Chapter 5

1 Hear this, you priests! Pay attention, you Israelites! Listen closely, O king! For judgment is about to overtake you. For you were like a trap to Mizpah, like a net spread out to catch Tabor. 2 Those who revolt are knee-deep in slaughter, but I will discipline them all. 3 I know Ephraim all too well; the evil of Israel is not hidden from me. For you have engaged in prostitution, O Ephraim; Israel has defiled itself. 4 Their wicked deeds do not allow them to return to their God; for a spirit of idolatry is in them, and they do not acknowledge the Lord. 5 The arrogance of Israel testifies against it; Israel and Ephraim will be overthrown because of their iniquity. Even Judah will be brought down with them. 6 Although they bring their flocks and herds to seek the favor of the Lord, they will not find him—he has withdrawn himself from them! 7 They have committed treason against the Lord because they bore illegitimate children. Soon the new moon festival will devour them and their fields. 8 Blow the ram’s horn in Gibeah! Sound the trumpet in Ramah! Sound the alarm in Beth Aven; tremble in fear, O Benjamin! 9 Ephraim will be ruined in the day of judgment. What I am declaring to the tribes of Israel will certainly take place! 10 The princes of Judah are like those who move boundary markers. I will pour out my rage on them like a torrential flood.⁠ 11 Ephraim will be oppressed, crushed under judgment, because he was determined to pursue worthless idols.⁠ 12 I will be like a moth to Ephraim, like wood rot to the house of Judah. 13 When Ephraim saw his sickness and Judah saw his wound, then Ephraim turned to Assyria and begged its great king for help. But he will not be able to heal you. He cannot cure your wound! 14 I will be like a lion to Ephraim, like a young lion to the house of Judah.⁠ I myself will tear them to pieces then I will carry them off, and no one will be able to rescue them! 15 Then I will return again to my lair until they have suffered their punishment. Then they will seek me; in their distress they will earnestly seek me.

Texts in conversation

Compare Deuteronomy 19:14 and Hosea 5:10

Hebrew Bible

Summary

Deuteronomy forbids moving a neighbor’s boundary marker, an idea inherited from ancient Near Eastern traditions and connected to the inheritance of the land. Hosea uses this image, accusing Judah’s leaders of acting like those who move boundary markers.

Passages

Deuteronomy 19:14

Hebrew Bible

12 The elders of his own city must send for him and remove him from there to deliver him over to the blood avenger to die. 13 You must not pity him, but purge from Israel the guilt of shedding innocent blood, so that it may go well with you. 14 You must not move your neighbor’s boundary marker,²⁸ which will have been defined in the inheritance you will obtain in the land the Lord your God is giving you. 15 A single witness may not testify against another person for any trespass or sin that he commits. A matter may be legally established only on the testimony of two or three witnesses. 16 If a false witness testifies against another person and accuses him of a crime,

750–400 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Deuteronomy

Hosea 5:10

Hebrew Bible

8 Blow the ram’s horn in Gibeah! Sound the trumpet in Ramah! Sound the alarm in Beth Aven; tremble in fear, O Benjamin! 9 Ephraim will be ruined in the day of judgment. What I am declaring to the tribes of Israel will certainly take place! 10 The princes of Judah are like those who move boundary markers. I will pour out my rage on them like a torrential flood. 11 Ephraim will be oppressed, crushed under judgment, because he was determined to pursue worthless idols. 12 I will be like a moth to Ephraim, like wood rot to the house of Judah.

600–501 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Hosea

References

"... The couplets of Proverbs 22:28 and 23:10 present us with the opening segment: ‘Do not remove the ancient marker,’ which is completed by two variant closures playing on the verbal motif of ‘father’: ‘which your fathers have set’ and, alternatively, ‘or enter the fields of the fatherless,’ and in their variance rendering radically different signification. While this opening segment echoes a proverb of the Egyptian Amenemope’s ‘Admonitions,’ it is also found in Deuteronomy 19:14 – in a very close variant of the Proverbs 22 couplet, in the context of a ‘law’ of Moses: ‘Do not remove your neighbor’s marker; which the men of old have set,’ a ‘legal’ motif, which in a poem of Hosea is referenced as an analogue, condemning a lawless Judah: ‘The princes of Judah have become like those who remove the marker’ (Hosea 5:10). Such economy of composition is one of the central factors reflected in the close formal proximity of biblical traditions presented as songs and those offered as wisdom. In Job 7:17 and Psalm 8:5 we find the famous interrogatory entrance: ‘What is a person?’ Job completes the query not merely adding the segment ‘that you make so much of one,’ but coupling it with ‘and that you pay attention to one,’ a couplet open to a positive orientation ..."

Thomas L. Thompson, Biblical Narrative and Palestine’s History: Changing Perspectives (Equinox, 2013), 140.

References are not endorsements of their contents. Read each reference in full to understand its author's intentions in using these texts.

Hosea14 chapters

Compare Deuteronomy 19:14 and Hosea 5:10

Summary

Passages

Deuteronomy 19:14

Hosea 5:10

References

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