Hosea 3:4-5

The applicability of these verses.

There is an important question in connection with these verses which presses for solution, and that is—Are the children of Israel the descendants of the ten tribes exclusively? Or has the expression, as used by the prophet, that wider and larger signification in which we popularly employ it, namely, as including all the descendants of Jacob or Israel, in other words, all the Jewish or Hebrew race? These questions involve a prior consideration. The ten tribes were carried away into captivity and left in the lands of Assyria, B.C. 722 according to the common chronology; the two tribes of Judah and Benjamin were carried into captivity in Babylon about one hundred and thirty years subsequently. After a lapse of seventy years' captivity the latter were permitted to return to their own land, and large numbers availed themselves of that permission. But what became of the ten tribes of Israel? They are still spoken of by some as the lost tribes; some, again, identify them with the Afghans; others with the American Indians. Such theories are easily enough formed, but can scarcely be said to be founded on facts. It is admitted that the fifty thousand who returned belonged mainly to the two tribes of Judah and Benjamin, while many of those two tribes remained behind in Babylon, and comparatively few of the members of other tribes joined their brethren in the return to Palestine. Where, then, are we to look for the main body of the ten tribes? We will try to answer this interesting and important question as best we can, and with a view to its bearing on the subject before us. After the restoration of the temple and city of Jerusalem, we find that there was an immense increase of the inhabitants of Palestine in the time and under the rule of the Maccabees. May we not regard it as more than probable that lingerers out of all the tribes were attracted to their native land after the restoration of its capital, and the revival of the country's prosperity? But large bodies still remained behind in the lands of their dispersion; there would be a natural tendency on the part of the remnants of the two tribes and the ten to gravitate towards each other. Thus they may be supposed to have amalgamated. Hence James addresses his Epistle to "the twelve tribes which are of the dispersion," that is, "scattered abroad," according to the Authorized Version; and Paul says, "Unto which promise our twelve tribes instantly serving God day and night, hope to come." We may cite, as confirmatory, the opinion of the late Dr. M'Caul. He says, "I feel strongly inclined to the opinion that the ten tribes are now found mingled with the other two. I do not mean that the ten tribes returned from Babylon, for in Ezra and Nehemiah we are told particularly who did return, but that the main body of the Jews, who remained in Babylon, who were dispersed in Egypt and other countries, and who never returned, naturally mingled with their brethren of the other tribes, and that this intermixture increased after the destruction of the second temple." Their return to the house of David, intimated in verse 5, presupposes some such reunion with their brethren as that of which we speak. We are, therefore, inclined to believe that the Judahites as well as the Israelites are comprehended in this plural patronymic of "the children of Israel."

I. THE CORRESPONDENCE OF THE CONDITION OF THE JEWS WITH THAT HERE SPECIFIED . The state of the Jewish people at the present day, as well as during centuries past, corresponds most exactly with that here described by Hosea. And where, it may be asked, is it possible to find any other nation whose condition—political and religious—is the same or even similar? Their condition is precisely what is here described with respect to Church and state, or public worship and civil government. No doubt in their dispersion they are subject to the king or rulers of the countries where they dwell; they have kings over them, but not of their own nation; they have laws by which they are governed, but those laws are not their own, nor the laws which God had given them. They have no king nor rulers to defend them from aggression without, nor king and high officers of state as the legislative and executive powers within. Kings of countries where they have sojourned have been mean enough and wicked enough to rob and plunder and oppress them cruelly.

II. THE CONFUSION OF THEIR CIRCUMSTANCES . "Here," says an old commentator, "is much privation—six 'withouts:'

but the last verse makes up for all: 'They shall return, and seek the Lord their God, and David their king.' These 'withouts' show the wonderfully confused estate that Israel was to be in for many days, many years, both in regard of their civil and of their Church estate." They had corrupted their way, setting up idols in Dan the place of judgment, and in Bethel the house of God; and that corruption now ends in confusion of both their civil and Church estate. They had combined the ordinances of God with their own devices, that is, the sacrifice and ephod with the image and the teraphim; now they are deprived of both.

HOMILIES BY C. JERDAN