6. It shall be also] Rather, This also (viz. the steer) shall be.

for a present to king Jareb] Just as the kings of Judah repeatedly gave up the gold and silver in the temple to foreign foes. ‘King Jareb’ should rather be the fighting king (i.e. the king of Assyria, see on Hosea 5:13).

shall be ashamed of his own counsel] i.e., shall find out what a mistake it was to set up a helpless idol as the protector of the nation.

Verse 6. - It shall he also carried unto Assyria for a present to King Jareb. Here we have an explanation and confirmation of what has just been said in the preceding verse. The calf, the glorious and magnificent national god, as Israel considered it, is brought to Assyria, and there offered as a present to the Assyrian king. The word gam is emphatic; that is, "it also," "itself also," or "it also with men and other spoils" - the golden idol of Beth-aven. Kimchi's explanation of gam is as follows: "Genesis, extension or generalization of the term, refers to the glory he bad mentioned. He says, 'Lo, in its place the glory shall depart from it as soon as they shall break it. Also, the stump of the calf, namely, the gold thereon, after its form is broken, they shall take away as a present to King Jareb.'" The sign of the accusative with suffix אוחו, which here stands before a passive verb, may be taken either

(1) absolutely, "as to it also," "it shall be brought ;" or

(2) as an instance of anacoluthon; or

(3), according to Gesenius, the passive may be regarded as an impersonal active, and thus it may take the object of the action in the accusative. The word yubhal is from yabhal, primarily used of flowing in a strong and violent stream, and so the root of מַבּול, the flood; then it signifies "to go," "to be brought or carried." The minchah here spoken of cannot well mean tribute, but is rather a gift of homage to the Assyrian conqueror, whom the prophet m vision sees already wasting the land of Israel and carrying away all its treasures and precious things. Ephraim shall receive shame, and Israel shall be ashamed of his own counsel. The feminine form, בָשְׁנָה - of which נּשֶׁן, the masculine, by analogy, is not in use - is wrongly explained by the Hebrew expositors as having a pleonastic nun. The construction usually preferred is

(1) that given above.

(2) Others render it, "Shame shall seize Ephraim;" but tiffs constructs a feminine noun with a masculine verb, contrary to grammar.

(3) Hitzig translates," He (the Assyrian king) shall take away or carry off the shame of Ephraim; that is, the calf-idol." He remarks that the construct feminine does not always in the speech of North Israel end in ־ת, and cites several passages in proof. The counsel of which Israel would be ashamed is understood

(1) of the consultation held before making a covenant or treaty with the King of Assyria;

(2) it is generally and more correctly understood of Jeroboam taking counsel with his tribesmen of Ephraim about setting up the calf idols. Jareb is a proper name, or rather an appellation. The King of Assyria, or the great king, was looked up to by the smaller Asiatic states for protection, and consequently styled their Jareb, avenger or defender, just as σώτηρ. savior, was a title applied to or assumed by certain kings for a similar reason, as Ptolemy Soter and others. The object of Israel's idolatry is carried off as a present to propitiate or appease the wrath of the Assyrian patron and protector - probably Shalmaneser in the present instance - or taken as a trophy to grace the triumph of the conqueror. So far from defending the calf-people, as Israel had become, their calf-god could not defend itself; instead of preserving its worshippers from deportation, it was doomed itself to deportation. Ephraim, the premier tribe. received shame, and Israel, the remaining tribes that had followed its lead and adopted its evil counsel, shared the shame; all of them together were thoroughly put to shame because of their mistaken and wicked policy. The counsel of Jeroboam - for to it, in our opinion, is the reference - appeared an able stroke of policy; but this policy, by which he hoped to detach Israel from Judah, was not only frustrated, but proved positively ruinous, so far were the means from effecting the end, or the end from justifying the wisdom of the means. Hosea 10:6The thoughts of Hosea 10:2, Hosea 10:3 are carried out still further in Hosea 10:4-7. Hosea 10:4. "They have spoken words, sworn falsely, made treaties: thus right springs up like darnel in the furrows of the field. Hosea 10:5. For the calves of Beth-aven the inhabitants of Samaria were afraid: yea, its people mourn over it, and its sacred ministers will tremble at it, at its glory, because it has strayed from them. Hosea 10:6. Men will also carry it to Asshur, as a present for king Jareb: shame will seize upon Ephraim, and Israel will be put to shame for its counsel." The dissimulation of heart (Hosea 10:3) manifested itself in their speaking words which were nothing but words, i.e., in vain talk (cf. Isaiah 58:13), in false swearing, and in the making of treaties. אלות, by virtue of the parallelism, is an infin. abs. for אלה, formed like כּרת, analogous to שׁתות (Isaiah 22:13; see Ewald, 240, b). כּרת בּרית, in connection with false swearing, must signify the making of a covenant without any truthfulness in it, i.e., the conclusion of treaties with foreign nations - for example, with Assyria - which they were inclined to observe only so long as they could promise themselves advantages from them. In consequence of this, right has become like a bitter plant growing luxuriantly (ראשׁ equals רושׁ; see at Deuteronomy 29:17). Mishpât does not mean judgment here, or the punitive judgment of God (Chald. and many others), for this could hardly be compared with propriety to weeds running over everything, but right in its degeneracy into wrong, or right that men have turned into bitter fruit or poison (Amos 6:12). This spreads about in the kingdom, as weeds spread luxuriantly in the furrows of the field (שׂדי a poetical form for שׂדה, like Deuteronomy 32:13; Psalm 8:8). Therefore the judgment cannot be delayed, and is already approaching in so threatening a manner, that the inhabitants of Samaria tremble for the golden calves. The plural ‛eglōth is used with indefinite generality, and gives no warrant, therefore, for the inference that there were several golden calves set up in Bethel. Moreover, this would be at variance with the fact, that in the sentences which follow we find "the (one) calf" spoken of. The feminine form ‛eglōth, which only occurs here, is also probably connected with the abstract use of the plural, inasmuch as the feminine is the proper form for abstracts. Bēth-'âven for Bēth-'ēl, as in Hosea 4:15. Shâkhēn is construed with the plural, as an adjective used in a collective sense. כּי (Hosea 4:5) is emphatic, and the suffixes attached to עמּו and כּמריו do not refer to Samaria, but to the idol, i.e., the calf, since the prophet distinctly calls Israel, which ought to have been the nation of Jehovah, the nation of its calf-idol, which mourned with its priests (kemârı̄m, the priests appointed in connection with the worship of the calves: see at 2 Kings 23:5) for the carrying away of the calf to Assyria. גּיל does not mean to exult or rejoice here, nor to tremble (applied to the leaping of the heart from fear, as it does from joy), but has the same meaning as חיל in Psalm 96:9. עליו is still further defined by על־כּבודו, "for its glory," i.e., not for the temple-treasure at Bethel (Hitzig), nor the one glorious image of the calf, as the symbol of the state-god (Ewald, Umbreit), but the calf, to which the people attributed the glory of the true God. The perfect, gâlâh, is used prophetically of that which was as good as complete and certain (for the fut. exact., cf. Ewald, 343, a). The golden calf, the glory of the nation, will have to wander into exile. This cannot even save itself; it will be taken to Assyria, to king Jareb (see at Hosea 5:13), as minchâh, a present of tribute (see 2 Samuel 8:2, 2 Samuel 8:6; 1 Kings 5:1). For the construing of the passive with את, see Ges. 143, 1, a. Then will Ephraim ( equals Israel) be seized by reproach and shame. Boshnâh, a word only met with here; it is formed from the masculine bōshen, which is not used at all (see Ewald, 163, 164). Hosea 10:6 Interlinear
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