Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Hosea 5:10
The princes of Judah were like them that remove the bound: [therefore] I will pour out my wrath upon them like water.
10. were like them that remove the bound ] Rather, are become like them that remove the landmark. The landmarks were under the protection of religion (Pro 22:28; Pro 23:10; Deu 19:14), and to remove them laid the offender under a curse, according to Deu 27:17. Hosea cites the offence as the greatest conceivable example of revolutionary caprice. Judah, it would seem, was not more fortunate now in its upper classes than Israel (comp. Hos 6:10-11 Sept., and Isaiah’s ‘these also’, viz. the chief men of Jerusalem, Isa 28:7).
like water ] Jehovah’s wrath is like fire in its destructiveness, and like a swollen stream in its abundant volume.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
The princes of Judah were like them that remove the bound – All avaricious encroachment on the paternal inheritance of others, was strictly forbidden by God in the law, under the penalty of His curse. Cursed is he that removeth his neighbors landmark Deu 27:17. The princes of Judah, i. e., those who were the kings counselors and chief in the civil polity, had committed sin, like to this. Since the prophet had just pronounced the desolation of Israel, perhaps that sin was, that instead of taking warning from the threatened destruction, and turning to God, they thought only how the removal of Ephraim would benefit them, by the enlargement of their borders. They might hope also to increase their private estates out of the desolate lands of Ephraim, their brother. The unregenerate heart, instead of being awed by Gods judgment on others, looks out to see, what advantages it may gain from them. Times of calamity are also times of greediness. Israel had been a continual sore to Judah. The princes of Judah rejoiced in the prospect of their removal, instead of mourning their sin and fearing for themselves. More widely yet, the words may mean, that the princes of Judah burst all bounds, set to them by the law of God, to which nothing was to be added, from which nothing was to be diminished, transferring to idols or devils, to sun, moon and stars, or to the beings supposed to preside over them, the love, honor, and worship, due to God Alone.
I will pour out My wrath like water – So long as those bounds were not broken through, the justice of God, although manifoldly provoked, was yet stayed. When Judah should break them, they would, as it were, make a way for the chastisement of God, which should burst in like a flood upon them, over-spreading the whole land, yet bringing, not renewed life, but death. Like a flood, it overwhelmed the land; but it was a flood, not of water, but of the wrath of God. They had burst the bounds which divided them from Israel, and had let in upon themselves its chastisements.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Hos 5:10
The princes of Judah were like them that remove the bound.
Breaking bounds
It was a custom among the heathen and the Romans, if any man removed the bound, the ancient landmark, to adjudge them, if poor, to slavery, to dig in deep pits; if rich, to banishment, and a forfeiture of the third part of their estates. The princes of Judah broke down the bounds in a fourfold manner.
1. They took away other mens estates, as Ahab did Naboths.
2. They broke all bounds; all laws and liberties. They will not be bound by laws, saying thus, Laws were made for subjects, not princes.
3. They broke the bonds of religion. This is the great breach of bonds, when people provoke God.
4. They broke the bonds of their own covenants, and regarded them not. The bounds of religion and laws, as they keep in obedience, so they keep out judgments. And we ought to look on laws in both these points of view, not only as means to keep us in order and duty, but also to keep out wrath. If we break our bounds, we must look that wrath should break in upon us; therefore we had need do as men that live near the sea, when the sea breaks in upon them, they presently leave all other businesses, to make up the breaches. (Jeremiah Burroughs.)
Landmarks, or bounds
In the East, advantage was taken, wherever possible, of natural divisions, such as river beds, tributary stream lines, or edges of valleys; but in the open ground, the separate properties were only marked by a deeper furrow, or by large stones almost buried in the soil. Stealthy encroachments might easily be made by shifting these stones.
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 10. Like them that remove the bound] As execrable as they who remove the land-mark. They have leaped over law’s enclosure, and scaled all the walls of right; they have despised and broken all laws, human and Divine.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
The princes; the great men about the king and court, the rulers and governors, who by the law of God and man should have been the maintainers of equity and justice among the people.
Of Judah; of the kingdom of Judah, or the two tribes.
Were; have been, and now are in the days of Ahaz, for to this mans time the prophet now pointeth.
Like them that remove the bound; the ancient bounds which limited every one, prevented controversies and oppressions of encroaching, covetous men. The prophet, I doubt not, aims at reproving the sin of these great ones in changing the laws of religion, as well as altering the bounds of civil rights, whether by encroaching upon foreigners, and enlarging the kingdom of Judah by entrenching on the neighbouring kingdoms, or, which is more certain, by injustice and violence seizing what was anothers.
Therefore I will pour out my wrath upon them: this was sin and forbidden, Deu 19:14; this practice is cursed, Deu 27:17, and God now will punish it.
Like water; like an overflowing flood.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
10. remove the bound (Deu 19:14;Deu 27:17; Job 24:2;Pro 22:28; Pro 23:10).Proverbial for the rash setting aside of the ancestral laws by whichmen are kept to their duty. Ahaz and his courtiers (“the princesof Judah”), setting aside the ancient ordinances of God, removedthe borders of the bases and the layer and the sea and introduced anidolatrous altar from Damascus (2Ki16:10-18); also he burnt his children in the valley of Hinnom,after the abominations of the heathen (2Ch28:3).
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
The princes of Judah were like them that remove the bound,…. Or landmark, which to do was contrary to the law, De 19:14; and has always been reckoned a heinous sin among all nations, and is only done by such who have no regard to right and wrong, and by them secretly; and such were the kings, princes, and nobles of Judah; they secretly committed the grossest iniquities, yea, were abandoned to their vile lusts, and could not be contained within any bounds. The “caph” here used is, according to Kimchi and Ben Melech, not a note of similitude, but of certainty; and then the sense is, that the princes of Judah did remove the bound; either, in a literal sense, by force and violence seized on the possessions and inheritances of their neighbours which lay next to theirs; or, in a figurative sense, they broke through all bounds and limits, and transgressed the laws of God and men, being not to be restrained by either:
[therefore] I will pour out my wrath upon them like water; in great abundance, and with such force and vehemence, as not to be stopped, but utterly destroy; like a flood of water, which overflows the banks, or breaks them down, and carries all before it; or like the flood of water that came upon the earth, and carried off the world of the ungodly; in like manner should the wrath of God be poured down from heaven upon these princes without measure, exceeding all bounds, in just retaliation for their removing the bounds of their neighbours, or transgressing the laws of God: this was fulfilled either in the times of Ahaz, when Rezin king of Syria, and Pekah king of Israel, as well as Tiglathpileser king of Assyria, greatly afflicted Judah, 2Ch 28:1; or at the time of the Babylonish captivity.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
Here the Prophet transfers the blame of all the evils which then reigned in the tribe of Judah to their princes. He says, that the people had fallen away and departed from God through their fault, and he uses a most fit similitude. We know that there is nothing certain in the possessions of men, except the boundaries of fields be fixed; for no one can otherwise keep his own. But by the metaphor of boundaries in fields, the Prophet refers to the whole political order. The meaning is, that all things were now in a state of disorder and confusion among the Jews; because their leaders who ought to have ruled the people and kept them in obedience, had destroyed the whole order of things. We now then understand what the Prophet had really in view.
But it must be observed that the tribe of Judah had been hitherto kept separate, as it were by limits, as God’s heritage; for Israel had become alienated. The possession of God had been diminished by the defection of Jeroboam; and he retained only one tribe and a half in his service. The Prophet says now, that the Jews had mixed with the Israelites, and had thus become themselves alienated from the Lord; for the princes themselves had taken away the boundaries, that is, they had, through indolence and other vices, destroyed all reverence for God, all care for religion, and also every concern for what was just and right: he therefore severely threatens them, “I will pour out”, he says, “my wrath upon them like waters”.
By this metaphor, he means that God would deal much more severely with them than with the common people: “I,” he says, “will with full force pour forth upon them my fury, as if it were the deluge of antiquity.” The meaning is, “I will overwhelm them in my vengeance, because they have done more evil by their bad examples, than if they had been private individuals.” We hence see that the corruption of the people is imputed to the princes, and therefore God’s more dreadful vengeance is denounced on them.
But we must bear in mind what I have before said, that the Prophet gives here metaphorically the name of boundaries to the lawful worship of God, and to whatever he had enjoined on the people, that they might be his certain possession, as fields among men are usually separated by bounds that every one may keep his own. It follows. —
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
(10) The princes of Judah, such as Ahaz, whose pusillanimity brought untold evil on both Israel and Judah (2Ki. 16:10-18).
Like them that remove the bound (landmark).A practice prohibited in Deu. 19:14, and included in the curses of Mount Ebal (Deu. 27:17), an indication that this very legislation existed before the time of the prophet. They break down the barrier between right and wrong, between truth and falsehood, between Jehovah and Baalim.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
‘The princes of Judah are like those who remove the landmark,
I will pour out my wrath on them like water.’
Judah also is to face YHWH’s chastisement although not to the same degree. There is no mention of desolation, but they will nevertheless experience the pouring out of YHWH’s anger on them like water. And this was because their princes had become like those who ‘remove the landmark’. Landmarks where a feature of those days, marking off what land belonged to one person from what belonged to another. The removal of such landmarks was seen as a heinous offence. As Deu 19:14 declares, “You shall not remove your neighbour’s landmark,” something underlined in the group of curses connected with the covenant in Deuteronomy 27, “Cursed be he who removes his neighbour’s landmark” (Deu 27:17).
The reference here is probably to the fact that the princes of Judah have allowed Judah’s standards to slip by easing the requirements of the Law and allowing the men of Judah (including themselves) to participate in Israel’s syncretistic cult (compare Hos 4:15). Or even as referring to their collaboration with Assyria which was certainly like removing a landmark, the landmark which kept Judah independent as YHWH’s people, for the consequence of it would be the introduction of an Assyrian altar into the house of YHWH. Either way the charge is one of compromising the true worship of YHWH. Alternately some see it as referring to Judah’s invasion of Israel in order to take back territory previously purloined. But it is difficult to see how that is the equivalent of removing the landmark, for in that case it was Israel who could be charged with having removed the landmark, although the thought may simply be that Judah should not have taken advantage of Israel’s catastrophe for their own ends (compare how Edom would later be punished for doing the same to Judah – Oba 1:11).
But the verse parallels the previous one suggesting that both Israel and Judah will suffer in similar ways, even if for different reasons, a thought which is repeated later (Hos 5:13). This makes Judah appearing in the guise of an invader very unlikely.
And because of Assyria’s activity YHWH’s wrath would be poured out on them like water (see Psa 69:24-25). Compare the vivid description in Isaiah of Assyria’s incursion into Judah around this time (Isa 8:7-8) with Judah in trouble up to its neck in flood water. So Israel and Judah are both in trouble, the difference being that Israel have gone too far, while for Judah there is still hope.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
Hos 5:10. The princes of Judah, &c. “They have violated the most sacred laws of the Almighty, upon which not only the ordinances of his worship, but also the rights and properties of men depend; and are become guilty of the same injustice and confusion with those who remove the ancient land-marks.” See Eze 46:18 and Pococke.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
Hos 5:10 The princes of Judah were like them that remove the bound: [therefore] I will pour out my wrath upon them like water.
Ver. 10. The princes of Judah were like them that remove the bound ] A wickedness condemned by the law and light both of nature and Scripture, Deu 27:17 ; Deu 19:14 Pro 22:28 . The princes are mentioned, because corruption in a people (as putrefication in a fish) begins at the head. Now the landmark of limit is removed many ways: as, first, religione, in religion; when the true is changed into that which is false, as was here in Queen Mary’s days, against her promise to the Suffolk men (Tarnon.). Secondly, in regione, in the civil state; when one man violently invadeth the right of another (as Ahab did Naboth’s vineyard), and no man must question them, because it is facinus maioris abollae (Juvenal), the fact of a great one. Thirdly, in officio, in a man’s office or particular station, when he keeps not within his circle, but takes liberty to transgress, prescribing new worships, as 2Ki 16:10-11 2Ch 28:23 ; taking upon them to teach ministers what to teach them, as Mic 2:6 ; or themselves invading the ministerial office uncalled thereunto, as did Jeroboam, 1Ki 12:33 ; 1Ki 16:3 , and Uzziah, 2Ch 26:16 , to their cost. This (saith an interpreter) is grandis culpa, et atrox crimen, a foul fault, a crimson crime. Let our lay preachers and levellers look to it, unless they covet a curse. Deu 27:17 , “He that breaketh a hedge, a serpent shall bite him.” Fourthly, in negotio, in businesses and transactions, in contracts and covenants: he removeth bounds who defrauds and circumventeth another in any matters, 1Th 4:6 . These must remember that God is the avenger of all such; and that it is a fearful thing to fall into the punishing hands of the living God, Heb 10:31 . The Papists fall foul upon us as innovators, and removers of the ancient bounds, because we reject their ecclesiastical traditions and unwritten verities (as they call them) commended unto us by the ancients, and embraced by whole nations tbr many ages. To whom we answer, that multitude and antiquity are but ciphers in divinity; they must (at least) have no more authority than what they can maintain. Let them boast, with the Gibeonites, of their old shoes, mouldy bread, &c., we hold us to the Scriptures, for our limits and landmarks unmoveable and immutable. And when they shall ask us, as they often do, where was your religion before Luther? we answer, as one once did, In the Bible, where yours never was. Erasmus met with an adversary so silly as to charge him for a remover of the ancient bounds, because he had anew translated the New Testament; a work of singular use to the Church of Christ in those dark times. (Erasm. in Apolog.).
Therefore I will pour out my wrath upon them like water
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
that remove, &c. Reference to Pentateuch (Deu 19:14; Deu 27:17). App-92Elsewhere only in Job 24:2. Pro 22:28; Pro 23:10.
bound = boundary, or landmark.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
princes: Hos 5:5
remove: Deu 19:14, Deu 27:17, 2Ki 16:7-9, 2Ch 28:16-22, Pro 17:14, Pro 22:28
like: Psa 32:6, Psa 88:17, Psa 93:3, Psa 93:4, Mat 7:27, Luk 6:49
Reciprocal: 2Ch 12:1 – all Israel 2Ch 24:18 – wrath Job 24:2 – landmarks Psa 69:24 – Pour Eze 7:8 – pour Eze 11:1 – Pelatiah Eze 22:22 – ye shall know
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Hos 5:10. Judah is brought into the prediction because she also was destined to be punished for her departures from the Lord. “When the pouring of water is used figuratively, it denotes a.n overflowing of some kind of misfortune. The people of God were destined to be invaded by the heathen nations.
Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary
Hos 5:10. The princes of Judah, &c. The prophet in this chapter passes frequently from the one kingdom to the other, that he might set forth the crimes, and foretel the punishments of both, unless they averted them by their repentance. Instead of the princes, Bishop Horsley reads, the rulers of Judah, observing, I prefer the word rulers to princes, because, in the modern acceptation of the word princes, royalty, or at least, royal blood, is included in the notion of it. But these , saree, [princes,] of the Old Testament, were not persons of royal extraction, or connected by blood or marriage with the royal family; but the chief priests and elders, who composed the secular as well as the ecclesiastical magistracy of the country. Like them that remove the bound They have violated the most sacred laws of God: upon which, not only the ordinances of his worship, but likewise the rights and properties of men depend, and are become guilty of the same injustice and confusion with those that remove the ancient bounds and landmarks, Eze 46:18. Therefore I will pour out my wrath upon them like water That is, with great violence, like an impetuous torrent, or the hasty unexpected overflowing of a river, which overwhelms every thing near. Great calamities are often compared to the overflowing of water.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Hos 5:10-14. Here the immoral cultus is no longer the subject, but the inner moral corruption of the state and its leaders. The parallelism of Judah and Ephraim in this section is remarkable, but seems to be original.[10] Judahs political leaders are specially singled out as examples of fraudulent dealing, and shall incur the Divine wrath. N. Israel (Ephraim) also suffers oppression, the whole social fabric is rotten, because the people have wilfully followed after vanity (mg.). Internal decay has set in in both kingdoms (after the death of Uzziah and Jeroboam II) (Hos 5:10-12). Too late both peoples recognise the desperate case of the body politic, and resort to Assyria for aid (king Jareb, i.e. king Pick-quarrel,[11] is a nickname for the king of Assyria), but without avail; Yahweh Himself is their adversary (Hos 5:13 f.).
Hos 5:10. Land-grabbing on the part of the rich in Judah is specially denounced in Isa 5:8, Mic 2:2 (cf. Deu 27:17).
Hos 5:13. If Jareb is a name for the king of Assyria, the reference may be to Menahems tribute to Assyria in 738. This will also be the case if great king or exalted king (cf. LXX) be read. Wellhausen reads, and Judah sent to king Jareb. The reference would then be to Ahaz in 734.
[10] Marti changes Judah throughout to Israel: cf. also Welch, p. 268, n. 18.
[11] So G. A. Smith.
Fuente: Peake’s Commentary on the Bible
5:10 The princes of Judah were like them that {k} remove the bound: [therefore] I will pour out my wrath upon them like water.
(k) They have turned upside down all political order and all manner of religion.
Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes
The leaders of Judah had also broken covenant with the Lord (cf. Isa 5:8; Mic 2:1-2), as those who move boundary markers. Judah had re-annexed Benjamite territory, thus violating the terms of the Mosaic Covenant regarding tribal allotments (cf. Deu 19:14; Deu 27:17). [Note: Ibid., p. 104.] Consequently God’s wrath would rain down on them. The boundaries that the leaders of Judah had moved were not just physical but also spiritual. They had moved the boundaries between right and wrong, true and false religion, and the true God and idols.