Komentaryo ng kabanata
Hosea Kabanata 9
10
HOS 9:10
15
HOS 9:15
The Lord thereupon replies in Hosea 9:15: “All their wickedness is at Gilgal; for there I took them into hatred: for the evil of their doings will I drive them out of my house, and not love them any more; all their princes are rebellions.” How far all the wickedness of Ephraim was concentrated at Gilgal it is impossible to determine more precisely, since we have no historical accounts of the idolatrous worship practised there (see at Hosea 4:15). That Gilgal was the scene of horrible human sacrifices, as Hitzig observes at Hosea 12:12, cannot be proved from Hosea 13:2. שׂנא is used here in an inchoative sense, viz., to conceive hatred. On account of their wickedness they should be expelled from the house, i.e., the congregation of Jehovah (see at Hosea 8:1). The expression “I will drive them out of my house” ( mibbēthı̄ 'ăgâr e shēm ) may be explained from Genesis 21:10, where Sarah requests Abraham to drive ( gârash ) Hagar her maid out of the house along with her son, that the son of the maid may not inherit with Isaac, and where God commands the patriarch to carry out Sarah's will. The expulsion of Israel from the house of the Lord is separation from the fellowship of the covenant nation and its blessings, and is really equivalent to loving it no longer. There is a play upon words in the last clause שׂריהם סוררים .
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Hosea 9:10. “I found Israel like grapes in the desert, I saw your fathers like early fruit on the fig-tree in the first shooting; but they came to Baal-peor, and consecrated themselves to shame, and became abominations like their lover.” Grapes in the desert and early figs are pleasant choice fruits to whoever finds them. This figure therefore indicates the peculiar pleasure which Jehovah found in the people of Israel when He led them out of Egypt, or the great worth which they had in His eyes when He chose them for the people of His possession, and concluded a covenant with them at Sinai (Theod., Cyr.). Bammidbâr (in the desert) belongs, so far as its position is concerned, to ‛ănâbhı̄m : grapes in the dry, barren desert, where you do not expect to find such refreshing fruit; but, so far as the fact is concerned, it also refers to the place in which Israel was thus found by God, since you can only find fruit in the desert when you are there yourself. The words, moreover, evidently refer to Deuteronomy 32:10 (“I found him Israel in the wilderness,” etc.), and point implicite to the helpless condition in which Israel was when God first adopted it. The suffix to berē'shı̄thâh (at her beginning) refers to תּאנה , the first-fruit, which the fig-tree bears in its first time, at the first shooting. But Israel no longer answered to the good pleasure of God. They came to Baal-peor. בּעל־פּעור without the preposition אל is not the idol of that name, but the place where it was worshipped, which was properly called Beth-peor or Peor (see at Numbers 23:28 and Numbers 25:3). ינּזרוּ is chosen instead of יצּמד (Numbers 23:3, Numbers 23:5), to show that Israel ought to have consecrated itself to Jehovah, to have been the nazir of Jehovah. Bōsheth (shame) is the name given to the idol of Baal-peor (cf. Jeremiah 3:24), the worship of which was a shame to Israel. 'Ohabh , the paramour, is also Baal-peor. Of all the different rebellions on the part of Israel against Jehovah, the prophet singles out only the idolatry with Baal-peor, because the principal sin of the ten tribes was Baal-worship in its coarser or more refined forms.
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