Albert Barnes Commentary Hosea 12

Ephraim feeds on wind, and follows after the east wind - The East wind in Palestine, coming from Arabia and the far East over large tracts of sandy wasteland, is parching, scorching, destructive to vegetation, oppressive to humans, violent and destructive on the sea (Psalms 48:7), and, by land also, has the force of the whirlwind (Job 27:21). The East wind carries him away and he departs, and as a whirlwind hurls him out of his place. In leaving God and following idols, Ephraim “fed on” what is unsatisfying and chased after what is destructive.

If a hungry man were to “feed on wind,” it would be light food. If a man could overtake the East wind, it would be his destruction. : Israel “fed on wind” when he sought by gifts to win one who could aid him no more than the wind; “he chased the East wind” when, instead of the gain which he sought, he received no slight loss from the patron whom he had adopted. Israel sought for the scorching wind when it could have taken refuge under the shadow of God. : “The scorching wind is the burning of calamities, and the consuming fire of affliction.”

He increases lies and desolation - Unrepented sins and their punishment are, in God’s government, linked together, so that to multiply sin is, in fact, to multiply desolation. Sin and punishment are bound together as cause and effect. Man overlooks what he does not see. Yet he nonetheless does treasure up wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous Judgment of God (Romans 2:5). : “Lying” will signify false speaking, false dealing, false belief, false opinions, false worship, false pretenses to justify it, false hopes, or relying on things that will deceive. In all these ways, Ephraim was guilty at that time, adding one sort of lying to another.”

They do make a covenant with the Assyrians and oil is carried into Egypt - Oil was a chief product of Palestine, which is why it is called a land of oil olive (Deuteronomy 8:8); and “oil” with balm was among its chief exports to Tyre (Ezekiel 27:17; see the note above at Hosea 2:8). It may also include precious ointments, of which it was the basis. As an export of great value, it stands for all other presents, which Hoshea sent to So, King of Egypt.

Ephraim, threatened by God, looked first to the Assyrian, then to Egypt, to strengthen itself. Having dealt falsely with God, he dealt falsely with man. First, he “made covenant with” Shalmaneser, king of “Assyria”; then, finding the tribute—the price of his help—burdensome to him, he broke that covenant by sending to Egypt.

Seeking to make friends apart from God, Ephraim made the more powerful Assyrian even more his enemy by seeking the friendship of Egypt; and God executed His judgments through those by whose help they had hoped to escape them.

The Lord has also a controversy with Judah, and will punish Jacob – The guilt of Judah was not open apostasy, nor had he filled up the measure of his sins. Of him, then, God says only, that He “had a controversy with” him, as our Lord says to the “Angel of the Church of Pergamos, I have a few things against you. Repent, or else I will come to you quickly, and fight against you with the sword of My mouth” (Revelation 2:12, 16). Of Ephraim, whose sin was complete, He says, that the Lord “is to punish.” God had set His mind, as we say, on punishing him; He had (so to speak) set Himself to do it.

Jacob, like Israel, is here the name for the chief part of Israel, that is, the ten tribes. Our Lord uses the same gradation in speaking of different degrees of evil-speaking: “Whosoever of you is angry without a cause, shall be in danger of the judgment; and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council; but whosoever shall say, You fool, shall be in danger of hell-fire” (Matthew 5:22).

“The justice of God falls more severely on those who degenerate from a holy parent, than on those who have no incitement to good from the piety of their home.”

To amplify this, “The prophet explains what good things Jacob received, to show both the mercy of God to Jacob, and the hardness of Ephraim toward God. While Jacob was yet in his mother’s womb, he took his brother by the heel, not by any strength of his own, but by the mercy of God, who knows and loves those whom he has predestined.”

He took his brother by the heel in the womb - Whether or not the act of Jacob was beyond the strength ordinarily given to infants in the womb, the meaning of the act was beyond human wisdom to declare. This is why the Jews paraphrased, “Was it not predicted of your father Jacob, before he was born, that he should become greater than his brother?” Yet this was not fulfilled until more than 500 years later, nor completely until the time of David.

These gifts were promised to Jacob out of the free mercy of God, prior to any merit. But Jacob, thus chosen without merit, displayed the power of faith: By his strength he had power with God. “The strength by which he did this was God’s strength, as well as that by which God struggled with him; yet it is well called his, as it was given to him by God. Yet he had power with God, God ordained it so that the strength in Jacob exerted itself with greater force than that in the assumed body, by which He thus dealt with Jacob. God, as it were, acted as two persons, showing in Jacob more strength than He exerted in the Angel.”

“Because of that faith in Jacob, it is related that God “could” not overcome him. He could not because He would not undermine his faith and constancy.”

“By the touch in the hollow of his thigh, He only added strength to his faith, showing him who it was who wrestled with him, and that He willed to bless him.” Then Jacob said those words which have become a proverb of earnest supplication: I will not let thee go, except thou bless me, and, I have seen God, face to face, and my life is preserved (Genesis 32:26; Genesis 32:30). It is also said: “He was strengthened by the blessing of Him whom he overcame.”

He wept and made supplication to Him - Jacob’s weeping is not mentioned by Moses. Hosea then knew more than Moses related. He could not have gathered it from Moses, for Moses relates the words of earnest supplication; yet the tone is that of one, by force of earnest energy, wresting, as it were, the blessing from God, not of one weeping.

Yet Hosea adds this, in harmony with Moses. For “vehement desires and earnest petitions frequently issue in tears.” “To implore means to ask with tears.” “Jacob, learning that God Himself thus deigned to deal with him, might well, out of amazement and wonder, out of awe-filled respect to Him, and in earnest desire of a blessing, pour out his supplication with tears.”

In this he became an image of Him, Who, in the days of His flesh, offered up prayers and supplications, with strong crying and tears to Him that was able to save Him from death, and was heard in that He feared (Hebrews 5:7).

As one commentator notes: “This which he says, ‘he prevailed,’ adding, ‘he wept and made supplication,’ describes the strength of penitents, for in truth they are strong by weeping earnestly and praying perseveringly for the forgiveness of sins, according to that, From the days of John the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force. Whosoever so imitates the patriarch Jacob, who wrestled with the Angel, and, as a conqueror, extorted a blessing from him, he, of whatever nation he is, is truly Jacob, and deserves to be called Israel.” Another says: “Yes, in this is the unconquerable might of the righteous, this his wondrous wrestling, in this his glorious victories, in glowing longings, assiduous prayers, joyous weeping. Girded with the might of holy prayer, they strive with God, they wrestle with His judgment, and will not be overcome, until they obtain from His goodness all they desire, and extort it, as it were, by force, from His hands.”

He found him in Bethel - This may mean either that “God found Jacob,” or that “Jacob found God,” which are indeed one and the same thing, since we find God only when He has first found us.

God “found,” i.e., made Himself known to Jacob twice in this place. First, when Jacob was going toward Haran, he saw the vision of the ladder with the angels of God ascending and descending, and the Lord stood above it and said, I am the Lord God of Abraham and the God of Isaac. Jacob then first called the place “Bethel.” Secondly, on his return, God spoke with him, giving him the name of Israel.

Both revelations of God to Jacob are probably included in the words, “He found him in Bethel,” since on both occasions God did “find him” and come to him, and he “found” God.

In Bethel, where God found Jacob, Israel deserted Him, setting up the worship of the calves. Indeed, he deserted God the more there because of God’s mercy to his forefather, desecrating to false worship the place that had been consecrated by the revelation of the true God, and choosing it all the more because it had been so consecrated.

And there He spoke with us - For what He said to Jacob, He said not to Jacob only, nor for Jacob’s sake alone, but, in him, He spoke to all his posterity, both the children of his body and the children of his faith. Thus it is said, There did we rejoice in Him (Psalms 66:6), i.e., we, their posterity, rejoiced in God there, where He so delivered our forefathers. And, Levi also, who receiveth tithes, paid tithes in Abraham, for he was yet in the loins of his father, when Melchizedek met him (Hebrews 7:9–10).

And Paul says that what was said to Abraham, therefore it was imputed to him for righteousness, was not written for his sake alone, but for us also, to whom it shall be imputed, if we believe on Him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead (Romans 4:23, Romans 4:4). There He spoke with us, showing how, in our needs, we should seek and find Him.

In loneliness, apart from distractions, in faith rising in proportion to our tears, in persevering prayer, in earnestness which “clings so fast to God, that if God would cast us into Hell, He would, as one said, Himself go with us, so Hell would not be Hell to us”—in these ways God is sought and found.

Even the Lord God of Hosts, the Lord is His memorial - The word, here translated and written "Lord," is the special and, so to speak, the proper Name of God, that which He gave to Himself, and which declares His Being. God Himself authoritatively explained its meaning. When Moses inquired of Him what he should say to Israel if they asked him, "What is the Name of the God of their fathers?"—the God who, Moses was to tell them, had sent him to them—God said, I Am That I Am...

Thus you shall say, "I Am" (EHYeH) "has sent me to you." And God said again to Moses, "Thus you shall say to the children of Israel, The Lord" (literally, He is, YeHeWeH) "God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you. This is My Name forever, and this is My memorial to all generations" (Exodus 3:13–15).

"I am" expresses self-existence: He who alone is. "I am that I am" expresses His unchangeableness, the necessary attribute of the Self-existent, who, since He is, always is all that He is.

"To Be," says Augustine, "is a name of unchangeableness. For all things which are changed, cease to be what they were, and begin to be what they were not. True Being, pure Being, genuine Being, no one has, except He who does not change. He has Being to whom it is said, You will change them and they will be changed, but You are the Same.

What is "I am that I am," if not "I am Eternal"? What is "I am that I am," except "I cannot be changed"?

No creature, no heaven, no earth, no angel, "nor Power, nor Throne, nor Dominion, nor Principality." This then being the name of eternity, it is somewhat more than He granted to him as a name of mercy, "I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." "That," He is in Himself; "this," to us.

If He willed only to be That which He is in Himself, what would we be? Since Moses understood, when it was said to him, "I am that I am," and "He who is has sent me to you," he believed that this meant much to people; he saw that this was far removed from them.

For "whoever has understood, as one ought, That which is, and which truly is, and, in whatever degree, has even transiently, as by a lightning flash, been irradiated by the light of the One True Essence, sees himself far below, in the utmost distance of removal and unlikeness."

This, the Self-existent, the Unchangeable, was the meaning of God’s ancient Name, by which He was known to the patriarchs, although they had not actually seen His unchangeableness, for theirs was a life of faith, hoping for what they did not see.

The word "He is," when used of Him by His creatures, expresses the same thing that He says of Himself, "I AM." This He willed to be "His memorial forever." This is the way in which He willed that we should believe in Him and think of Him as He who is, the Self-existing, the Self-Same.

The way of pronouncing that Name is lost. The belief has continued, wherever the Lord is named, for by "the Lord" we mean the Unchangeable God. That belief is contradicted whenever people use the name "Jehovah" to speak of God as though the belief in Him under the Old Testament differed from that of the New Testament.

Perhaps God allowed the pronunciation to be lost so that people might not become so familiar with it, as they do with the word "Jehovah," or use it irreverently and in an anti-Christian manner, as some now use other ways of pronouncing it. The Jews, even before the time of our Lord, ordinarily ceased to pronounce it.

In the translations of the Old Testament, and in the Apocrypha, the words "the Lord" were substituted for it. Jewish tradition states that in later times the Name was pronounced in the temple only, by the priests, when pronouncing the blessing commanded by God in the law.

On the great Day of Atonement, it was said that the high priest pronounced it ten times, and that when the people heard it, they fell on their faces, saying, "Blessed be the glorious name of His kingdom forever and ever."

They say, however, that in the time of Simeon the Just (that is, Jaddua who died about 322 B.C.), the high priests themselves stopped using it, for fear that it might be pronounced by some irreverent person.

Our Lord Himself sanctioned the disuse of it (as did the inspired Apostles yet more frequently), since, in quoting places of the Old Testament in which it occurs, He uses instead of it the name "the Lord." It stands, throughout the Old Testament, as the Name which speaks of God in relation to His people: that He always is. And, since He always is, then He is unchangeably to us all that He ever was, "The Same, yesterday and today and forever" (Hebrews 13:8).

He then who appeared to Jacob, and who, in Jacob, spoke to all the posterity of Jacob, was God. This was true whether it was (as almost all the early fathers thought) God the Son, who thus appeared in human form to the patriarchs, Moses, Joshua, and in the time of the Judges, under the name of "the Angel of the Lord," or whether it was the Father.

God Almighty thus accustomed humanity to see the form of Man, and to know and believe that it was God. It was He, the prophet explains, "the Lord"—that is, the Self-existent, the Unchangeable, "Who was, and is and is to come" (Revelation 1:4, 1:8)—who alone is, and from whom are all things, "the Fullness of Being, both of His own, and of all His creatures, the boundless Ocean of all which is, of wisdom, of glory, of love, of all good."

The Lord of Hosts - that is, of all things visible and invisible, of the angels and heavenly spirits, and of all things animate and inanimate, which, in the history of the Creation, are called "the host of heaven and earth" (Genesis 2:1), the one host of God. This was the way in which He willed to be kept in mind, thought of, remembered.

On the one hand then, concerning Ephraim’s sin, He did not will to be represented to people’s minds or thoughts by the calves, nor by any other created thing. On the other hand, concerning God’s mercies, since He who revealed Himself to Jacob was the unchangeable God, Israel had no cause to fear if he returned to the faith of Jacob, whom God there accepted. From this it follows: