Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Hosea 5:12
Therefore [will] I [be] unto Ephraim as a moth, and to the house of Judah as rottenness.
12. Therefore will I be ] Rather, And as for me, I am, &c. The same two figures are of frequent occurrence; they are combined again in Job 13:28. A gradual inward corruption was destroying the two Israelitish states quite as effectually as a foreign conquest. Anarchy and civil war combined with a retrograde religion and a lax morality to bring northern Israel in particular to the verge of ruin. Elsewhere Hosea describes its condition as a living death (Hos 13:1).
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
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 Gods first judgments on Israel and Judah; such are they now commonly upon sinners. He tried, and now too tries at first, gentle measures and mild chastisements, uneasy indeed and troublesome and painful; yet slow in their working; each stage of loss and decay, a little beyond that which preceded it; but leaving long respite and time for repentance, before they finally wear out and destroy the impenitent. The two images, which He uses, may describe different kinds of decay, both slow, yet the one slower than the other, as Judah was, in fact, destroyed more slowly than Ephraim. For the rottenness, or caries in wood, preys more slowly upon wood, which is hard, than the moth on the wool.
So God visits the soul with different distresses, bodily or spiritual. He impairs, little by little, health of body, or fineness of understanding; or He withdraws grace or spiritual strength; or allows lukewarmness and distaste for the things of God to creep over the soul. These are the gnawing of the moth, overlooked by the sinner, if he persevere in carelessness as to his conscience, yet in the end, bringing entire decay of health, of understanding, of heart, of mind, unless God interfere by the mightier mercy of some heavy chastisement, to awaken him. : A moth does mischief, and makes no sound. So the minds of the wicked, in that they neglect to take account of their losses, lose their soundness, as it were, without knowing it. For they lose innocency from the heart, truth from the lips, continency from the flesh, and, as time holds on, life from their age. To Israel and Judah the moth and rottenness denoted the slow decay, by which they were gradually weakened, until they were carried away captive.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Hos 5:12
Therefore will I be unto Ephraim as a moth.
The moth; or Gods quiet method of destroying
And I am like the moth to Ephraim, and like the worm to the house of Judah.–Keil and Delitzsch. The moth and worm are figures employed to represent destructive powers: the moth destroying clothes (Isa 50:9; Isa 51:8; Psa 39:12), the worm injuring both wood and flesh. The words indicate Gods quiet method of ruining. In two or three verses in this chapter He is spoken of as proceeding in His work of destruction as a lion. Here as a moth–working out ruin silently, slowly, and gradually.
I. He works decay thus sometimes in the bodies of men. Oftentimes men die violently and suddenly, but more frequently by some insidious hidden disease which, like a moth, works away quietly at the vitals, gradually poisoning the blood and undermining the constitution. The moth is often so small and secret in its workings that medical science can seldom find it out, and when it finds it out, though it may check it for a time, it cannot destroy it: the moth defies all medicine. At the heart of some of the strongest trees in the forest there are hosts of invisible insects noiselessly at work; the forester knows it not, the tree seems healthy; until one fine morning before a strong gust of wind it falls a victim to these silent workers. So with the strongest man amongst us.
II. He works decay thus sometimes in the enterprises of men. Often men find it impossible to succeed in their worldly avocations. Mercantile establishments that have been prosperous for generations have the moth in them. They have not been conducted by godly men and that in a right spirit; so God sent a moth, and the moth has been working away for years silently, secretly, and gradually, until all the vitality has been eaten up.
III. He works decay thus sometimes in the kingdoms of men. Effeminacy, luxury, ambition, greed, self-indulgence, servility, irreverence, these are moths, and decay sets in, and it falls not by the sword of the invader but by its own rottenness.
IV. He works decay thus sometimes in the churches of men. What destroyed the churches of Asia Minor? The moth of worldliness and religious error. Some of our modern churches are obviously slowly rotting away. A realising faith in the invisible; brotherly love; practical self-sacrifice; Christliness of spirit, are being eaten up by the moth of secularity, sectarianism, superstition, and religious pretence. Thus, too, individual souls lose their spiritual life and strength. God deliver us from those errors of heart that like a moth eat away the life! (Homilist.)
The moth
The mention of the moth in Scripture is, with a single exception, confined to the destruction caused in clothing by the larvae of the little clothes moth (Tineidae), of which very many species are found in Palestine. No other lepidopterous insect is alluded to in Scripture, and the class, including butterflies and moths, is not very numerously represented in the Holy Land, the dry climate of which, together with the scarcity of wood, is not particularly favourable to the development of this group. The number of recorded species in the Holy Land is about two hundred and eighty. (Canon Tristram.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 12. Unto Ephraim as a moth] I will consume them by little and little, as a moth frets a garment.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
Therefore, or And, Heb. I will be; I am; it is concise in the Hebrew, and might be thus expressed, But, or And, as for me, I am, and will be, to the ten tribes.
As a moth: moths do leisurely eat up and mar our clothes; so God was then, and had been from Jeroboams death to this day, weakening the ten tribes; their seditions did eat them up.
And to the house of Judah; the two tribes, who now with Ahaz did, as Ephraim, cast God off.
As rottenness; shall secretly consume and rot as wood doth by worms; so God will punish both Israel and Judah, these shall be forerunners and preparatories to the final desolation of both; of the one by Assyria, and of the other by Babylon.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
12. as a mothconsuming agarment (Job 13:28; Psa 39:11;Isa 50:9).
Judah . . .rottennessEphraim, or the ten tribes, are as a garmenteaten by the moth; Judah as the body itself consumed byrottenness (Pr 12:4). Perhapsalluding to the superiority of the latter in having the house ofDavid, and the temple, the religious center of the nation [GROTIUS].As in Hos 5:13; Hos 5:14,the violence of the calamity is prefigured by the “wound”which “a lion” inflicts, so here its long protractedduration, and the certainty and completeness of the destruction fromsmall unforeseen beginnings, by the images of a slowly but surelyconsuming moth and rottenness.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
Therefore [will] I [be] unto Ephraim as a moth,…. Which eats garments, penetrates into them, feeds on them privately, secretly, without any noise, and gradually and slowly consumes them; but at last utterly, that they are of no use and profit: this may signify the various things which befell the ten tribes in the reigns of Zachariah, Shallum, Menahem, Pekahiah, and Pekah, which secretly and gradually weakened them; and the utter consumption of them in the times of Hoshea by Shalmaneser:
and to the house of Judah as rottenness; as rottenness in the bones,
Pr 12:4; which can never be got out or cured; or as a worm that eats into wood, as Jarchi interprets it; and gets into the very heart of a tree, and eats it out: thus the Lord threatens the house of Judah, or the two tribes, with a gradual, yet thorough, ruin and destruction.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
“And I am like the moth to Ephraim, and like the worm to the house of Judah.” The moth and worm are figures employed to represent destructive powers; the moth destroying clothes (Isa 50:9; Isa 51:8; Psa 39:12), the worm injuring both wood and flesh. They are both connected again in Job 13:28, as things which destroy slowly but surely, to represent, as Calvin says, lenta Dei judicia . God becomes a destructive power to the sinner through the thorn of conscience, and the chastisements which are intended to effect his reformation, but which lead inevitably to his ruin when he hardens himself against them. The preaching of the law by the prophets sharpened the thorn in the conscience of Israel and Judah. The chastisement consisted in the infliction of the punishments threatened in the law, viz., in plagues and invasions of their foes.
Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament
God now denounces punishment in common on the two kingdoms; but he speaks not as before, he says not that his fury would be like a deluge, to overwhelm and drown the people. What then? He compares himself to little worms which gnaw wood and consume cloths; or he compares himself to rottenness; for, as we have said, the second word is to be so taken, as רקב, rekob, is properly rottenness, and is derived from רקב, rekab, to rot;” it is then rottenness or putrescence. But as I have said, some would render it, “a grub;” and there is a probable reason for this, because he first mentioned moth; and these two, moth and grub (24), would be more suitable to each other, than moth and rottenness. However, the meaning of the Prophet is by no means obscure, and that is, that the Lord would by a slow corrosion consume both the people; that though he would not by one onset destroy them, yet they would pine away until they became wholly rotten. This is the meaning.
But we must observe why the Prophet used this metaphor. It was, that the Israelites and the Jews might understand, that though the Lord would in some measure withhold his hand from resting heavily upon them, and that though he would spare them, yet they would not be safe, because they would by little and little feel a slow decay, that would consume them. And the Lord meant in this way to turn the people to repentance; but he effected nothing: for such was their hardness, that they felt not this slow decay; as those who are stupid are not moved, except they feel a most grievous pain; they think that they are doing well, and they struggle against their own disease: many such we see. Hence the Prophet here reminds them, that though the Lord should not openly fulminate against the Israelites and the Jews, they yet in vain flattered themselves, because the Lord would be to them a moth and a worm; that is, that however gradually he might consume them, they would yet be greatly deceived, if they did not perceive that they had to do with him.
The chief instruction is, that God does not always punish men in the same way; for he deals with them differently, either to promote their salvation, or to render them in this way more inexcusable. Hence God sometimes pours forth his severity, and at another time he slowly chastises us. But whatever may be the way, we are reminded that we ought not to sleep, whenever the Lord awakens us; nor should we wait until he appears as a lion or a bear, until he devours us, until he rages against us in dreadful fury. We are then reminded that there is no reason why we should wait for this; but that when God consumes us by degrees, it ought instantly to occur to us, that though the moth and the worm are but very small insects, hardly seen by the eyes, yet a hard and firm tree is consumed by these little worms, or by its own cariousness; and that cloths are consumed with putridity, when once the moth enters into them; we see valuable furniture perishing. Since it is so, there is no reason for men to be secure when God shows any sign of his wrath, though he pours not forth his horrible vengeance, but is as a hidden putrefaction. We now perceive what Hosea means in this verse. It now follows —
(24) “That it signifies some kind of worm or maggot I have no doubt, because the rule of the parallelism demands some gnawing insect, that may correspond with עש, the moth.” — By. Horsley
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
CRITICAL NOTES.
Hos. 5:12. Moth and rottenness] Destructive powers, one injuring cloths, the other wood and flesh; slowly but surely do they work (Job. 13:28). The sinner has foes within and without; conscience gnaws like a worm, and Divine judgment falls like a plague.
HOMILETICS
DESTRUCTION SLOW AND SURE.Hos. 5:12
The ten tribes are compared to a garment eaten by the moth, and Judah is consumed by rottenness. The moth is injurious to clothing. The worm penetrates both wood and flesh. Both prefigure the inward and outward corruption of Israel; destruction slowly and surely progressing (Job. 13:28).
I. Destruction small in its beginning. The moth is a small and mischievous creature. Touch it, and you kill it; permit it to live, and it makes havoc in the dwelling. Sins of youth may be despised and indulged, but they harden the heart and prepare for greater sins. Nations are not destroyed at once; families and churches are not always suddenly overcome. Some moral disease, like the moth, quietly gnaws away their beauty and vitality. Pride, intemperance, and vice prey upon their reputation and royalty. They are crushed with the moth.
II. Destruction slow in its progress. Little by little the hardest wood is pierced. Silently and slowly do rottenness and decay work their end. Yonder river rolling to the sea, rises from some small spot, and widens as it flows to join the mighty deep. The inhabitants of primeval forests are often startled by the fall of some giant tree. For centuries it was strong and grand in its foliage, but fell a victim to rottenness and decay. Insects came and gradually bored its sides and peeled its bark; the wind and air got access to its centre and heart. Now it lies a helpless trunk, to blend in common dustthe place thereof knows it no more. Family honour, mercantile prosperity, and national enterprises, may be upheld and flourish for a season. But secret sins and religious declensions, luxury and effeminacy, are, like the moth, slowly working out destruction. Rottenness entered the nations of antiquity, and their grandeur decayed like a flower. Superstition and priestly ambition, a sectarian and worldly spirit, will destroy spiritual life in our modern churches; lukewarmness and pride will hasten their ruin, and make them desolate in the day of rebuke.
III. Destruction sure in its end. Wherever the moth dwells destruction is costly and sure. The house of the moth is not a mansion of iron, a lasting habitation which never falls to ruin. The most precious stores are devoured. Rich perfumes and purple apparel are consumed and frittered away. The moth, says Dr Thomas, is often so small and secret in its workings that medical science can seldom find it out, and when it finds it out, though it may check it for a time, it cannot destroy it: the moth defies all medicine. So the judgments of God upon sin may be small in beginning, but increase in severity, and at length bring death and destruction. At first God tries gentle measures, mild chastisements, then loss and decay in bodily health, family prestige, and national glory; finally, after respite and space for repentance, calamities wear out and destroy the impenitent. For the moth shall eat them up like a garment, and the worm shall eat them like wool.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 5
Hos. 5:11-14. Vice is sometimes punished instantly and sometimes gradually. This seems to be the method of Divine procedure. We have slow and rapid consumption in the bodies of men. We have the gradual decay and the sudden overthrow of empires, the seed-time of evil and the harvest of judgment. The changes of circumstances are so various and frequent, so great and sudden, that the same person, the same people, afford an example of the greatest prosperity and the greatest misery. Henry the Fourth of France was despatched by a sacrilegious hand in his carriage, in the midst of popular applause and the triumphs of peace. Like Herod, the grandson of Herod the Great, he found but one step between adoration and oblivion. The ruin which God inflicts upon the impenitent and presumptuous sinners is often beyond precedent most sudden and most fearful. What folly, then, to trust in man, when God can easily destroy him!
Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell
(12) Rottenness.The Authorised version is right in this rendering (the disease caries) rather than worm (margin). Both images express concealed causes of irreparable destruction which come suddenly to view when it is too late.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
‘Therefore am I to Ephraim as a moth,
And to the house of Judah as rottenness (decay).’
Central to the passage (see the analysis above) is a description of what YHWH is to both Israel and Judah. To Israel He is as a moth, devouring them like clothes are devoured by moths, to Judah He is like the rottenness in fruit that spreads and spreads rendering the fruit inedible (compare the similar parallel descriptions in Job 13:28). In both cases the idea is that He is slowly executing His judgment on them because of their failure in respect of the covenant.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
Hos 5:12. Therefore will I be unto Ephraim as a moth A moth in the garment, a worm in the flesh. From small and unperceived beginnings, working a slow, but certain and complete destruction.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
Hos 5:12 Therefore [will] I [be] unto Ephraim as a moth, and to the house of Judah as rottenness.
Ver. 12. Therefore will I be unto Ephraim as a moth ] Their sin was the greater because they were so willing to it, and so easily drawn to idolatry, as most agreeable to their nature, and making much of their ease; which was Jeroboam’s main argument. It may very well be that he threatened punishment to those that disobeyed his commandment: but here they should have stood out, and have bid the worst; choosing affliction rather than sin; which because they did not, therefore they should perish by their own hand and counsels; they shall be moth-eaten, as a garment that breedeth the moth, and as a tree that breedeth the worm that wasteth it. Not but that God had a special hand in their punishment; and this not permissive only, but active too: “I will be unto Ephraim,” &c. For is there evil in a city and he hath not done it? The changes and periods of kingdoms are of him, Psa 75:6-7 , that men may know that the heavens do rule, Dan 4:26 ; so are the alterations in men’s bodies and estates, as Job setteth it forth, Job 4:19 ; Job 13:28 ; Job 27:18 . Every one (say some chemists) hath his own balsam within him; his own bane it is sure he hath; his clay cottage is every day ready to drop on his head, 2Co 5:1 . And for his estate, there are often times secret issues and drains of expense, at the which it runs out, as at a hole in the bottom of the bag, Hag 1:6 . See Trapp on “ Hag 1:6 “ Howbeit God’s holy hand is in all this; “I will be unto Ephraim as a moth,” &c., that is, I will waste them sensim, sine sensu. Secretly, insensitively, slowly; but surely, and inevitably: this David after Job, acknowledgeth: Psa 39:11 , “When thou with rebukes dost correct man for iniquity, thou makest his beauty to consume away like a moth,” thou castest him into a corruptio totius substantive, as the physicians call the hectic: “Surely every man is vanity. Selah.” Yea, he is “altogether vanity”; yea, and that in his best estate, when he is best underlaid, when settled on his best bottom, Hos 5:5 ; when he is gotten upon his mount with David, and thinks to die in his nest with Job; when he counts upon much good laid up in store for many years, as that rich fool, that reckoned without his host, as we say, Psa 30:7 Job 29:18 Luk 12:19 . Tinea damnum facit, et sonitum non facit, saith Gregory. The moth maketh no noise, but doth a great deal of harm among clothes. The worm here, rendered rottenness, is minutissimus vermiculus, saith Luther here, a very small creature, but doth no small mischief, ( teredo ), for it eats out the heart of the strongest wood, yea, of the strongest oaken planks at sea. See here what a poor creature is man, yea, a whole kingdom, whenas a moth and a little worm may consume them; when they may be crushed before the moth, as Job speaks, Job 4:19 ; he saith not before the lion, but before the moth. Learn also to take heed of sin, yea, of secret sins, 2Ki 17:9 , lest we be secretly wasted, our graces cast into a consumption, our comfortables wiped away, our consciences wearied with secret buffets, as being smitten with the rod of God’s mouth, Isa 11:4 ; our estates melted as the fat of lambs before the fire, and our land insensibly wasted, and by degrees desolated; as Ephraim and Judah were, as the Greek empire was, and as it began to be here with us, in Queen Mary’s reign, which was never prosperous after she had abolished the gospel; for beside foreign losses, of Calais, extreme dearths raged, much harm was done by thunder from heaven, and by fire in the royal navy, and all things went to worse, till Queen Elizabeth came in, “a repairer of the breach, a restorer of paths to dwell in,” Isa 53:12 ; according to that glorious epitaph, caused by King James to be inscribed upon her princely monument by him erected.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Therefore will I be = For I [am].
rottenness: or, a worm.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
as a: Job 13:28, Isa 50:9, Isa 51:8
as: Pro 12:4
rottenness: or, a worm, Jon 4:7, Mar 9:44-48
Reciprocal: 1Ki 14:16 – who did sin 2Ki 15:37 – Rezin Psa 39:11 – his beauty Isa 1:6 – they have Isa 9:14 – will cut Jer 30:15 – thy sorrow Jer 31:18 – Thou hast Hos 5:9 – Ephraim Hos 6:1 – he hath torn Amo 2:4 – Judah Jam 5:2 – your garments
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Hos 5:12. Again the two divisions of the Jewish people, Ephraim (Israel) and Judah, are named in the predictions of God’s wrath. A moth consumes the material which it attacks, and the Lord decreed to attack his unfaithful people in time to come.
Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary
Yahweh would consume the Northern Kingdom as a moth eats cloth or as rot causes bones to decay. He was behind the enemy invasion.