Hosea 13:1

This chapter is a further elaboration of the gross sins of Israel, the prophet's words taking the form of a formal indictment, followed by the announcement of the verdict and penalty. His purpose seems to be that of removing any doubt whatever that the doomed nation fully deserved the promised destruction. The monotony of this tragic scene is unexpectedly broken in Hosea 13:14 by a startling promise of reclamation and redemption, not for the purpose of casting any note of uncertainty with regard to the fate of the apostate nation, but for the purpose of revealing that God's ultimate purpose of redemption for mankind was yet to be fulfilled. Hosea 13:14 does not mean that Israel will escape her just reward, but that God's purpose will be successful anyway. It shows that it was not God who was defeated by Israel's apostasy, but Israel. The chapter is especially interesting because of Paul's quotation from Hosea 13:14 (1 Corinthians 15:55), and for the reflection of the new birth motif in Hosea 13:13, as adopted and extended by our Lord himself (John 3:1-5). Also, the various parenthetical outbursts in the prophecy of Revelation, extolling the glories of heaven, or the happiness of the saints in glory, in the very midst of prophecies concerning the most terrible apostasy, are very similar to the unexpected appearance in this chapter of such a promise as that given in Hosea 13:14. This, of course, is not the way men write their books; but it is surely the way in which God has written his. For that reason, we confidently reject the notion of some scholars that Hosea 13:14 does not belong in this passage.

Hosea 13:1

"When Ephraim spake, there was trembling; he exalted himself in Israel; but when he offended in Baal, he died."

How the mighty had fallen! There had been many times in Israel's history that saw Ephraim in the ascendancy. Beginning with the preferred blessing of the Patriarch Jacob (Genesis 48:14), Ephraim had always been prominent and powerful among the twelve tribes, being the largest and strongest, and at the same time, the most ambitious among them. They led the rebellion against the house of David (1 Kings 12:20); Joshua, the successor to Moses and leader of the conquest of Canaan was an Ephraimite;[1] after the death of Solomon, the Hebrew dominion in the Middle East attained its greatest extent under the Ephraimite Jereboam II (2 Kings 14:25-27); and here the prophet summarized that long-standing preeminence of Ephraim with the comment that, "When Ephraim spake, there was trembling." We agree with Myers that there is "no specific reference"[2] here to any particular event that indicated the former power and glory of Ephraim. The thrust of the verse is in the second clause.

"But when he offended in Baal, he died ..." "The dying commenced with the introduction of the unlawful worship."[3] It was appropriate that Ephraim should have been named here as a synonym for the whole northern Israel, because it was the Ephraimite king Jereboam I who led the way in corrupting the worship of God (1 Kings 12:30), "Ephraim's death warrant was sealed when he introduced idolatry."[4] Other Old Testament passages relating to that corruption are 1 Kings 12:25ff and 16:29-33. When God's covenant people forgot him and wallowed in the sensual immoralities of the old Canaanite paganism, their spiritual death ensued immediately; and the ultimate destruction of the kingdom became inevitable.