1. When Ephraim spake trembling, &c.] The Hebrew is difficult, and the soundness of the text is perhaps questionable. At any rate, the rendering will depend on one’s impression of the requirements of the context. To the present writer, no translation appears preferable to that of King James’s Bible, and he has a pleasure in finding himself in accord with this version, which must of necessity rarely be the case in obscure passages. The single objection to the rendering is that expressed by Mr Huxtable in the Speaker’s Commentary, viz. that it ‘would give to the tribe of Ephraim a character out of harmony alike with Hosea’s description of it in Hosea 5:5 and with the history.’ But the passage referred to requires to be explained differently, and as to the history of the tribe, we are not here concerned with the facts as viewed critically, but as they presented themselves to a preacher in search of edification. Hosea has once already pointed the people of Israel to the golden age of the past, when Israel as a whole was comparable to ‘grapes in the wilderness’ and ‘the firstripe in the fig tree’ (Hosea 9:10, see note); he conceives of Jehovah as kindly overlooking the human frailty of his child in consideration of Israel’s latent possibilities. ‘When Ephraim spake trembling’, &c., may therefore be expanded thus, ‘When the Ephraimites in trembling accents responded to the divine call (comp. Hosea 2:15), they rose to the exalted position which its prophetic ancestor foreshadowed (Genesis 49:22-26).’ The reference is partly to the leadership of the Ephraimite Joshua, partly to the prosperity which attended the tribe of Ephraim even when it no longer supplied a general, a judge, or a king to the entire nation. The other chief renderings are, ‘When Ephraim spake, [there was] terror’, &c., i.e., men listened to Ephraim with fear and trembling; and, ‘When Ephraim spake of revolt (?), [and] lifted itself up [as a rebel] in Israel’, continuing in the next clause, ‘it became guilty through Baal, and died.’ In the latter case, the reference is to the revolt of the Ten Tribes, and the public sanction then given to a retrograde religion. The advantage of this view is that it enables us to give precisely the same meaning to Ephraim in both parts of Hosea 13:1; but as the text stands, the writer feels unable to accept it, as the sense of ‘revolt’ cannot be justified. It is very possible that the text is corrupt.

but when he offended in Baal, he died] Rather, if the Authorized Version’s view of the meaning be retained, but he became guilty through the Baal, and died. That is, in course of time, the Ten Tribes severed themselves definitely from the progressive teaching of the higher spiritual prophecy, and by so doing sealed their doom as a nation. The Baal-worship spoken of is not the form of religion against which Elijah thundered; that was introduced from Phœnicia, whereas a simpler but still idolatrous worship was offered by the northern Israelites to Jehovah under the name of ‘Baal’ (see on Hosea 2:13; Hosea 2:16). Finding a multitude of Canaanitish sacred places dedicated each to its own ‘Baal’ or patron-deity, they forthwith identified this Baal with their own Jehovah, and so fell under the same condemnation as their heathen predecessors. They failed to go forward with Amos and Hosea, and so they could not but fall behind to a degenerate and lower type of religion.

died] Ephraim was ‘dead while he lived’ (1 Timothy 5:6, comp. Proverbs 9:18, and Dante, Inferno XXXIII. 139–157). So Genesis 2:17, ‘in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die.’ Till Adam ate of the forbidden fruit, there was the hope that, though not created immortal, he might yet be exempted from decay and death. So, till Ephraim deliberately corrupted his religion, there was always the possibility that God might recognize him as a permanent factor in the religious history of the world. Comp. on Hosea 5:12.

1–8. Israel signed his own death-warrant when he lapsed into Baal-worship. Foolish as it is to ‘kiss calves’, they persist in the practice. Therefore the nation can but drift away, like cloud, or chaff, or smoke. How little Jehovah deserves such treatment! But Israel’s destruction has already begun: they shall be torn piecemeal.Verse 1. - When Ephraim spake trembling, he exalted himself in Israel. This rendering of the Authorized Version

(1) is supported by the Syriac, which is: "When Ephraim spake trembling, then he was, and was great in Israel." Rashi has a similar rendering of the word retheth, which is an ἅπαξ λεγόμενον, and causes the diversity of translation in this clause; but his exposition of the whole sentence is vague and unsatisfactory. Referring it to Jeroboam of the tribe of Ephraim, he explains as follows: "When Jeroboam, zealous for God, spoke against Solomon hard words, and with terror, Solomon was a great king." Pococke's exposition is in harmony with the Authorized Version, and is the following: "When Ephraim spake with fear and trembling (like his forefather Jacob, in his humble supplication to God), he exalted himself in Israel." But

(2) the rendering adopted by most moderns, is decidedly preferable, as agreeing better with the context, and much more in bar-runny with tribal characteristics of Ephraim, as intimated in this very book, and exhibited elsewhere. The translation we thus prefer is: "When Ephraim spake, there was trembling; he, even he, exalted himself in Israel." Such was the fear inspired, and the deference paid to the authority of that powerful tribe. The word reheth, though not found elsewhere, has a cognate root in Aramaic, with the meaning here assigned to it; for רתת is to fear, shudder, tremble; there is also, in Jeremiah 49:24, the word רֶטֶט, equivalent to "fear," similar in both sense and sound. The Chaldee supports this rendering; its paraphrase is: "When one of the house of Ephraim spake, trembling seized the peoples." Also Aben Ezra and Kimchi. The former's brief comment is: "Before his speaking the peoples were afraid; and the word רתת has no analogue except in the Aramaic." Kimchi's explanation is, "From the beginning, before Ephraim sinned, the fear of him was great over the peoples who surrounded him; for when he spake, fear and trembling were wont to seize him who heard him; and he was great and strong among the tribes of Israel, as it was said of him, ' And his seed shall be a multitude of nations.'"

(3) The LXX. renders reheth by δικαιώματα, thus:" According to the word of Ephraim, be adopted ordinances for himself in Israel," that is, when Ephraim spoke, the rest of the Israelites assented to his ordinances and rights, reverencing his authority, so that the general sense differs little from the Chaldee.

(4) Rosenmüller constructs and explains differently; his exposition runs somehow thus: "When Ephraim spake, instituting that horrible worship of the calves, he himself bore the sin of that horrible dictum, i.e. was guilty of, and bore its punishment." This explanation of נשא is farfetched and unnatural. We have no hesitation in preferring "lifted up," i.e. his head, or exalted himself, for, though it is usually the Hithp. that is employed in this sense, examples also occur in which Qal is so used, for example Psalm 89:10 and Nahum 1:5. Kimchi supplies rosho. We adhere, therefore, to the rendering and exposition of

(2). But when he offended in Baal, he died. This was not merely the calf-worship which, for political reasons, Jeroboam instituted and his successors retained, but the worship of Baal for which, no doubt, the calf-worship had prepared the way, and which had been introduced by Ahab at the instigation of his Sidonian queen. And though the people were partially and temporarily reformed through the efforts of Elijah the prophet and by the royal authority of Jehu, son of Nimshi, the evil was not eradicated, but frequently broke out again. The exaltation of Ephraim was not so much his distinction among his brethren as the governmental predominance at which that tribe ever aimed. That elevation, however, was soon followed by religious declension, culminating in the idolatry of Baal, which soon sealed the doom of the northern kingdom, thenceforth given up to destruction. The sentence of death was pronounced, and the actual dying commenced with the introduction of idolatrous worship. Thus, correctly, Kimchi: "He lifted up his head in Israel. And after he offended in Baal he died, as if he said, he was beaten before his enemies, as if he were dead, the power of his hand had departed." In this way will the Lord take away from the people their festivals of joy. Hosea 2:13. "And I visit upon her the days of the Baals, to which she burned incense, and adorned herself with her ring and her jewels, and went after her lovers; and she hath forgotten me, is the word of Jehovah." The days of the Baals are the sacred days and festive seasons mentioned in Hosea 2:13, which Israel ought to have sanctified and kept to the Lord its God, but which it celebrated in honour of the Baals, through its fall into idolatry. There is no ground for thinking of special feast-days dedicated to Baal, in addition to the feasts of Jehovah prescribed by the law. Just as Israel had changed Jehovah into Baal, so had it also turned the feast-days of Jehovah into festive days of the Baals, and on those days had burned incense, i.e., offered sacrifice to the Baals (cf. Hosea 4:13; 2 Kings 17:11). In Hosea 2:8 we find only הבעל mentioned, but here בּעלים in the plural, because Baal was worshipped under different modifications, from which Beâlı̄m came to be used in the general sense of the various idols of the Canaanites (cf. Judges 2:11; 1 Kings 18:18, etc.). In the second hemistich this spiritual coquetry with the idols is depicted under the figure of the outward coquetry of a woman, who resorts to all kinds of outward ornaments in order to excite the admiration of her lovers (as in Jeremiah 4:30 and Ezekiel 22:40ff.). There is no ground for thinking of the wearing of nose-rings and ornaments in honour of the idols. The antithesis to this adorning of themselves is "forgetting Jehovah," in which the sin is brought out in its true shape. On נאם יהוה, see Delitzsch on Isaiah 1:24. Hosea 13:1 Interlinear
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