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with them. 6 Although they bring their flocks and herds to seek the favor of the Lord, they will not find him—he has withdrawn himself from them! 7 They have committed treason against the Lord because they bore illegitimate children.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 Hosea 5:14 and 1 Maccabees 3:4

Hebrew Bible · Deuterocanon

Summary

In 1 Maccabees, Judas is described as a lion’s cub roaring for prey, a phrase that recalls Hosea’s image of a lion representing divine ferocity. 1 Maccabees reuses the imagery to present Judas as a heroic agent of deliverance.

Passages

Hosea 5:14

Hebrew Bible

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.

600–501 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Hosea

1 Maccabees 3:4

Deuterocanon

1 His son Judas, who was called Maccabaeus, rose up in his place. 2 All his kindred helped him, and so did all those who joined with his father, and they fought with gladness the battle of Israel. 3 He got his people great glory, and put on a breastplate like a giant, and bound his warlike harness around him, and set battles in array, protecting the army with his sword. 4 He was like a lion in his deeds, and like a lion’s cub roaring for prey. 5 He hunted and pursued the lawless, and he burned up those who troubled his people.

134–63 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in 1 Maccabees

References

"... Books like 1 Maccabees were written to celebrate the sons of Mattathias as “the family of those people through whom deliverance was given to Israel” (1 Maccabees 5:62), God’s chosen agents who rescued Israel from the ills that beset it. Two poetic passages are particularly important for the author’s interpretation of the role of this family in the plan of God, namely, the poem in praise of Judas in 1 Maccabees 3:3–9 and the encomium on Simon in 1 Maccabees 14:4–15. The author lauds Judas as “a lion in his deeds, a lion’s cub roaring for prey” (1 Maccabees 3:4), recalling Hosea’s description of God’s agent (Hosea 5:14) as well as Jacob’s description of Judah’s ancient namesake (Genesis 49:9). By cleansing Israel of apostate and lapsed Jews, Judas “turned away wrath from Israel” (1 Maccabees 3:8), words directly reminiscent of the important episode of Phinehas, whose similarly violent response to compromise won him the covenant of an eternal priesthood (Numbers 25:10–13; see also 1 Maccabees 2:23–26, 54). Judas emerges as a hero of biblical proportions striding onto the scene, entrusted with restoring and extending “the glory of his people” ..."

David A. DeSilva, The Jewish Teachers of Jesus, James, and Jude: What Earliest Christianity Learned from the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 143.

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 Hosea 5:14 and 1 Maccabees 3:4

Summary

Passages

Hosea 5:14

1 Maccabees 3:4

References

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