Hosea 5:11

Ephraim is oppressed and broken in judgment, because he willingly walked after the commandment.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(11) Broken in judgment.—The Authorised version is probably right in this rendering, the phrase having reference to rights pertaining to individuals. Interpreters differ as to the rare word tsav, translated “commandment.” It only occurs in one other place (Isaiah 28:10; Isaiah 28:13). Ewald regards it as meaning “wooden post,” i.e., their idol, but this has no basis in Old Testament usage, though etymologically ingenious. The majority of Jewish and modern commentators take it as meaning the evil ordinance of Jeroboam, who demanded the reverence of his subjects for the calf-symbol of Jehovah. The LXX. had another text (shav instead of tsav), which they render “vanities,” and are followed by the Targum and Syriac version. This is worthy of attention.

Willingly—i.e., “waywardly.”

Benson Commentary

Hosea 5:11-12. Ephraim is oppressed and broken in judgment — He is delivered over to oppressors by God’s just judgment. Such were Pul and Tiglath-pileser, kings of Assyria. Archbishop Newcome distinguishes between these phrases thus: He is oppressed with a heavy weight of calamity; he is crushed, or broken in his judicial contest with God; because he willingly walked after the commandment — Because he willingly submitted to, or complied with Jeroboam’s command, requiring his subjects to worship the calves which he had placed at Dan and Beth-el, and to conform to all his idolatrous institutions, in opposition to the law of God. Of this kind were the statutes of Omri, mentioned Micah 6:16. The reading of the LXX. here is different, namely, Κατεπατησε το κριμα, οτι ηρξατο πορευεσθαι οπισω των ματαιων, He trode judgment under foot, because he began to walk after vain things; that is, after idols. They seem either to have read שׁוא, shave, (vanity,) for צו, tzave, (commandment,) or else to have supposed the latter word to be put for the former, there being frequent instances in the Hebrew text of letters being changed, one for another, which have nearly the same sound: see the Arabic, Syriac, Chaldaic, Houbigant and others, in Poole’s Synopsis, who read שׁוא, vanity. Therefore will I be unto Ephraim as a moth — My judgment shall consume both Israel and Judah as a moth fretteth a garment, or as rottenness consumes the flesh, from small and unperceived beginnings, working slow, but certain and complete destruction.

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

Ephraim is oppressed and broken in judgment - Literally, "crushed in judgment." Holy Scripture, elsewhere also, "combines" these same two words, rendered "oppressed" and "crushed," in speaking of man's oppression by man. Ephraim preferred man's commands and laws to God's; they obeyed man and set God at nought; therefore they should suffer at man's hands, who, while he equally neglected God's will, enforced his own. The "commandment," which "Ephraim willingly went after," was doubtless that of Jeroboam; "It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem; behold thy gods, O Israel, which brought you out of the land of Egypt; and Jeroboam ordained a feast unto the children of Israel" 1 Kings 12:28, 1 Kings 12:32-33. Through this "commandment," Jeroboam earned the dreadful title, "who made Israel to sin." And Israel "went willingly after it," for it is said; "This thing became a sin; and the people went to worship before the one, even unto Dan:" i. e., while they readily accepted Jeroboam's plea. It "is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem," they "went willingly" to the Northernmost point of Palestine, "even to Dan." For this sin, God judged them justly, even through the unjust judgment of man. God mostly punishes, through their own choice, those who choose against His. The Jews said, "we have no king but Caesar," and Caesar destroyed them.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

11. broken in judgment—namely, the "judgment" of God on him (Ho 5:1).

walked after the commandment—Jeroboam's, to worship the calves (2Ki 10:28-33). Compare Mic 6:16, "the statutes of Omri," namely, idolatrous statutes. We ought to obey God rather than men (Ac 5:29). Jerome reads "filthiness." The Septuagint gives the sense, not the literal translation: "after vanities."

Matthew Poole's Commentary

Ephraim; the subjects of the kingdom of Israel, the ten tribes; the prophet resumeth his threat against them.

Is oppressed; supposing, as well we may, that this prophecy respecteth Ahaz’s time, it will appear that the reigns of Zachariah, Shallum, Menahem, Pekahiah, and Pekah were past, which were unjust, seditious, bloody, and tyrannical times, in which oppressions abounded, and of which our prophet now speaketh. The ten tribes are by sedition, civil wars, and bloody conspiracies eaten up already almost. But to those God will add his displeasure, and the Assyrians shall be the executioners, and shall oppress Ephraim.

Broken in judgment, i.e. through fear of the partiality of the judge; though his cause be equal and just, yet money, or money’s worth, is extorted, to prevent an unjust, or to procure a just sentence; a known course in such days as those the prophet lived in, or as the days of Marius and Sylla.

Because he, Ephraim, spoken of as if one person, perhaps to intimate the universal defection,

willingly walked; it was not forced upon them, they did it willingly. Though there was a law commanding, yet there was in the people a forwardness, and too great a readiness, to comply and obey that law which made idolatry the establishment in the ten tribes.

After the commandment; to forbear going to the temple, and to worship the calves at Dan and Beth-el, as Jeroboam son of Nebat required.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

Ephraim is oppressed, and broken in judgment,.... Here the prophet again returns to the ten tribes, who were oppressed and broken, either by their own judgments, as the Targum; by the tyranny of their kings, and the injustice of their judges, who looked only for the mammon of unrighteousness; or by the judgment of their enemies, the Assyrians, the taxes they laid upon them, the devastations they made among them, and by whom, at last, they were carried captive; or by the judgments of God upon them; for all the enemy did was by his permission, and according to his will:

because he willingly walked after the commandment; not after the commandment of God, but after the commandment of men, as Aben Ezra; or after the commandment of the prophets of Baal, as Jarchi; or after the commandment of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, as Kimchi, by worshipping the calves at Dan and Bethel he set up there.

Geneva Study Bible

Ephraim is oppressed and broken in judgment, because he willingly walked after the {l} commandment.

(l) That is, after King Jeroboam's commandment, and did not rather follow God.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

11. Ephraim is oppressed and broken in judgment] The same two participles are again combined in Deuteronomy 28:33, and, as here, in connexion with invasion, ‘thou shalt be only oppressed and crushed alway’ (so Auth. Vers.). The judgment meant is God’s. The idea was so familiar that a more distinct form of expression was unnecessary. The Hebrews and the other Semitic peoples regarded war as a kind of pleading before a judge; comp. for the latter, the Syriac khayeb ‘damnavit, vicit’, and for the former Isaiah 54:17, where ‘weapon’ is parallel to ‘tongue that riseth against thee’). Compare Schiller’s Die Weltgeschichte ist das Weltgericht. Somewhat less probable is the rendering ‘crushed as to (his) right’, i.e. his right of national independence.

he willingly walked after the commandment] ‘The commandment’ (or, ‘ordinance’) is generally explained of the arbitrary calf-worship (rather bull-worship) set up by Jeroboam I., but as the word only occurs once again in the stammering speech of the drunkards (Isaiah 28:10), it seems more than probable that we should adopt the reading of Septuagint and Peshito, and render the whole clause, he would go after vanity (i.e. after idols, as Jeremiah 18:15; Psalm 31:6). With this reading, too, we can account for the fact that the noun has no article. Archbishop Seeker well points out that the two initial letters of the next word in the Hebrew are such as help to account for the scribe’s supposed error.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 11. - Ephraim is oppressed and broken in judgment. The expression retsuts mishpat is

(1) by some explained, "crushed by the judgment," that is, of God, according to which mishpat would be the genitive of the agent as mukkeh Elohim. But "crushed of judgment" or in judgment is justly preferred by others, the genitive taking the place of the accusative. Again, though the combination of 'ashuq with rutsuts is frequent, occurring as early as Deuteronomy 28:33, the latter is the stronger term. The oppression is

(2) not that which their own kings and princes practiced upon their subjects, according to Aben Ezra, "Their kings oppressed and cheated them;" nor the injustice practiced by the people of Ephraim among themselves, as implied by the LXX., "Ephraim altogether prevailed against his adversary, he trod judgment underfoot." The reference

(3) is rather to Ephraim being oppressed and crushed in judgment by the heathen nations around; thus Rashi explains, "Oppressed is Ephraim ever by the hand of the heathen - chastised with chastisements;" so also Kimchi, "By the hand of the heathen who oppressed and crushed them through hard judgments." The construction is asyndetous, like Song of Solomon 2:11, "The rain is over, is gone." Because he willingly walked after the commandment. This clause assigns the reason of Ephraim's oppression. They evinced ready willing-hood in following

(1) the commandments of men instead of the commandments of God. Tsav is thus understood by Aben Ezra, and in like manner Ewald explains it to mean an arbitrary or self-imposed precept. The LXX.

(2) seem to have read שָׁו, equivalent to שָׁוְא, vanity, translating, "for he began to go after vanities (τῶν ματαίων);" which the Chaldee and Syriac fellow. But

(3) it is rather the commandment of Jeroboam about the worship of the calves which lay at the root of the nation's sin. It is welt explained by Kimchi: "Although the word 'Jeroboam' is wanting, so that he makes no mention of it after tsar, such is the scriptural usage in certain places, i.e. to omit a word where the sense is plain. For it was a well-known fact that in that generation they walked not after the commandment, but after that of Jeroboam; therefore he has abbreviated the word to indicate the worthlessness, and used tsav instead of mitsvah." Perhaps it may have the concrete sense of the object of idolatrous worship. Hosea 5:11

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

From these judgments Israel and Judah will not be set free, until in their distress they seek their God. This thought is expanded in the next strophe (Hosea 5:11-15). Hosea 5:11. "Ephraim is oppressed, broken in pieces by the judgment; for it has wished, has gone according to statute." By the participles ‛âshūq and râtsūts, the calamity is represented as a lasting condition, which the prophet saw in the spirit as having already begun. The two words are connected together even in Deuteronomy 28:33, to indicate the complete subjection of Israel to the power and oppression of its foes, as a punishment for falling away from the Lord. Retsuts mishpât does not mean "of broken right," or "injured in its right" (Ewald and Hitzig), but "broken in pieces by the judgment" (of God), with a genitivum efficientis, like mukkēh Elōhı̄m in Isaiah 53:4. For it liked to walk according to statute. For הלך אחרי compare Jeremiah 2:5 and 2 Kings 18:15. Tsav is a human statute; it stands both here and in Isaiah 28:10, Isaiah 28:13, the only other passages in which it occurs, as an antithesis to the word or commandment of God. The statute intended is the one which the kingdom of Israel upheld from beginning to end, viz., the worship of the calves, that root of all the sins, which brought about the dissolution and ruin of the kingdom.