Hosea 5:11

"Ephraim is oppressed, he is crushed in judgment; because he was content to walk after man's command."

As a glance at the American Standard Version text shows, there is no Hebrew word for "man's" in the last phrase of this verse; but the translators are undoubtedly correct in this rendition, because, as Keil observed:

"The word for `command' or `statute' here (see Jeremiah 2:5, and 2 Kings 18:15) is [~tsaw] and it means a human statute as an antithesis to the word or commandment of God. It is thus used both here and in Isaiah 28:10,13."[28]

In the light of these, there is no way to translate the passage without supplying the word that truly reveals the meaning.

Hailey and others have seen here a specific reference to the acceptance of Jeroboam's commandments for the people to worship the golden calves; and, while true enough, this by no means exhausts the ramifications of Ephraim's sin in walking after "man's command" instead of walking after "the commandment of the Lord."

We cannot leave this without stressing that our present world is filled with people who are doing exactly the same thing that Ephraim did, walking after men's commandments. They do so in the so-called "forms" of baptism they preach and practice, in the "non-observance" of the Lord's Supper on the Lord's Day, in the names, doctrines, and theologies of their churches, in their immoralities, drunkenness, adulteries, violence, and countless other ways. As the Lord himself declared, "In vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men" (Matthew 15:9).

Summing it all up, Ephraim's disaster was that he heeded the statutes of men, instead of walking in the way that God had commanded.