Hosea 13:1 When Ephraim spoke trembling, he exalted himself in Israel; but when he offended in Baal, he died. "Spake trembling," i.e., there was trembling. "Ephraim was once very awful," Bishop Hall says, "so as, while he spake, the rest of the tribes were ready to tremble." The prophet contrasts two conditions of Ephraim, of prosperity and destruction. His prosperity he owed to the undeserved mercy of God, who blessed him for Joseph's sake; his destruction, to his own sin. There is no period recorded when Ephraim spake tremblingly, i.e., in humility. Pride was his characteristic, almost as soon as he had a separate existence as a tribe. Under Joshua, it could not be called out, for Ephraim gained honour, when Joshua, one of themselves. became the captain of the Lord's people. Under the judges, their pride appeared. Yet God tried them, by giving them their heart's desire. They longed to be exalted, and He satisfied them, if so be they would thus serve Him. They had the chief power, and were a terror to Judah. But he abused the goodness of his God; his sin followed as a consequence of God's goodness to him. God raised him, and he offended. The alliance with a king of Tyre and Sidon, which brought in the worship of Baal, was a part of the worldly policy of the kings of Israel. The twenty-two years of Ahab's reign established the worship. The prophets of Baal became 450, the prophets of the kindred idolatry of Ashtoreth, or Astarte, became 400; Baal had his one central temple, large and magnificent, a rival of that of God. The prophet Elijah thought the apostasy almost universal. (E. B. Pussy, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: When Ephraim spake trembling, he exalted himself in Israel; but when he offended in Baal, he died. |
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