Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Hosea 11:8 - 11:8
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
They deserved to be utterly destroyed for this, and would have been if the compassion of God had not prevented it. With this turn a transition is made in Hos 11:8 from threatening to promise. Hos 11:8. “How could I give thee up, O Ephraim! surrender thee, O Israel! how could I give thee up like Admah, make thee like Zeboim! My heart has changed within me, my compassion is excited all at once. Hos 11:9. I will not execute the burning heat of my wrath, I will not destroy Ephraim again: for I am God, and not man, the Holy One in the midst of thee: and come not into burning wrath.” “How thoroughly could I give thee up!” sc. if I were to punish thy rebellion as it deserved. Nâthan, to surrender to the power of the enemy, like miggēn in Gen 14:20. And not that alone, but I could utterly destroy thee, like Admah and Zeboim, the two cities of the valley of Siddim, which were destroyed by fire from heaven along with Sodom and Gomorrha. Compare Deu 29:22, where Admah and Zeboim are expressly mentioned along with the cities of Sodom and Gomorrha, which stand alone in Gen 19:24. With evident reference to this passage, in which Moses threatens idolatrous Israel with the same punishment, Hosea simply mentions the last two as quite sufficient for his purpose, whereas Sodom and Gomorrha are generally mentioned in other passages (Jer 49:18; cf. Mat 10:15; Luk 10:12). The promise that God will show compassion is appended here, without any adversative particle. My heart has turned, changed in me (עַל, lit., upon or with me, as in the similar phrases in 1Sa 25:36; Jer 8:18). יַחַד נִכְמְרוּ, in a body have my feelings of compassion gathered themselves together, i.e., my whole compassion is excited. Compare Gen 43:30 and 1Ki 3:26, where, instead of the abstract nichūmı̄m, we find the more definite rachămı̄m, the bowels as the seat of the emotions. עָשָׂה חֲרֹון אַף, to carry out wrath, to execute it as judgment (as in 1Sa 28:18). In the expression לֹא אָשׁוּב לְשַׁחֵת, I will not return to destroy, שׁוּב may be explained from the previous נֶהְפַּךְ לִבִּי. After the heart of God has changed, it will not return to wrath, to destroy Ephraim; for Jehovah is God, who does not alter His purposes like a man (cf. 1Sa 15:29; Num 23:19; Mal 3:6), and He shows Himself in Israel as the Holy One, i.e., the absolutely pure and perfect one, in whom there is no alternation of light and darkness, and therefore no variableness in His decrees (see at Exo 19:6; Isa 6:3). The difficult expression בְּעִיר cannot mean “into a city,” although it is so rendered by the ancient versions, the Rabbins, and many Christian expositors; for we cannot attach any meaning to the words “I do not come into a city” at all in harmony with the context. עִיר signifies here aestus irae, the heat of wrath, from עוּר, effervescere, just as in Jer 15:8 it signifies the heat of alarm and anxiety, aestus animi.