of Israel (Simson); for the boundary-line between Israel and Judah was not so appointed by God, that a violation of it on the part of the princes of Judah could be reckoned a grievous crime, but by removing the boundaries of right which had been determined by God, viz., according to Hosea 4:15, by participating in the guilt of Ephraim, i.e., by idolatry, and therefore by the fact that they had removed the boundary between Jehovah and Baal, that is to say, between the one true God and idols. "If he who removes his neighbour's boundary is cursed, how much more he who removes the border of his God!" (Hengstenberg). Upon such men the wrath of God would fall in its fullest measure. כּמּים, like a stream of water, so plentifully. For the figure, compare Psalm 69:25; Psalm 79:6; Jeremiah 10:25. Severe judgments are thus announced to Judah, viz., those of which the Assyrians under Tiglath-pileser and Sennacherib were the instruments; but no ruin or lasting devastation is predicted, as was the case with the kingdom of Israel, which was destroyed by the Assyrians.