i.e., the people of Jehovah, is not Israel of the ten tribes, but the covenant nation as a whole. Consequently shebhūth ‛ammı̄ is the misery into which Israel (of the twelve tribes) had been brought, through its falling away from God, not the Assyrian or Babylonian exile, but the misery brought about by the sins of the people. God could only avert this by means of judgments, through which the ungodly were destroyed and the penitent converted. Consequently the following is the thought which we obtain from the verse: “When God shall come to punish, that He may root out ungodliness, and bring back His people to their true destination, Judah will also be visited with the judgment.” We must not only reject the explanation adopted by Rosenmüller, Maurer, and Umbreit, “when Israel shall have received its chastisement, and be once more received and restored by the gracious God, the richly merited punishment shall come upon Judah also,” but that of Schmieder as well, who understands by the “harvest” a harvest of joy. They are both founded upon the false interpretation of shūbh shebhūth, as signifying the bringing back of the captives; and in the first there is the arbitrary limitation of ‛ammı̄ to the ten tribes. Our verse says nothing as to the question when and how God will turn the captivity of the people and punish Judah; this must be determined from other passages, which announce the driving into exile of both Israel and Judah, and the eventual restoration of those who are converted to the Lord their God. The complete turning of the captivity of the covenant nation will not take place till Israel as a nation shall be converted to Christ its Saviour.
Chap. 7
Verses 1-3
In the first strophe (Hos 7:1-7) the exposure of the moral depravity of Israel is continued. Hos 7:1. “When I heal Israel, the iniquity of Ephraim, reveals itself, and the wickedness of Samaria: for they practise deceit; and the thief cometh, the troop of robbers plundereth without. Hos 7:2.And they say not in their heart, I should remember all their wickedness. Now their deeds have surrounded them, they have occurred before my face. Hos 7:3. They delight the king with their wickedness, and princes with their lies.” As the dangerous nature of a wound is often first brought out by the attempt to heal it, so was the corruption of Israel only brought truly to light by the effort to stem it. The first hemistich of Hos 7:1 is not to be referred to the future,
