Commentary on Hosea John Calvin (continued)
Hosea 13
Chapter 13
Lecture Thirty-fourth
Hosea 13:1
1. When Ephraim spake trembling, he exalted himself in Israel; but when he offended in Baal, he died.
1. Quam loqueretur Ephraim, tremor: extulit se ipse in Israel, et peccavit in Baal, et mortuus est.
Interpreters agree not in their view of this verse. Some say that trembling was excited in Israel when Ephraim, that is, Jeroboam, who was born of that tribe, exhorted the people to worship the calves. By the word {,}רתתretat, ``trembling,'' they understand, that the people were so astonished, that they without thought immediately obeyed the will, or rather the humour, of their impious king. And if this sense be approved, the word, trembling, may be in another way explained, even in this, --- that the people did not immediately embrace that perverted worship, but dreaded, as is wont to be the case with regard to new things, and which seem to have nothing reasonable in their favour. But these expounders wholly depart, in my judgement, from the intention of the Prophet; for, on the contrary, he sets forth here the twofold state of the kingdom of Israel, that it might hence be manifest that the ten tribes had been through their own fault rejected by the Lord, and had thus fallen from that dignity unto which the Lord had raised them.
He therefore says, When Ephraim spake formerly, his voice dreaded, 89 and he raised himself in Israel; that is, among the whole race of Abraham. But now he is dead, or is fallen, after he has begun to sin in Baal. Then, in the first sentence, the Prophet records the honours with which God had favoured that tribe. Ephraim, we know, was the younger of the sons of Joseph. Manasseh ought not only to have had 89Horsley appears to have adopted Calvin's view of this sentence. His version is this, — "When Ephraim spake, there was dread."