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As for Ephraim, their glory shall fly away, like a bird - Ephraim had parted with God, his true Glory. In turn, God would quickly take from him all created glory, all which he counted glory, or in which he gloried. When man parts with the substance, his true honor, God takes away the shadow, lest he should content himself therewith, and not see his shame, and, boasting himself to be something, abide in his nothingness and poverty and shame to which he had reduced himself. “Fruitfulness,” and consequent strength, had been God‘s special promise to Ephraim. His name, Ephraim, contained in itself the promise of his future fruitfulness. Genesis 41:52. With this Jacob had blessed him. He was to be greater than Manasseh, his older brother, “and his seed shall become a multitude of nations” Genesis 48:19. Moses had assigned to him “tens of thousands” Deuteronomy 33:17, while to Manasseh he had promised “thousands” only. On this blessing Ephraim had presumed, and had made it to feed his pride; so now God, in his justice and mercy, would withdraw it from him. It should “make” itself “wings, and fly away” Proverbs 23:5, with the swiftness of a bird, and “like a bird,” not to return again to the place, from where it has been scared.

From the birth - Their children were to perish at every stage in which they received life. This sentence pursued them back to the very beginning of life. First, when their parents should have joy in “their birth,” they were to come into the world only to go out of it; then, their mothers womb was to be itself their grave; then, stricken with barrenness, the womb itself was to refuse to conceive them.

: “The glory of Ephraim passes away, from the birth, the womb, the conception, when the mind which before was, for glory, half-deified, receives, through the just judgment of God, ill report for good report, misery for glory, hatred for favor, contempt for reverence, loss for gain, famine for abundance. Act is the “birth;” intention the “womb;” thought the “conception.” “The glory of Ephraim then flies away from the birth, the womb, the conception,” when, in those who before did outwardly live nobly, and gloried in themselves for the outward propriety of their life, the acts are disgraced, the intention corrupted, the thoughts defiled.”

Though they bring up children - God had threatened to deprive them of children, in every stage before or at their birth. Now, beyond this, he tells them, as to those who should escape this sentence, he would bereave them of them, or make them childless.

That there shall not be a man left - Literally, “from man.” The brief word may be filled up, as the English Version has done (by not infrequent an idiom):

(1) “from there being a man;” or

(2) “from” among “men;” as Samuel said to Agag (1 Samuel 15:33; add Proverbs 30:14), “as thy sword has made women childless, so shall thy mother be childless among women;” or

(3) “from” becoming “men,” i. e., from reaching man‘s estate.

The prophet, in any case, does not mcan absolute excision, for he says, “they shall be wanderers among the nations,” and had foretold, that they should abide, as they now are, and be converted in the end. But since their pride was in their numbers, he says, that these should be reduced in every stage from conception to ripened manhood. So God had forewarned Israel in the law, “If thou wilt not observe to do all the words of this law - ye shall be left few in number, whereas ye were as the stars of heaven for multitude” Deuteronomy 28:58, Deuteronomy 28:62. A sentence, felt the more by Ephraim, as being the head of the most powerful division of the people, and himself the largest portion of it.

Yea - (literally, “for”) woe also unto them, when I depart from them This is, at once, the ground and the completion of their misery, its beginning and its end. God‘s departure was the source of all evil to them; as He foretold them, “I will forsake them, and I will hide My face from them, and they shall be devoured, and many evils and troubles shall befall them, so that they shall say in that day, Are not these evils come upon us, because our God is not among us?” Deuteronomy 31:17. But His departure was itself above all. For the prophet says also; “for woe also unto them.” This was the last step in the scale of misery. Beyond the loss of the children, whom they hoped or longed for, beyond the loss of their present might, and all their hope to come, there is a further undefined, unlimited, evil, “woe to them also,” when God should “withdraw,” not His care and providence only, but Himself also from them; “when I depart from them.” They had “departed” and turned away, from or “against” God (see the note at Hosea 7:13). It had been their characteristic Hosea 4:16. Now God Himself would requite them, as they had requited Him. He would depart from them. This is the last state of privation, which forms the “punishment of loss” in Hell. When the soul has lost God, what has it?

Ephraim, as I saw Tyrus, is planted in a pleasant place - Or (better) “as I saw (her) toward Tyre,” or “as I saw as to Tyre.” Ephraim stretched out, in her dependent tribes, “toward” or “to” Tyre itself. Like to Tyrus she was, “in her riches, her glory, her pleasantness, her strength, her pride,” and in the end, her fall. The picture is that of a fair tree, not chance-sown, but “planted” carefully by hand in a pleasant place. Beauty and strength were blended in her. On the tribe of Joseph especially, Moses had pronounced the blessing; “Blessed of the Lord be his land, for the precious things of heaven, for the dew, and for the deep which coucheth beneath, and for the precious fruits brought forth by the sun, and for the precious things put forth by the moons (i. e., month by month) and for the chief things of the ancient mountains, and for the precious things of the lasting hills and for the precious things of the earth and the fulness thereof, and for the good pleasure of Him who dwelt in the bush” Deuteronomy 33:13-16. Beautiful are the mountains of Ephraim, and the rich valleys or plains which break them. And chief in beauty and in strength was the valley, whose central hill its capital, Samaria, crowned; “the crown of pride to the drunkards of Ephraim, whose glorious beauty is a fading flower which is on the head of the fat valleys of them that are overcome with wine” Isaiah 28:1. The blessing of Moses pointed perhaps to the time when Shiloh was the tabernacle of Him, who once dwelt and revealed Himself in the bush. Now that it had exchanged its God for the calves, the blessings which it still retained, stood but in the more awful contrast with its future.

But Ephraim shall bring forth his children to the murderer - Literally, “and Ephraim is to bring forth etc.” i. e., proud though her wealth, and high her state, pleasantly situated and firmly rooted, one thing lay before her, one destiny, she “was to bring forth children only for the murderer.” Childlessness in God‘s providence is the appropriate and frequent punishment of sins of the flesh. Pride too brought Peninnah, the adversary of Hannah, low, even as to that which was the ground of her pride, her children. “The barren hath born seven, and she that hath many children is waxed feeble” 1 Samuel 2:5. So as to the soul, “pride deprives of grace.”

Give them a miscarrying womb - The prophet prays for Israel, and debates with himself what he can ask for, amid this their determined wickedness, and God‘s judgments. Since “Ephraim” was “to bring forth children to the murderer,” then it was mercy to ask for them, that they might have no children. Since such are the evils which await their children, grant them, O Lord, as a blessing, the sorrows of barrenness. What God had before pronounced as a punishment, should, as compared to other evils, be a mercy, and an object of prayer. So our Lord pronounces as to the destruction of Jerusalem. “Behold the days are coming, in which they shall say, Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bare, and the paps that never gave suck” Luke 23:29. “O unhappy fruitfulness and fruitful unhappiness, compared with which, barrenness, which among them was accounted a curse, became blessedness.”

All their wickedness is in Gilgal - “Gilgal,” having been the scene of so many of God‘s mercies, had been, on that very ground, chosen as a popular scene for idol-worship (see the note above at Hosea 4:15). And doubtless, Ephraim still deceived himself, and thought that his idolatrous worship, in a place once so hallowed, would still be acceptable with God. “There, where God of old was propitious, He would be so still, and whatever they did, should, even for the place‘s sake, be accepted; the hallowed place would necessarily sanctify it.” In answer to such thoughts, God says, “all their wickedness,” the very chief and sum, the head from which the rest flowed, their desertion of God Himself, whatever they hoped or imagined, all their “wickedness is” there.

For there I hated them - “There, in the very place where heretofore I shewed such great tokens of love to, and by My gracious presence with, them, “even there I have hated them” and now hate them.” “He saith not, there was I angry, or displeased with them, but in a word betokening the greatest indignation, “I hated them.” Great must needs be that wickedness which provoked the Father of mercies to so great displeasure as to say, that He “hated them;” and severe must needs be those judgments which are as effects of hatred and utter aversation of them, in Him.”

For the wickedness of their doings - The sin of Israel was no common sin, not a sin of ignorance, but against the full light. Each word betokens evil. The word “doings” expresses “great bold doings.” It was “the wickedness of their wicked works,” a deeper depth of wickedness in their wickedness, an essence of wickedness, for which, God saith, “I will drive them out of My house,” i. e., as before, out of His whole land (see the note above at Hosea 8:1).

I will love them no more - So He saith, in the beginning; “I will have no more mercy upon the house of Israel, but I will utterly take them away” Hosea 1:6.: “This was a national judgment, and so involved the whole of them, as to their outward condition, which they enjoyed as members of that nation, and making up one beady politic. It did not respect the spiritual condition of single persons, and their relation, in this respect, to God.” As individuals, they were, “not cut off from God‘s favor and tokens of His love, nor from the power of becoming members of Christ, whenever any of them should come to Him. It only struck them forever out of that “house of the Lord” from which they were then driven,” or from hopes that that kingdom should be restored, which God said, He would cause to cease.

All their princes are revolters - Their case then was utterly hopeless. No one of their kings “departed from the sin of Jeroboam who made Israel to sin.” The political power which should protect goodness, became the fountain of corruption.: “None is there, to rebuke them that offend, to recall, those that err; no one who, by his own goodness, and virtue, pacifying God, can turn away His wrath, as there was in the time of Moses.”: “Askest thou, why God cast them out of His house, why they were not received in the Church or the house of God? He saith to them, because they “are all revolters, departers,” i. e., because, before they were cast out visibly in the body, they departed in mind, were far away in heart, and therefore were cast out in the body also, and lost, what alone they loved, the temporal advantages of the house of God.”

Ephraim is smitten - The prophet, under the image of a tree, repeats the same sentence of God upon Israel. The word “smitten” is used of the smiting of the tree from above, especially by the visitation of God, as by “blasting” and “mildew” Amos 4:9. Yet such smiting, although it falls heavily for the time, leaves hope for the future. He adds then, “their root is” also “withered,” so that “they should bear no fruit;” or if, perchance, while the root was still drying up and not quite dead, any fruit he yet found, “yet will I slay,” God says, “the beloved,” fruit “of their womb,” the desired fruit of their bodies, that which their souls longed for.: “So long as they have children, and multiply the fruit of the womb, they think that they bear fruit, they deem not that “their root is dried,” or that they have been severed by the axe of excision, and “rooted out of the land of the living;” but, in the anguish at the “slaying” of those they most loved, they shall say, better had it been to have had no children.”

My God hath cast them away - “My God” (he saith) as if God were his God only who clave to him, not their‘s who had, by their disobedience, departed from Him. “My God.” “He had then authority from Him,” whom he owned and who owned “him,” and who bade him so Speak, as though God were “his” God, and no longer their‘s. God “casts them away,” lit. “despises them,” and so rejects them as an object of aversion to Him, “because they did not hearken to Him.” “God never forsakes unless He be first forsaken.” When they would not hearken, neither doing what God commanded, nor abstaining from what He forbade, God at last rejected them, as worthless, lacking altogether to that end for which He created them.

And they shall be wanderers among the nations - This was the sentence of Cain Genesis 4:12; “a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth.” So God had forewarned them. “The Lord shall scatter thee among all people, from the one end of the earth even unto the other end of the earth - and among these nations shalt there find no ease, neither shall the sole of thy foot have rest” Deuteronomy 28:64-65.

The words of the prophet imply an abiding condition. He does not say, “they shall wander, but, they shall be wanderers.” Such was to be their lot; such has been their lot ever since; and such was not the ordinary lot of those large populations whom Eastern conquerors transported from their own land. Those conquerors took away with them into their own land, portions of the people whom they conquered, for two ends. When a people often rebelled, they were placed where they could rebel no more, among tribes more powerful than they, and obedient to the rule of the conqueror. Or they were carried off; as slaves to work in bricks, like Israel in Egypt.

Their workmen, smiths, artificers, were especially taken to labor on those gigantic works, the palaces and temples of Nineveh or Babylon. But, for both these purposes, the transported population had a settled abode allotted to it, whether in the capital or the provinces. Sometimes new cities or villages were built for the settlers. Israel at first was so located. Perhaps on account of the frequent rebellions of their kings, the ten tribes were placed amid a wild, warlike, population, “in the cities of the Medes.” 2 Kings 17:6. When the interior of Asia was less known, people thought that they were still to be found there.

The Jews fabled, that the ten tribes lay behind some mighty and fabulous river, Sambatyon, or were fenced in by mountains. Christians thought that they might be found in some yet unexplored part of Asia. Undeceived as to this, they still asked whether the Afghans, or the Yezides, or the natives of North America were the ten tribes, or whether they were the Nestorians of Kurdistan. So natural did it seem, that they, like other nations so transported, should remain as a body, near or at the places, where they had been located by their conquerors. The prophet says otherwise. He says their abiding condition shall be, “they shall be wanderers among the nations,” wanderers among them, but no part of them. Before the final dispersion of the Jews at the destruction of Jerusalem, “the Jewish race,” Josephus says,” was in great numbers through the whole world, interspersed with the nations.”

Those assembled at the day of Pentecost had come from all parts of Asia Minor but also from Parthia, Media, Persia, Mesopotamia, Arabia, Egypt, maritime Lybia, Crete, and Italy Acts 2:9-11. Wherever the Apostles went, in Asia or Greece, they found Jews, in numbers sufficient to raise persecution against them. James writes to those whom, with a word corresponding to that of Hosea, he calls, “the dispersion.” “James … to the twelve in the dispersion”. The Jews, scoffing, asked, whether our Lord would go to “the dispersion among the Greeks”. They speak of it, as a body, over against themselves, to whom they supposed that He meant to go, to teach them, when He said, “Ye shall seek Me and shall not find Me.” The Jews of Egypt were probably the descendants of those who went there, after the murder of Gedaliah. The Jews of the North, as well as those of China, India, Russia, were probably descendants of the ten tribes.

From one end of Asia to the other and onward through the Crimea, Greece and Italy, the Jews by their presence, bare witness to the fulfillment of the prophecy. Not like the wandering Indian tribe, who spread over Europe, living apart in their native wildness, but settled, among the inhabitants of each city, they were still distinct, although with no polity of their own; a distinct, settled, yet foreign and subordinate race.: “Still remains unreversed this irrevocable sentence, as to their temporal state and face of an earthly kingdom, that they remain still “wanderers” or dispersed among other nations, and have never been restored, nor are in likelihood of ever being restored to their own land, so as to call it their own. If ever any of them hath returned thither, it hath been but as strangers, and all, as to any propriety that they should challenge in it, to hear the ruins and waste heaps of their ancient cities to echo in their ears the prophet‘s words, “Arise ye and depart, for this is not your rest;” your ancestors polluted it, and ye shall never return as a people thither, to inhabit it, as in your former condition” Micah 2:10.

“Meanwhile Ephraim here is an example, not only to particular persons, that as they will avoid personal judgments, so they take care faithfully to serve God and hearken unto Him; but to nations and kingdoms also, that as they will prevent national judgments, so they take care that God be truly served, and the true religion maintained in purity and sincerity among them. Ephraim, or lsrael, held their land by as good and firm tenure as any people in the world can theirs, having it settled on them by immediate gift from Him who is the Lord of the whole earth, who promised it to their forefathers, Abraham and his seed forever Genesis 13:14-15; Deuteronomy 34:4, called therefore the land which the Lord sware unto them Deuteronomy 9:28, the land of promise Hebrews 11:9. Who could have greater right to a place, better and firmer right, than they had to the Lord‘s land, by “His” promise which never fails, and “His” oath who will not repent, confirmed to them?

Certainly, if they had observed conditions and kept covenant with Him, all the people in the world could never have driven them out, or dispossessed them of it. But, seeing they revolted and brake His covenant, and did not hearken to Him, He would not suffer them longer to dwell in it, but drave and cast them out of it, so that they could never recover it again, but continue to this day “wandering among the nation,” having no settled place of their own, nowhere where they can be called a people, or are for such owned. If God so dealt with Israel on their disobedience and departing from His service, to whom He had so particularly engaged himself to make good to them the firm possession of that land; how shall any presume on any right or title to any other, or think to preserve it to themselves by any force or strength of their own, if they revolt from Him, and cast off thankful obedience to Him? The Apostle cautioneth and teacheth us so to argue, “if God spared not the natural branches, take heed lest He also spare not thee,” and therefore warneth, “be not high-minded,” and presumptuous, “but fear” Romans 11:20-21.

As for Ephraim, their glory shall fly away, like a bird - Ephraim had parted with God, his true Glory. In turn, God would quickly take from him all created glory, all which he counted glory, or in which he gloried. When man parts with the substance, his true honor, God takes away the shadow, lest he should content himself therewith, and not see his shame, and, boasting himself to be something, abide in his nothingness and poverty and shame to which he had reduced himself. “Fruitfulness,” and consequent strength, had been God‘s special promise to Ephraim. His name, Ephraim, contained in itself the promise of his future fruitfulness. Genesis 41:52. With this Jacob had blessed him. He was to be greater than Manasseh, his older brother, “and his seed shall become a multitude of nations” Genesis 48:19. Moses had assigned to him “tens of thousands” Deuteronomy 33:17, while to Manasseh he had promised “thousands” only. On this blessing Ephraim had presumed, and had made it to feed his pride; so now God, in his justice and mercy, would withdraw it from him. It should “make” itself “wings, and fly away” Proverbs 23:5, with the swiftness of a bird, and “like a bird,” not to return again to the place, from where it has been scared.

From the birth - Their children were to perish at every stage in which they received life. This sentence pursued them back to the very beginning of life. First, when their parents should have joy in “their birth,” they were to come into the world only to go out of it; then, their mothers womb was to be itself their grave; then, stricken with barrenness, the womb itself was to refuse to conceive them.

: “The glory of Ephraim passes away, from the birth, the womb, the conception, when the mind which before was, for glory, half-deified, receives, through the just judgment of God, ill report for good report, misery for glory, hatred for favor, contempt for reverence, loss for gain, famine for abundance. Act is the “birth;” intention the “womb;” thought the “conception.” “The glory of Ephraim then flies away from the birth, the womb, the conception,” when, in those who before did outwardly live nobly, and gloried in themselves for the outward propriety of their life, the acts are disgraced, the intention corrupted, the thoughts defiled.”

Though they bring up children - God had threatened to deprive them of children, in every stage before or at their birth. Now, beyond this, he tells them, as to those who should escape this sentence, he would bereave them of them, or make them childless.

That there shall not be a man left - Literally, “from man.” The brief word may be filled up, as the English Version has done (by not infrequent an idiom):

(1) “from there being a man;” or

(2) “from” among “men;” as Samuel said to Agag (1 Samuel 15:33; add Proverbs 30:14), “as thy sword has made women childless, so shall thy mother be childless among women;” or

(3) “from” becoming “men,” i. e., from reaching man‘s estate.

The prophet, in any case, does not mcan absolute excision, for he says, “they shall be wanderers among the nations,” and had foretold, that they should abide, as they now are, and be converted in the end. But since their pride was in their numbers, he says, that these should be reduced in every stage from conception to ripened manhood. So God had forewarned Israel in the law, “If thou wilt not observe to do all the words of this law - ye shall be left few in number, whereas ye were as the stars of heaven for multitude” Deuteronomy 28:58, Deuteronomy 28:62. A sentence, felt the more by Ephraim, as being the head of the most powerful division of the people, and himself the largest portion of it.

Yea - (literally, “for”) woe also unto them, when I depart from them This is, at once, the ground and the completion of their misery, its beginning and its end. God‘s departure was the source of all evil to them; as He foretold them, “I will forsake them, and I will hide My face from them, and they shall be devoured, and many evils and troubles shall befall them, so that they shall say in that day, Are not these evils come upon us, because our God is not among us?” Deuteronomy 31:17. But His departure was itself above all. For the prophet says also; “for woe also unto them.” This was the last step in the scale of misery. Beyond the loss of the children, whom they hoped or longed for, beyond the loss of their present might, and all their hope to come, there is a further undefined, unlimited, evil, “woe to them also,” when God should “withdraw,” not His care and providence only, but Himself also from them; “when I depart from them.” They had “departed” and turned away, from or “against” God (see the note at Hosea 7:13). It had been their characteristic Hosea 4:16. Now God Himself would requite them, as they had requited Him. He would depart from them. This is the last state of privation, which forms the “punishment of loss” in Hell. When the soul has lost God, what has it?

Ephraim, as I saw Tyrus, is planted in a pleasant place - Or (better) “as I saw (her) toward Tyre,” or “as I saw as to Tyre.” Ephraim stretched out, in her dependent tribes, “toward” or “to” Tyre itself. Like to Tyrus she was, “in her riches, her glory, her pleasantness, her strength, her pride,” and in the end, her fall. The picture is that of a fair tree, not chance-sown, but “planted” carefully by hand in a pleasant place. Beauty and strength were blended in her. On the tribe of Joseph especially, Moses had pronounced the blessing; “Blessed of the Lord be his land, for the precious things of heaven, for the dew, and for the deep which coucheth beneath, and for the precious fruits brought forth by the sun, and for the precious things put forth by the moons (i. e., month by month) and for the chief things of the ancient mountains, and for the precious things of the lasting hills and for the precious things of the earth and the fulness thereof, and for the good pleasure of Him who dwelt in the bush” Deuteronomy 33:13-16. Beautiful are the mountains of Ephraim, and the rich valleys or plains which break them. And chief in beauty and in strength was the valley, whose central hill its capital, Samaria, crowned; “the crown of pride to the drunkards of Ephraim, whose glorious beauty is a fading flower which is on the head of the fat valleys of them that are overcome with wine” Isaiah 28:1. The blessing of Moses pointed perhaps to the time when Shiloh was the tabernacle of Him, who once dwelt and revealed Himself in the bush. Now that it had exchanged its God for the calves, the blessings which it still retained, stood but in the more awful contrast with its future.

But Ephraim shall bring forth his children to the murderer - Literally, “and Ephraim is to bring forth etc.” i. e., proud though her wealth, and high her state, pleasantly situated and firmly rooted, one thing lay before her, one destiny, she “was to bring forth children only for the murderer.” Childlessness in God‘s providence is the appropriate and frequent punishment of sins of the flesh. Pride too brought Peninnah, the adversary of Hannah, low, even as to that which was the ground of her pride, her children. “The barren hath born seven, and she that hath many children is waxed feeble” 1 Samuel 2:5. So as to the soul, “pride deprives of grace.”

Give them a miscarrying womb - The prophet prays for Israel, and debates with himself what he can ask for, amid this their determined wickedness, and God‘s judgments. Since “Ephraim” was “to bring forth children to the murderer,” then it was mercy to ask for them, that they might have no children. Since such are the evils which await their children, grant them, O Lord, as a blessing, the sorrows of barrenness. What God had before pronounced as a punishment, should, as compared to other evils, be a mercy, and an object of prayer. So our Lord pronounces as to the destruction of Jerusalem. “Behold the days are coming, in which they shall say, Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bare, and the paps that never gave suck” Luke 23:29. “O unhappy fruitfulness and fruitful unhappiness, compared with which, barrenness, which among them was accounted a curse, became blessedness.”

All their wickedness is in Gilgal - “Gilgal,” having been the scene of so many of God‘s mercies, had been, on that very ground, chosen as a popular scene for idol-worship (see the note above at Hosea 4:15). And doubtless, Ephraim still deceived himself, and thought that his idolatrous worship, in a place once so hallowed, would still be acceptable with God. “There, where God of old was propitious, He would be so still, and whatever they did, should, even for the place‘s sake, be accepted; the hallowed place would necessarily sanctify it.” In answer to such thoughts, God says, “all their wickedness,” the very chief and sum, the head from which the rest flowed, their desertion of God Himself, whatever they hoped or imagined, all their “wickedness is” there.

For there I hated them - “There, in the very place where heretofore I shewed such great tokens of love to, and by My gracious presence with, them, “even there I have hated them” and now hate them.” “He saith not, there was I angry, or displeased with them, but in a word betokening the greatest indignation, “I hated them.” Great must needs be that wickedness which provoked the Father of mercies to so great displeasure as to say, that He “hated them;” and severe must needs be those judgments which are as effects of hatred and utter aversation of them, in Him.”

For the wickedness of their doings - The sin of Israel was no common sin, not a sin of ignorance, but against the full light. Each word betokens evil. The word “doings” expresses “great bold doings.” It was “the wickedness of their wicked works,” a deeper depth of wickedness in their wickedness, an essence of wickedness, for which, God saith, “I will drive them out of My house,” i. e., as before, out of His whole land (see the note above at Hosea 8:1).

I will love them no more - So He saith, in the beginning; “I will have no more mercy upon the house of Israel, but I will utterly take them away” Hosea 1:6.: “This was a national judgment, and so involved the whole of them, as to their outward condition, which they enjoyed as members of that nation, and making up one beady politic. It did not respect the spiritual condition of single persons, and their relation, in this respect, to God.” As individuals, they were, “not cut off from God‘s favor and tokens of His love, nor from the power of becoming members of Christ, whenever any of them should come to Him. It only struck them forever out of that “house of the Lord” from which they were then driven,” or from hopes that that kingdom should be restored, which God said, He would cause to cease.

All their princes are revolters - Their case then was utterly hopeless. No one of their kings “departed from the sin of Jeroboam who made Israel to sin.” The political power which should protect goodness, became the fountain of corruption.: “None is there, to rebuke them that offend, to recall, those that err; no one who, by his own goodness, and virtue, pacifying God, can turn away His wrath, as there was in the time of Moses.”: “Askest thou, why God cast them out of His house, why they were not received in the Church or the house of God? He saith to them, because they “are all revolters, departers,” i. e., because, before they were cast out visibly in the body, they departed in mind, were far away in heart, and therefore were cast out in the body also, and lost, what alone they loved, the temporal advantages of the house of God.”

Ephraim is smitten - The prophet, under the image of a tree, repeats the same sentence of God upon Israel. The word “smitten” is used of the smiting of the tree from above, especially by the visitation of God, as by “blasting” and “mildew” Amos 4:9. Yet such smiting, although it falls heavily for the time, leaves hope for the future. He adds then, “their root is” also “withered,” so that “they should bear no fruit;” or if, perchance, while the root was still drying up and not quite dead, any fruit he yet found, “yet will I slay,” God says, “the beloved,” fruit “of their womb,” the desired fruit of their bodies, that which their souls longed for.: “So long as they have children, and multiply the fruit of the womb, they think that they bear fruit, they deem not that “their root is dried,” or that they have been severed by the axe of excision, and “rooted out of the land of the living;” but, in the anguish at the “slaying” of those they most loved, they shall say, better had it been to have had no children.”

My God hath cast them away - “My God” (he saith) as if God were his God only who clave to him, not their‘s who had, by their disobedience, departed from Him. “My God.” “He had then authority from Him,” whom he owned and who owned “him,” and who bade him so Speak, as though God were “his” God, and no longer their‘s. God “casts them away,” lit. “despises them,” and so rejects them as an object of aversion to Him, “because they did not hearken to Him.” “God never forsakes unless He be first forsaken.” When they would not hearken, neither doing what God commanded, nor abstaining from what He forbade, God at last rejected them, as worthless, lacking altogether to that end for which He created them.

And they shall be wanderers among the nations - This was the sentence of Cain Genesis 4:12; “a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth.” So God had forewarned them. “The Lord shall scatter thee among all people, from the one end of the earth even unto the other end of the earth - and among these nations shalt there find no ease, neither shall the sole of thy foot have rest” Deuteronomy 28:64-65.

The words of the prophet imply an abiding condition. He does not say, “they shall wander, but, they shall be wanderers.” Such was to be their lot; such has been their lot ever since; and such was not the ordinary lot of those large populations whom Eastern conquerors transported from their own land. Those conquerors took away with them into their own land, portions of the people whom they conquered, for two ends. When a people often rebelled, they were placed where they could rebel no more, among tribes more powerful than they, and obedient to the rule of the conqueror. Or they were carried off; as slaves to work in bricks, like Israel in Egypt.

Their workmen, smiths, artificers, were especially taken to labor on those gigantic works, the palaces and temples of Nineveh or Babylon. But, for both these purposes, the transported population had a settled abode allotted to it, whether in the capital or the provinces. Sometimes new cities or villages were built for the settlers. Israel at first was so located. Perhaps on account of the frequent rebellions of their kings, the ten tribes were placed amid a wild, warlike, population, “in the cities of the Medes.” 2 Kings 17:6. When the interior of Asia was less known, people thought that they were still to be found there.

The Jews fabled, that the ten tribes lay behind some mighty and fabulous river, Sambatyon, or were fenced in by mountains. Christians thought that they might be found in some yet unexplored part of Asia. Undeceived as to this, they still asked whether the Afghans, or the Yezides, or the natives of North America were the ten tribes, or whether they were the Nestorians of Kurdistan. So natural did it seem, that they, like other nations so transported, should remain as a body, near or at the places, where they had been located by their conquerors. The prophet says otherwise. He says their abiding condition shall be, “they shall be wanderers among the nations,” wanderers among them, but no part of them. Before the final dispersion of the Jews at the destruction of Jerusalem, “the Jewish race,” Josephus says,” was in great numbers through the whole world, interspersed with the nations.”

Those assembled at the day of Pentecost had come from all parts of Asia Minor but also from Parthia, Media, Persia, Mesopotamia, Arabia, Egypt, maritime Lybia, Crete, and Italy Acts 2:9-11. Wherever the Apostles went, in Asia or Greece, they found Jews, in numbers sufficient to raise persecution against them. James writes to those whom, with a word corresponding to that of Hosea, he calls, “the dispersion.” “James … to the twelve in the dispersion”. The Jews, scoffing, asked, whether our Lord would go to “the dispersion among the Greeks”. They speak of it, as a body, over against themselves, to whom they supposed that He meant to go, to teach them, when He said, “Ye shall seek Me and shall not find Me.” The Jews of Egypt were probably the descendants of those who went there, after the murder of Gedaliah. The Jews of the North, as well as those of China, India, Russia, were probably descendants of the ten tribes.

From one end of Asia to the other and onward through the Crimea, Greece and Italy, the Jews by their presence, bare witness to the fulfillment of the prophecy. Not like the wandering Indian tribe, who spread over Europe, living apart in their native wildness, but settled, among the inhabitants of each city, they were still distinct, although with no polity of their own; a distinct, settled, yet foreign and subordinate race.: “Still remains unreversed this irrevocable sentence, as to their temporal state and face of an earthly kingdom, that they remain still “wanderers” or dispersed among other nations, and have never been restored, nor are in likelihood of ever being restored to their own land, so as to call it their own. If ever any of them hath returned thither, it hath been but as strangers, and all, as to any propriety that they should challenge in it, to hear the ruins and waste heaps of their ancient cities to echo in their ears the prophet‘s words, “Arise ye and depart, for this is not your rest;” your ancestors polluted it, and ye shall never return as a people thither, to inhabit it, as in your former condition” Micah 2:10.

“Meanwhile Ephraim here is an example, not only to particular persons, that as they will avoid personal judgments, so they take care faithfully to serve God and hearken unto Him; but to nations and kingdoms also, that as they will prevent national judgments, so they take care that God be truly served, and the true religion maintained in purity and sincerity among them. Ephraim, or lsrael, held their land by as good and firm tenure as any people in the world can theirs, having it settled on them by immediate gift from Him who is the Lord of the whole earth, who promised it to their forefathers, Abraham and his seed forever Genesis 13:14-15; Deuteronomy 34:4, called therefore the land which the Lord sware unto them Deuteronomy 9:28, the land of promise Hebrews 11:9. Who could have greater right to a place, better and firmer right, than they had to the Lord‘s land, by “His” promise which never fails, and “His” oath who will not repent, confirmed to them?

Certainly, if they had observed conditions and kept covenant with Him, all the people in the world could never have driven them out, or dispossessed them of it. But, seeing they revolted and brake His covenant, and did not hearken to Him, He would not suffer them longer to dwell in it, but drave and cast them out of it, so that they could never recover it again, but continue to this day “wandering among the nation,” having no settled place of their own, nowhere where they can be called a people, or are for such owned. If God so dealt with Israel on their disobedience and departing from His service, to whom He had so particularly engaged himself to make good to them the firm possession of that land; how shall any presume on any right or title to any other, or think to preserve it to themselves by any force or strength of their own, if they revolt from Him, and cast off thankful obedience to Him? The Apostle cautioneth and teacheth us so to argue, “if God spared not the natural branches, take heed lest He also spare not thee,” and therefore warneth, “be not high-minded,” and presumptuous, “but fear” Romans 11:20-21.