Commentary on Hosea, Joel and Amos 1.10.1–1.10.6

Verses 1–3. — “Israel is a leafy vine; its fruit has been made equal to it; according to the multitude of its fruit it has multiplied altars. According to the richness of its land it has abounded in [shrines and] images. Their heart is divided; now they shall perish. He himself will break their images and lay waste their altars; for now they will say, We have no king, for we do not fear the Lord; and what will a king do for us?” The prophet’s speech runs through one and the same matter, namely enlarging on the crimes of that people and announcing their punishments; and so he often goes over similar and even the same figures, yet mixes in, as far as he can, something by which they are made new. So, naming Israel a leafy vine, he declares that its fruit has been made equal to it. “This vine,” he says, “when it had been brought out of Egypt and filled the land of promise, stood joyful with spreading branches, and produced such richness of fruit, that is, of children and grandchildren, that the stretches of land it had received became narrow. But what did it profit that its offspring increased, when they strove to break out in the opposite direction, so that they armed themselves, in proportion to their numbers, to insult me, the author of so great a gift, and, as if trying to match their abundance with crimes, fashioned gods for themselves to worship in public and in private? So that vine, which had been planted from the stock of the chosen fathers, was turned into a cluster of bitterness and a branch of Sodom, so that common people and princes alike rejoiced not merely to have neglected justice but even to have fought against it.” “Their heart is divided; now they shall perish.” That is, they have separated from me with their whole intent, and have departed from the worship of the law by a settled decision. What remains but that they perish by a fixed disaster, and understand the emptiness of the opinion with which they used to console themselves, saying that their state would be judged better even under captivity than when they were governed by holy men or priests or kings? “So they will talk among themselves shamelessly,” he says, “that then they will obtain a kind of freedom, by which they are forced to obey neither law nor king, since the enemy has carried off their prince and they have thrown off the yoke of religion by their old profanity. Exulting in these crimes,” he says, “they think it happiness that they are not summoned to the daily services of their kings, but, living far away, pay yearly tributes to the victors.” For just as those of whom the apostle says, “Despairing, they gave themselves up to licentiousness, to work every uncleanness and greed,” or those whom the prophet means, because they said, “We will magnify our tongue; our lips are our own; who is our lord?”, so blessed Hosea declares of these men that they had broken out so far into profanity that they seem to have said, or to be able to say, “We have no king, for we do not fear the Lord; and what will a king do for us?”: that is, “We are freed from the troubles of the fear of God, and we have no law that could punish this license of speech.” Since this rightly stirs grave horror in one who considers it well, he rebukes them and cries out [Verse 4]: “You speak words of a useless vision, and you will strike a covenant, and judgment will spring up like bitterness on the furrows of the field.” That is, “You will feel that, to your heart’s content, in such madness you have entered into a covenant with the utmost calamities; and all your regions will be filled with various disasters to such a degree that dangers rather than shoots will seem to sprout in the very lands.” Fittingly, since he had marked that they sinned not by negligence but by zeal and deliberate effort, he named furrows pressed into the fields, in which the bitterness of judgment, that is, the severity of vengeance, would be born, so that they might know they would reap what they had sown.

Verses 5, 6. — “The inhabitants of Samaria worshiped the heifers of Beth-aven; for its people mourned over it, and its temple keepers exulted over it in its glory, because it departed from it. For it too was carried to Assyria, a gift to the avenging king. Confusion shall seize Ephraim, and Israel shall be put to shame in its own will.” Jewish tradition usually explains this passage thus: at the time when the Israelites had not yet been transferred to the fields of the Medes, but, still remaining in their own region, were paying tribute to the Assyrians, their treasury being exhausted, the calves they worshiped were sent to the Assyrian as tribute. But since Jeroboam had dedicated them as golden, they had been changed into bronze by their temple keepers, to whom their custody had been entrusted. So when necessity required that the calves too be sent to make up the tribute, the people mourned, thinking they had lost their divinities; but the keepers, conscious of the fraud, exulted, since, with the images sent elsewhere, they no longer had to fear an inquiry into the theft. Although the reading seems to have given occasion to this sense, it can also be made clear in keeping with the explanation set out from the beginning: after the threatening authority had announced that bitter vengeance would sprout for the wretches through the furrows of the field, it at once added, in its usual way, the cause of the indignation. “The inhabitants of Samaria,” he says, “worshiped the heifers of Beth-aven”: that is, the people of the royal city, who ought to have called others back from error, kept running to small towns to worship the images of calves. After this the order of the following verse is changed by hyperbaton, and the distinction is this: the people of Samaria will be put to shame when adversities have uncovered the worthlessness and uselessness of its gods. For under the pressure of want they too will serve to make up the tribute, having no more weight than the value of the metal requires. So the unhappy people follows with tears those whom shortly before it had consecrated with honor and with the joy of its soothsayers. “Confusion shall seize Ephraim, and Israel shall be put to shame in its own will,” whose great ugliness and bitter wages it will then recognize.

Verses 7, 8. — “Samaria has made its king pass away like foam on the face of the water. The high places of the idol, the sin of Israel, shall be destroyed; the burr and the thistle shall grow up on their altars; and they shall say to the mountains, Cover us, and to the hills, Fall on us.” “As far as divine goodness and mercy go,” he says, “I had wished that they should have long and secure possession of their land; but their grave sacrileges resisted, and forced their king, that is, their kingdom, to be destroyed by a swift end, so that, like foam floating on running water, both the profanity of the nation and its dignity were swallowed up. So, when all the shrines by frequenting which it used to provoke me have been destroyed by enemy fire, thickets will clothe their altars, so that whoever is left, driven by shame or fear, will wish to hide, if there is no other way, even under some overhanging mountains.” It should be noted that the Lord also took up this verse in the Gospel to signify the wishes of the fearful; and it comes from the custom of the Scriptures that sentences uttered in one case are fittingly applied to similar matters.

Verse 9. — “From the days of Gibeah Israel has sinned; there they stood; [battle shall not] overtake them in Gibeah against the children of iniquity.” He had already mentioned that time above, where he said that those to whom the words of the prophets were a mockery sinned like that youth of Gibeah which had abused the Levite’s wife to death. But lest the repetition be empty, here he sets out those whom he compared there, saying that the crime of those who sinned by incestuous obscenity and of those who judged spiritual men to be fools and madmen seemed alike; and therefore captivity would rage in the likeness of that disaster which almost destroyed the Benjamites by slaughter. Now, then, as if weighing the moments of the punishments on a scale for examination, he declares this later vengeance to be heavier. Not without reason, certainly, since there the struggle between the battle lines of the ten and the one tribe wavered for a long time, and the men of Gibeah, though few in number, were overcome with great effort. Here, however, the calamities and overthrows that preceded the final overthrow consumed all the resources of the Samaritans, so that there was no one who had the confidence to resist. “From the days of Gibeah,” then, he declares that Israel sinned; but at that time it stood firm for a while and gave proofs of its strength in very heavy battles. For only in the third battle, imploring God’s help with tears, did all the Israelites together win the victory. But now, since not only did no one go out to battle against the Assyrians, but they would not even defend their walls, the prophet says that the quantity of iniquity must also be understood from the heap of miseries. “For at that time,” he says, “the Benjamites resisted so bravely that for some time they seemed not to be overcome in battle. But these peoples of the ten tribes, with their kings and princes, because they had offended me, did not even stand. Therefore, since without any real battle the sentence must be pronounced on the guilty, [Verse 10] according to my desire I will chastise them.” This seems put entirely according to our custom: when we are moved by some indignation, we say that we desire vengeance and feel pleasure at the affliction of the guilty. So now he promises that they will be chastised according to his desire. For there follows, “Peoples shall be gathered against them”: that is, a multitude of plunderers will gather as if to prepared prey, so that they may receive the punishment of a double iniquity. For so he says, “they shall be chastised for their two iniquities.” As he indicated their number, he did not mark their kinds. We could therefore say that another prophet signified those iniquities he did not distinguish: namely, that they abandoned God, the fountain of living water, and fashioned for themselves broken cisterns, that is, idols, from which they can feel no refreshment. But since the best rule of explanation is the one taken from the sequence of the reading, let us think that he called “two iniquities” those which he accuses in the present passage: that they not only covered the true prophets with insults and blows, but also honored with offices and gifts the false ones who served demons in the region. By this it was shown that those who did both with equal persistence, honoring destructive teachers and detesting saving ones, fell not by error but by zeal. For a holy man is described as walking the opposite way: “Lord, who shall dwell in your tabernacle, or who shall rest on your holy mountain? He who walks without stain and works justice; who speaks truth in his heart and has not practiced deceit with his tongue, nor done evil to his neighbor, nor taken up a reproach against his neighbor. The wicked man is brought to nothing in his sight, but he honors those who fear the Lord.” “For these two iniquities, then, I will consume the ungodly with an affliction that is less pleasant to me.”

Verses 11, 12. — “Ephraim is a heifer taught to love threshing, and I passed over the beauty of her neck; I will mount upon Ephraim; Judah shall plow; Jacob shall break up furrows for himself. Sow for yourselves in righteousness, and reap in the mouth of mercy; renew for yourselves the fallow ground; and it is the time to seek the Lord, when he comes who will teach you righteousness.” He made known his feeling of indignation in mocking words, naming a nation that was liable to punishment a heifer suitable and fit for threshing crops. He marked its weakness by sex and age alike, since he placed it in every respect below the men of Gibeah to whom he compared it above. So, mocking, he calls it both a heifer and beautiful, and fond of the pressures it deserved by its evil pursuits: not that a person afflicted could love her hardships, but that she was bound to the sentence as closely as hearts inflamed by love are usually joined to each other. A neck fit to be put under torments, then, is promised to bear heat and winds, so that, while the one who threatens insults her with mockery, he declares her both eager for and skilled in the evils of which she is most deserving. “Ephraim,” he says, “is a heifer taught to love threshing, and I passed over the beauty of her neck; I will mount upon Ephraim; Judah shall plow; Jacob shall break up furrows for himself. I will break the hitherto proud neck of Ephraim,” he says, “so that he may at last feel as avenger the one whom he despised as teacher and indulgent. Nor will my censure fail of the usefulness I desire: for though it subjects these to exile, it will heal others by their example. For Ephraim, who would not be leaven and was not filled with the marrow of piety, but vanished wholly into chaff by the lightness of his mind, will endure the burning labor of the threshing floors. But Judah, in happier condition, will come under the yoke of fear: with the plowshare of the commandments driven in, he will distinguish between good and evil, and, taming the clod of his heart by the pursuits of religion, will lay down the seed of knowledge with the work of justice and mercy, and entrust it to renewed fallow ground, from which he has cleared the wild brushwood, so that a fitting harvest may answer so great a work.” This seems to have been fulfilled at the time when help sent from heaven delivered Hezekiah and the whole city from the hands of Sennacherib. Then follows: “And it is the time to seek the Lord, when he comes who will teach you righteousness.” For the holy annals tell that blessed Hezekiah had such zeal for religion that he fulfilled the office both of prince and of teacher. Not content to have called the inhabitants of his own tribe back to the worship of God, he sent messengers and edicts through the neighboring regions too, in which some of Israel had remained after the captivity and deportation, that they should return to the worship of the true God, rejecting the errors of idols. This, then, is what he says: that the people of Jerusalem would reap mercy when the devotion of a prince who taught them righteousness also roused them to seek God. Though this work and office may seem to have been briefly carried out under Hezekiah, it is shown to have been carried out more fully by our Lord, who is King of kings and Lord of lords, through whom the light of piety was shown not to one tribe or region but to all lands and nations, and the discipline of virtues handed on. Therefore the apostle too says, “Behold, now is the acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation (Rom 13:11), giving no offense in anything, so that the ministry may not be blamed.” For then the fitting time to seek the Lord appeared, when “the Word became flesh, to dwell among us; and we saw his glory, glory as of the only-begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.” But let us see the ungodliness too.

Verses 13–15. — “You have plowed ungodliness, you have reaped iniquity, you have eaten the fruit of lying; for you trusted in your ways, in the multitude of your mighty men. A tumult shall rise among your people, and all your fortresses shall be laid waste, as Salmana was laid waste by the house of him who judged Baal in the day of battle, the mother dashed in pieces upon her children. So has Bethel done to you, because of the face of the malice of your wickednesses.” On the occasion of Ephraim, whose sins he magnifies through almost the whole book, mention of Judah had been brought in, in which it had appeared what devotion and faith deserved in a time of dangers. Content to have noted this digression briefly, he returns to the order of the action he had begun, and presses on with rebuking the crimes of Israel. “But you, peoples of Samaria,” he says, “very differently from Judah and Benjamin, when you had come to the extremity of dangers, trusted not at all in God, but in your own counsels and the strength of your columns. You will receive a fitting fruit, then: a hostile tumult will destroy and overturn your people and your fortresses, and you will be consumed in the likeness of a most ungodly leader whose name was Salmana. As we read in the book of Judges, Gideon, having won the victory, killed him, and consumed him either with his kin, whom he showed by the name of the wretched mother, or with the very city in which he had reigned, which can be thought to be called mother. As Gideon, then, who had destroyed the idol of Baal, wiped out Salmana by slaughter, so Bethel has done to you: the city, that is, in which you set up idols to worship, deserting your God.” In the manner of the Scriptures, to express the fullness of profanity, he doubled the same words, saying, “So has Bethel done to you, because of the face of the malice of your wickednesses.” So the face of malice made up of manifold iniquity means nothing else than that they received a fitting wage, namely captivity, for their conduct.