Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament · Hosea Chapitre 10

In the next verse the punishment is still further defined, and also extended to Judah. Hosea 10:11. “And Ephraim is an instructed cow, which loves to thresh; and I, I have come over the beauty of her neck: I yoke Ephraim; Judah will plough, Jacob harrow itself.” M e lummâdâh , instructed, trained to work, received its more precise definition from the words “loving to thresh” ( 'ōhabhtı̄ , a participle with the connecting Yod in the constructive: see Ewald, §211, b), not as being easier work in comparison with the hard task of driving, ploughing, and harrowing, but because in threshing the ox was allowed to eat at pleasure (Deuteronomy 25:4), from which Israel became fat and strong (Deuteronomy 32:15). Threshing, therefore, is a figurative representation not of the conquest of other nations (as in Micah 4:13; Isaiah 41:15), but of pleasant, productive, profitable labour. Israel had accustomed itself to this, from the fact that God had bestowed His blessing upon it (Hosea 13:6). But it would be different now. עברתּי על , a prophetic perfect: I come over the neck, used in a hostile sense, and answering to our “rushing in upon a person.” The actual idea is that of putting a heavy yoke upon the neck, not of putting a rider upon it. ארכּיב not to mount or ride, but to drive, or use for drawing and driving, i.e., to harness, and that, as the following clauses show, to the plough and harrow, for the performance of hard field-labour, which figuratively represents subjugation and bondage. Judah is also mentioned here again, as in Hosea 8:14; Hosea 6:11, etc. Jacob, in connection with Judah, is not a name for the whole nation (or the twelve tribes), but is synonymous with Ephraim, i.e., Israel of the ten tribes. This is required by the correspondence between the last two clauses, which are simply a further development of the expression ארכיב אף , with an extension of the punishment threatened against Ephraim to Judah also.

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