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Hypocrisy Rebuked
v. 11. Ephraim also is like a silly dove without heart, one which is too simple to notice the snare of the fowler. They call to Egypt, they go to Assyria, not realizing that the very nations whose help they invoked would prove their undoing.
v. 12. When they shall go, when their embassies are dispatched to seek the aid of the great foreign nations, I will spread My net upon them, using the foreigners as His instruments to carry out His punishment upon them; I will bring them down as the fowls of the heaven, dragging them down into the net of the exile; I will chastise them, as their congregation hath heard, in accordance with His repeated proclamations concerning their doom.
v. 13. Woe unto them! For they have fled from Me, forsaking the one Rock of their salvation. Destruction unto them! because they have transgressed against Me, they have rebelled and thereby forsaken Him, who is the only One who could and would help them. Though I have redeemed them, from the bondage of Egypt and from all other enemies, yet they have spoken lies against Me, by both words and actions, in seeking help elsewhere.
v. 14. And they have not cried unto Me with their heart, for whatever praying they did was performed in hypocrisy, when they howled upon their beds, with cries of sleepless anguish, after the usual manner of their kind, resorting to extremes in order to make an impression; they assemble themselves for corn and wine, their one thought and object being to fill their stomachs with the best products of the land, and they rebel against Me, they have forsaken Him and, at the same time, turn against Him with open hostility.
v. 15. Though I have bound and strengthened their arms, teaching them where to get and how to use their strength, yet do they imagine mischief against Me, by their idolatry and rebellion.
v. 16. They return, but not to the Most High, or, "upwards," with their faces turned to His power alone; they are like a deceitful bow, whose string has lost its tenseness and cannot carry the arrow to its mark. Their princes shall fall by the sword for the rage of their tongue, on account of their proud boasting concerning the aid of Egypt; this shall be their derision in the land of Egypt, for the Egyptians themselves ridiculed them on account of the weakness revealed in their overthrow. That is ever the result of man's turning to men for help, for the very ones upon whom he depended for assistance will jeer at his fall. God is the only One in whom we may safely place all our trust.