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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Hosea 12:9 - 12:9
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“Yet am I Jehovah thy God, from the land of Egypt hither: I will still cause thee to dwell in tents, as in the days of the feast. Hos 12:10. I have spoken to the prophets; and I, I have multiplied visions, and spoken similitudes through the prophets. Hos 12:11. If Gilead (is) worthlessness, they have only come to nothing: in Gilgal they offered bullocks: even their altars are like stone-heaps in the furrows of the field.” The Lord meets the delusion of the people, that they had become great and powerful through their own exertion, by reminding them that He (וְאָנֹכִי is adversative, yet I) has been Israel's God from Egypt hither, and that to Him they owe all prosperity and good in both past and present (cf. Hos 13:4). Because they do not recognise this, and because they put their trust in unrighteousness rather than in Him, He will now cause them to dwell in tents again, as in the days of the feast of Tabernacles, i.e., will repeat the leading through the wilderness. It is evident from the context that mō‛ēd (the feast) is here the feast of Tabernacles. מֹועֵד (the days of the feast) are the seven days of this festival, during which Israel was to dwell in booths, in remembrance of the fact that when God led them out of Egypt He had caused them to dwell in booths (tabernacles, Lev 23:42-43). אֹד אוֹשִׁיבְךָ stands in antithesis to הוֹשַׁבְתִּי ot si in Lev 23:43. “The preterite is changed into a future through the ingratitude of the nation” (Hengstenberg). The simile, “as in the days of the feast,” shows that the repetition of the leading through the desert is not thought of here merely as a time of punishment, such as the prolongation of the sojourn of the Israelites in the wilderness for forty years really was (Num 14:33). For their dwelling in tents, or rather in booths (sukkōth), on the feast of Tabernacles, was intended not so much to remind the people of the privations of their unsettled wandering life in the desert, as to call to their remembrance the shielding and sheltering care and protection of God in their wandering through the great and terrible wilderness (see at Lev 23:42-43). We must combine the two allusions, therefore: so that whilst the people are threatened indeed with being driven out of the good and glorious land, with its large and beautiful cities and houses full of all that is good (Deu 6:10.), into a dry and barren desert, they have also set before them the repetition of the divine guidance through the desert; so that they are not threatened with utter rejection on the part of God, but only with temporary banishment into the desert. In Hos 12:10 and Hos 12:11 the two thoughts of Hos 12:9 are still further expanded. In Hos 12:10 they are reminded how the Lord had proved Himself to be the God of Israel from Egypt onwards, by sending prophets and multiplying prophecy, to make known His will and gracious counsel to the people, and to promote their salvation. דִּבֶּר with עַל, to speak to, not because the word is something imposed upon a person, but because the inspiration of God came down to the prophets from above. אֲדַמֶּה, not “I destroy,” for it is only the kal that occurs in this sense, and not the piel, but “to compare,” i.e., speak in similes; as, for example, in Hos 1:1-11 and Hos 3:1-5, Isa 5:1., Ezekiel 16 etc.: “I have left no means of admonishing them untried” (Rosenmüller). Israel, however, has not allowed itself to be admonished and warned, but has given itself up to sin and idolatry, the punishment of which cannot be delayed. Gilead and Gilgal represent the two halves of the kingdom of the ten tribes; Gilead the land to the east of the Jordan, and Gilgal the territory to the west. As Gilead is called “a city (i.e., a rendezvous) of evil-doers” (פֹּעֲלֵי אָוןֶ) in Hos 6:8, so is it here called distinctly אָוןֶ, worthlessness, wickedness; and therefore it is to be utterly brought to nought. אָוןֶ and שָׁוְא are synonymous, denoting moral and physical nonentity (compare Job 15:31). Here the two notions are so distributed, that the former denotes the moral decay, the latter the physical. Worthlessness brings nothingness after it as a punishment. אַךְ, only = nothing, but equivalent to utterly. The perfect הָיוּ is used for the certain future. Gilgal, which is mentioned in Hos 4:15; Hos 9:15, as the seat of one form of idolatrous worship, is spoken of here as a place of sacrifice, to indicate with a play upon the name the turning of the altars into heaps of stones (Gallim). The desolation or destruction of the altars involves not only the cessation of the idolatrous worship, but the dissolution of the kingdom and the banishment of the people out of the land. שְׁוָרִים, which only occurs in the plural here, cannot of course be the dative (to sacrifice to oxen), but only the accusative. The sacrifice of oxen was reckoned as a sin on the part of the people, not on account of the animals offers, but on account of the unlawful place of sacrifice. The suffix to mizbechōthâm (their sacrifices) refers to Israel, the subject implied in zibbēchū.