Hosea 5:12
So I am like a moth to Ephraim, and like decay to the house of Judah.
BSB
ASV
Therefore am I unto Ephraim as a moth, and to the house of Judah as rottenness.
KJV
Therefore will I be unto Ephraim as a moth, and to the house of Judah as rottenness.
"And I am like a moth to Ephraim, and like rottenness to the house of Judah." LXX: "And I am like a tribulation to Ephraim, and like a stimulus to the house of Judah." In the Hebrew language "moth" is called "Recob" for "rot and decay"; one of which consumes clothes and the other wood: for which the LXX translated as "turbulence", which is "disorder" or "turbulence", and "stimulus". And it should be noted that the moth pertains to Ephraim, and the rottenness to the house of Judah.
Therefore I will be unto Ephraim a moth - Literally, “and I as a moth.” This form of speaking expresses what God was doing, while Ephraim was “willingly following” sin. “And I” was all the while “as a moth.” The moth in a garment, and the decay in wood, corrode and prey upon the substance, in which they lie hid, slowly, imperceptibly, but, at the last, effectually. Such were God’s first judgments on Israel and Judah; such are they now commonly upon sinners.
As in Ho 5:13, 14, the violence of the calamity is prefigured by the "wound" which "a lion" inflicts, so here its long protracted duration, and the certainty and completeness of the destruction from small unforeseen beginnings, by the images of a slowly but surely consuming moth and rottenness.
Rare words are the text's own signal of a deliberate thread: the fewer the occurrences, the more the places it appears belong together.
The walk8
Follow this verse’s cross-references two steps out. Each card is a verse this one points to, and beneath it the verses that one points to in turn. Where several different paths arrive at the same place, that place is listed first: the text keeps returning to it. Every stop shows its own words, and every stop is a page.
Through
Proverbs 12:4A wife of noble character is her husband’s crown, but she who causes shame is like decay in his bones.
leads to
A wife of noble character, who can find? She is far more precious than rubies.
A tranquil heart is life to the body, but envy rots the bones.
Every wise woman builds her house, but a foolish one tears it down with her own hands.
Better to live in the desert than with a contentious and ill-tempered wife.
A foolish son is his father’s ruin, and a quarrelsome wife is like a constant dripping.
Through
Isaiah 51:8For the moth will devour them like a garment, and the worm will eat them like wool. But My righteousness will last forever, My salvation through all generations.”
leads to
Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look at the earth below; for the heavens will vanish like smoke, the earth will wear out like a garment, and its people will die like…
how much more those who dwell in houses of clay, whose foundations are in the dust, who can be crushed like a moth!
Reached by 2 independent paths from here.
Surely the Lord GOD helps Me. Who is there to condemn Me? See, they will all wear out like a garment; the moths will devour them.