Summary
Chapter summary
Judgment is announced to priests, people, and royal house together, for all three were a snare at Mizpah and a net spread on Tabor. The diagnosis is a lodged condition, not a lapse: 'the spirit of whoredom is within them, and they know not Jehovah.' They will come with flocks and herds to seek him and not find him, for he has withdrawn. Sick Ephraim runs to Assyria for a cure: 'yet can he not heal you, neither will he cure you of your wound.' Jehovah becomes a moth to Ephraim and a lion who tears and departs, until in their affliction they seek his face earnestly.
Context
Prophecy · Hosea — Hosea overview
- A. 1–7 A snare at Mizpah and a net spread on Tabor
- B. 8–12 Blow the trumpet — I will be like a moth to Ephraim
- C. 13–15 They ran to Assyria, who could not heal their wound
The outline
A.A snare at Mizpah and a net spread on Taborvv. 1 to 7
Read vv. 1 to 7 →B.Blow the trumpet — I will be like a moth to Ephraimvv. 8 to 12
Read vv. 8 to 12 →C.They ran to Assyria, who could not heal their woundvv. 13 to 15
Read vv. 13 to 15 →
The world behind this chapter
Hosea 5The history
Mizpah, Tabor, and Shittim were not random names. Each was a well-known site with a shrine or a memory attached, and each sat where travellers passed — which is why the picture is of a snare and a net spread on a hill. The men supposed to guard the people were trapping them at the very places people went to worship.
The politics behind this chapter are documented outside the Bible. Assyria under Tiglath-Pileser III was pushing west and demanding tribute. Israel and Damascus formed a coalition to resist and tried to force Judah to join, invading when Ahaz refused. Ahaz then appealed to Assyria for help — and Assyrian records confirm both the tribute and the campaign that followed, in which Assyria stripped away Israel's northern territory and deported its people.
That appeal is what the chapter is mocking. Both kingdoms, wounded, run to the same doctor: the great king of Assyria. The Hebrew title used for him plays on a word for contending or quarrelling, and it is the last address on earth that could heal anything, since Assyria was the wound.
The images for God's judgment are slow ones on purpose. Moth and dry rot do not strike; they work quietly inside cloth and timber for years until the thing falls apart when it is handled. Then the image switches to a lion, which is not slow at all.
What it meant to them
To hearers in the middle of a war with their own relatives, the verdict was that both sides were guilty and both sides were treating the symptom. The wound was not Damascus or Samaria or Jerusalem. It was the covenant.
The chapter ends with God withdrawing to his place until they acknowledge their guilt and seek his face. In a world where every nation assumed its god was obliged to fight for it, the idea that the LORD would simply leave and wait was the most frightening thing in the chapter.
Sources cited
- The Annals of Tiglath-Pileser III (royal inscriptions of Assyria)
- Edwin R. Thiele, The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings
- John H. Walton, Victor H. Matthews, Mark W. Chavalas, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament
The text of this chapter
This page carries no textual note on Hosea 5. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →
This page draws on Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Calvin, Commentaries; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.