Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Hosea 9:2
The floor and the winepress shall not feed them, and the new wine shall fail in her.
2. the winepress ] Rather, the vat (within the press) into which the grape-juice or the oil flowed; comp. Joe 2:24.
shall fail in her ] Rather, shall fall her (lit. ‘shall lie unto her’, as Hab 3:17). There is a good various reading (supported by the versions and by the Babylonian codex) ‘in them’, but the same interchange of pronouns occurs in Hos 4:19. Idolatrous Israel is personified as a harlot. Wine-drinking was, in fact, so closely connected with the customs of idolatry (comp. Jdg 9:27; Amo 2:8), that the Nazirites bound themselves by a vow of ‘total abstinence’ (Num 6:3).
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
The floor and winepress shall not feed them – God turneth away wholly from the adulterous people, and telleth others, how justly they shall be dealt with first for this. Because she loved My reward, and despised Myself, the reward itself shall be taken away from her. When the blessings of God have been abused to sin, He, in mercy and judgment, takes them away. He cut them off, in order to show that He alone, who now withheld them, had before given them. When they thought themselves most secure, when the grain was stored on the floor, and the grapes were in the press, then God would deprive them of them.
And the new wine shall fail in her, or shall fail her – Literally, shall lie to her. It may be, he would say, that as Israel had lied to his God, and had spoken lies against Him Hos 7:13, so, in requital, the fruits of the earth should disappoint her, and holding out hopes which never came to pass, should, as it were, lie to her, and in the bitterness of her disappointment, represent to her her own failure to her God. The prophet teaches through the workings of nature, and gives, as it were, a tongue to them .
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
The floor; the corn which is gathered into the floor and that is threshed there, that plenty which these sottish idolaters have, and think they have it from their idols, the bread they eat. For here the floor is put for the corn, and the bread made of it.
The wine-press, by the same figure, put for the wine that is pressed out in it; though there is great plenty, and the vats overflow as well as the press full.
Shall not feed them; all this plenty shall not nourish and strengthen them. Since they think their idols give them their corn and wine, let them give also, what I will not give, a blessing on these that they may support and refresh them; they shall be lean and half-starved in their plenty unless their idols can do this for them, i.e. bless their food.
Them, who seek to idols for corn and wine, and praise their idols as givers of it. These I will blast, their provision shall be as theirs, Hag 1:6.
The new wine shall fail in her; or lie unto her, or fail her expectation. Samaria and all Israel expect a fair and full vintage, but they expect it from their idols, which are a doctrine of lies, and in this, as in all other, will lie.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
2. (Hos 2:9;Hos 2:12).
faildisappoint herexpectation.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
The floor and the winepress shall not feed them,…. Though their expectations from their worship of idols were large, they should find themselves mistaken; for there would not be a sufficiency of corn on the floor, nor of wine in the press, to supply them with what was necessary for their sustenance; either through a blight upon their fields and vineyards, or through the invasion of an enemy, treading them down, and spoiling and foraging them: or else supposing a sufficient quantity of corn and wine got in; yet those blessings should be either turned into curses, or carried off by the enemy, that they should do then, no good; or if they enjoyed them, yet they should receive no nourishment from them; but should become lean, and look like starved and famishing creatures in the midst of plenty; by all which it would appear that their idols could neither give them a sufficiency of provisions, nor make those nourishing to them they had:
and the new wine shall fail in her; in the congregation or land of Israel: or, “shall lie to her” s; shall not answer their expectations, but disappoint and deceive them; whereas they expected great plenty from the promising prospect of the vines, these by one means or another should be destroyed, so that they would yield but little, and balk them; see Hab 3:17.
s “mentietur in ea”, Pagninus, Montanus, Zanchius; “mentietur isti”, Junius & Tremellius, Piscator, Liveleus, Schmidt.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
God now denounces such a punishment as the Israelites deserved. They had been drawn away, as we have said, from the pure worship of God by allurements; they hoped for more profit from superstitions. Hence God shows, that he would on this account punish them by taking away from them their wine and corn, as we have already noticed in Hos 2:0 : for it is the only way by which the Lord restores men to a sane mind, or at least renders them inexcusable, to deprive them of his blessings. The harlot, as long as gain is to be had, as long as she surpasses all honest and chaste matrons in her dress and mode of living, is pleased with herself and blinded by her own splendour; but when she is reduced to extreme want, when she sees herself to be the laughing-stock of all, and when she drags a miserable life in poverty, she then sighs and owns how infatuated she had been in leaving her husband. So the Lord now declares by his Prophet, that he would thus deal with the Israelites, that they might no longer please themselves with such delusions.
Hence he says, The floor and the wine-press shall not feed them, and the new wine shall disappoint them, ( mentietur illis — shall lie to them;) — that is, the vineyards shall not answer their expectation. It is the same as though he said, “As these men regard only their stomach, as they deem nothing of any moment but provision, therefore the floor and the wine-press shall not feed them; I will deprive them of their support, that they may understand that they in vain worship false gods.” Let us take a common similitude: We see some boys so disingenuous as not to be moved either by disgrace or even by stripes; but as they are subject to the cravings of appetite, when the father deprives them of bread, they nearly lose all hope. Stripes do no good, all warnings are slighted; but when the boy who loves excess sees that bread is denied him, he finds out that his father’s displeasure ought to be feared. Thus God corrects men addicted to excessive indulgence; for they are so insensible, that no other remedy can do them any good.
We now, then, apprehend the meaning of the Prophet. He first reproaches the Israelites for loving a reward, for hastening after fictitious gods, that they might glut themselves with great abundance of things: but when the Lord saw that they had become stupefied in their fatness, he said, “I will deprive them of all their provisions; neither wine nor wheat shall be given them; this want will at length drive them to repentance.” We hence see how the Lord deals with men according to their disposition. And his manner of speaking ought to be noticed; he says, that neither the floor nor the wine-press shall feed them. He does not say, that the fields shall be barren; he does not say, that he would send hail or storm; but he says, that neither the floor nor the wine-press shall feed them; and further, that the new wine shall disappoint them; that is, when they shall think themselves to be blessed with all plenty, when the harvest shall appear abundant, and when they shall have already, by anticipation, swallowed up the large produce of their vineyards, all this shall come to nothing; for neither the floor nor the wine-press shall feed them; nay, the very wine which they thought to have been prepared shall disappoint them. It follows —
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
(2) Winepress.Read wine-vat (with margin), into which the trsh, new wine ( grape-juice ), flowed from the winepress. (Comp. Isa. 5:2.) For fail in her read deceive her, with LXX. and Vulgate.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
2. Faithlessness to Jehovah will be punished by a withdrawal of the divine gifts (Hos 2:9).
Wine press The Hebrew word denotes not the press in which the grapes are pressed out, but the receptacle into which flows the juice after the grapes are crushed (see on Joe 2:24). Threshing floor where the grain is stored as well as threshed out and winepress stand for grain and wine.
New wine See on Hos 4:11.
Feed them LXX., with a change of one consonant, “know them.”
Fail in her Better R.V., “fail her,” that is, Israel. The change to a feminine pronoun would have to be explained by the representation of Israel as a harlot (Hos 4:19). It should be noted, however, that all the versions read the plural, as in the first clause. Changes from the second person (Hos 9:1) to the third person (Hos 9:2) are not uncommon in prophetic discourse. For the thought compare Amo 5:11; Isa 5:10.
The manner in which Jehovah will execute the judgment is indicated in Hos 9:3. Israel is to be removed from the land.
Egypt See on Hos 8:13. The other power upon which Israel relies for help, Assyria (Hos 7:11; Hos 8:9), will also be a means of Israel’s destruction.
Jehovah’s land The land in which Israel now dwells. So long as primitive religious conceptions prevailed in Israel Palestine was thought to be the land of Jehovah in much the same sense in which Moab was the land of Chemosh or Ammon the land of Milcom (Jdg 11:23-24). Outside of Israel Jehovah was powerful only as he went to the assistance of his people Israel against another people and its deity. Even to David exile from the land meant inability to worship Jehovah (1Sa 26:19; compare Jon 1:3). The eighth century prophets had a broader conception of Jehovah; he controlled other nations as well as Israel (Amo 1:3 to Amo 2:3; Amo 9:7), though they never ceased to believe that Jehovah had a peculiar interest in the Hebrews. Nevertheless, in several places passages are found which imply that the common people continued to cling to the narrower view. Thus may be explained the latter part of this verse.
Unclean things [“food”] Not food which was per se ceremonially unclean, but food which was unclean because the land in which it was eaten was unclean (Amo 7:17; Eze 4:13); and the land was unclean because Jehovah could not properly be worshiped there (compare 2Ki 5:17).
To a people so scrupulous about the fulfillment of the ceremonial requirements one of the greatest calamities of life in exile would be the inability to continue properly the external forms of worship. This calamity the prophet brings before them in vivid colors in Hos 9:4. Whether the prophet himself shared the common notion, or whether he simply used these expressions because they would present the climax of calamity to the minds of those whom he was anxious to influence, is not made clear; that Hosea conceived of the sway of Jehovah as extending over nations outside of Israel cannot be doubted. Offer [“pour out”] wine offerings to Jehovah Drink offerings will cease (see on Joe 1:9).
Neither shall they (the wine offerings) be pleasing unto him Margin of R.V., which connects the words differently, reproduces more accurately the Hebrew, “neither shall their sacrifices be pleasing unto him.” This presupposes the bringing of sacrifice, only it will not be acceptable to Jehovah. But the first as well as the last clause of the verse states that certain offerings shall be discontinued. The same is implied in the whole verse; Hos 3:4, also teaches that sacrifice is to be entirely discontinued in exile. To remove this apparent contradiction scholars generally accept the emendation first suggested by Kuenen, and read, with a change of one single consonant, “neither shall they prepare for him their sacrifices.”
Their sacrifices shall be unto them as the bread of mourners That is, unclean. The bread of mourning is the bread eaten during the seven days of mourning (Deu 26:14) and at funeral meals. Everyone coming near a dead person is unclean for seven days (Num 19:14), and everything such an unclean person touches, even his food, becomes unclean (Num 19:22); anyone eating this unclean food shares the uncleanness.
Their bread for their soul The last word means also appetite, so R.V., “shall be for their appetite”; sometimes it is even used in the place of the pronoun “for themselves.” Whichever rendering is adopted, the thought remains the same. Part of the bread (or food) was presented to Jehovah in the form of first fruits, offerings, or tithes, and thus it assisted in securing the divine favor; a part was used to satisfy the hunger of the owner. In the exile there will be no sanctuary, and offerings cannot be brought; the food cannot be used to secure or maintain the divine favor; it serves only to satisfy physical hunger.
House of Jehovah Any sanctuary consecrated to Jehovah.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
‘The threshing-floor and the oil-press will not feed them,
And the new wine will fail her.’
They were to recognise that in the not too distant future they would discover that their threshing floors and oil presses would no longer provide food for them, and that their new wine would fail. This would be because they were no longer in Israel, having been transported to a foreign country. For the threefold combination of grain, oil and wine see Hos 2:8.
The oil-press, and the wine-press, would be a hole made in the ground with its bottom at two levels one below the other. The grapes and olives would be trampled on the top level and the juice would then seep through to the bottom level.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
Hos 9:2 The floor and the winepress shall not feed them, and the new wine shall fail in her.
Ver. 2. The floor and the winepress shall not feed them ] Culpam poena premit comes, Punishment attendeth sin at the heels. They had abused their plenty, and ascribed it to their idols; therefore shall they be cut short either in their store, as Hab 3:6 ; Hab 3:10 ; Hab 2:16 , or in their strength, as Hos 4:10 ; Hos 8:7 . see Hos 2:8-9 , with the notes One way or other their hopes shall be frustrated, the creature shall lie to them, and not answer their expectation.
The new wine shall fail in her
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
floor = threshing-floor.
winepress = wine fat. Hebrew. yekeb, the wine receptacle; not gath, the winepress. See note on Isa 5:2.
new wine. Hebrew. tirosh. App-27. Not same as Hos 9:4.
her. A special various reading called Sevir (App-34), with some codices, one early printed edition, Aramaean, Septuagint, Syriac, and Vulgate, give “them”; some give “with her” in margin
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
floor: Hos 2:9, Hos 2:12, Isa 24:7-12, Joe 1:3-7, Joe 1:9-13, Amo 4:6-9, Amo 4:5-11, Mic 6:13-16, Hag 1:9, Hag 2:16
winepress: or, winefat
Reciprocal: Num 18:27 – the corn Hos 3:1 – love flagons Joe 1:10 – the new Joe 1:12 – joy Amo 5:17 – in
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Hos 9:2. This verse is a simple prediction of the industrial provisions of the country, that they would be cut off by the invasion of a strange force.
Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary
9:2 {c} The floor and the winepress shall not feed them, and the new wine shall fail in her.
(c) These outward things that you seek will be taken from you.